Random thoughts on a school shooting

Since Adam Lanza shot 27 people in a Connecticut school, I've been having a number of conversations over the last several days, primarily on Facebook and in what we laughingly call "real life." (I have yet to work up the interest in trolling right-wing blogs, though. Not sure why - perhaps the open futility of logic in this case.)

It's surprising how often I've been hearing the same tropes, too.

You know, if one of those teachers had owned a gun, none of this would have happened!
Actually, one of them owned several guns. Her son used them to kill her, and 26 other people.

And in fact, if you review the data (and this analysis is slightly flawed, but data is data), of the 17 mass shootings he analyzed, 11 were, in fact, stopped by civilians. But only in one of them was the shooter gunned down by someone carrying a weapon (one other was wounded by a civilian with a firearm, but he escaped, and later shot himself). The most common endings for these situations is a gunman shooting himself, or getting tackled by unarmed civilians; police killing the gunman actually came in third.

In fact, the most common ending for armed civilians entering the fray? Increased confusion, more collateral damage, and more wounded bystanders. So, once again, the "conventional wisdom" turns out to be completely inaccurate.

Students were killed because liberals ended prayer in school!
Or any of a thousand variations on a theme. Really, there's only one answer to statements like that.

(On a side note and something of a non sequiter, Westboro Baptist Church announced their intention to picket the funerals of the children. And within hours, the hacker group Anonymous released the contact information of many of the more public members, so you can contact them and tell them how you feel. Just thought I'd mention.)

There've been a few new tropes of late, though. I had the following exchange after tossing out a simple picture like this:

Guy: I would only point out that they should be focusing on the societal issues that causes this piece of dirt to think this was a viable option.

Me: And one of the societal issues? The easy availability of guns. How is it that every other 1st world country can handle this problem but us? Why are we down with the 3rd world countries in per capita gun deaths?

Girl: It's been said many times before: guns don't kill people, crazy idiots with guns kill people

Me: Guns don't kill people. People kill people. By throwing bullets at each other.

Still me: 27 children. Dead. I'm just saying.

Guy: Lol at your wikipedia reference. it would be a little more believable if the dates the data was cherry picked from matched and if the US didn't have three years of data to every others one year (exception being Argentina)

Still the guy: and yes 27 people killed is a horrible tragedy. Maybe we should spend some time grieving first and then discussing why it happened at a more appropriate time.

Me: Huh. Interesting theory. Ignoring your wish to get all the data from a source that doesn't exist, there have been 4 mass shootings this year alone. There have been two a year for the last 3 decades. If we followed your advice and waited until an appropriate time, it's a discussion that would never happen. So, since we obviously need it, when do you suggest? And how many people need to die before we do?

Please note the two newest tropes on display up there:

We should take care of the societal issues that cause the problems, not the problems themselves.

and

Now is not the time to talk about this. There should be time to mourn. We should wait until emotions aren't running as high.

I believe Jon Stewart pointed out the problems with that last point.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

So in the end, there are no new arguments. Just the same ones, louder.

A crashing Boortz

Radio talk-show host Neal Boortz picked up a little press last week, and now he's complaining about it. So this week, he gave a big ol' non-apology. I'm going to reprint a big chunk of it here (interesting punctuation issues and all) to be sure I'm not taking him out of context.

As examples we'll use the Huffington post, a well known leftist website, and another named ournewsnow.com, a website with the slogan "The revolution will not be televised; whatever in the world that means, that titled their little bit about me thusly: "Atlanta Talk Show Host Codes Race Killings." Both of these websites printed the following quote from me:

"This town is starting to look like a garbage heap. And we got too damn many urban thugs, yo, ruining the quality of life for everybody. And I'll tell you what it's gonna take. You people, you are - you need to have a gun. You need to have training. You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta.

Well ... that wasn't exactly all I said. Here's the part they left off:

"We need to see the next guy that tries to carjack you shot dead right where he stands. We need more dead thugs in this city."

These websites, you see, wanted to portray me as having called for people to simply get guns and start killing blacks. They didn't include the beginning of my comments where I referenced two violent carjackings in Atlanta, nor did they see fit to include that part of my statement that related to self defense. No surprise. If you have an agenda to push, you do whatever editing is necessary to keep your message on point...

OK, so there's his basic message, or so he claims. It's all right to kill somebody, if you think they're robbing you. You know, basic libertarian, Second Amendment stuff. This isn't a healthy trend (ask Bernie Goetz), but I digress.)

Now Boortz takes a while complaining about his treatment by the "liberal media," until we get to this.

(Ed) Shultz picked up on my comments from Media Matters and then ... before he played it on his MSNBC show ... he did a little creative editing. My comments related to self defense, but Schultz, like other critics, needed to get the self defense aspect out of the way so that he could portray me as, in his words, as "reckless, stupid and racist" and to tell his audience that I had "advocated murder in the streets of Atlanta." You can't say that I was advocating murder if it's clear that I'm talking about defending yourself from a carjacker --- so that part was taken out. Here, again, is what I said:

You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta. "We need to see the next guy that tries to carjack you shot dead right where he stands. We need more dead thugs in this city."

See? That makes it all better.

He follows that with more whining about how badly he's mistreated by the "liberal media," and he'd like an apology. And he's not a racist, but he doesn't care if you call him one.

And then he says this.

Here's a nasty little secret for you. Pretty much every time the Atlanta media reports a violent crime in the city; whether it's a rape, an assault, a shooting, a carjacking or the murder of three people who worked in a car wash that doubles as a rap music recording studio, (no kidding this happened last week), one of the first thoughts that will cross most people's minds is that the perpetrators were young black males. I'm sure this is the case in most other large urban areas. Sometimes these initial impressions will be false, but not that often. Are these thoughts racist? Do these first impressions occur because of some deeply held belief that young black males are genetically predisposed to commit crimes? Hardly. These initial impressions are brought about by recognition of the fact that young black males are engaged in criminal activity in numbers way out of proportion to their percentage of the population - a recognition that there is a culture of crime and violence in the urban community. Yes, I can give you some statistics. You might not like them, but they're there for you to develop on your own, if you care to, using FBI crime data.

See? He's not racist! Everybody is, and he's just saying it for them!

And then he abuses statistics for a while, to show that most crime is committed by blacks and hispanics. Now, it would be rude of me to point out that these are the same statistics used by Klansmen to show that they aren't racist, they're only protecting their own kind!

And burning crosses (but that's just a hobby).

Instead, I'm just going to ponder the statistics he didn't use. The one from the Atlanta police, that shows that crime in Atlanta has been dropping steadily. In fact, crime in all of Georgia has been dropping for the last 30 years (a few indicators spiked in the early 90s, probably due to the influence of Vanilla Ice).

What other statistics does he ignore? Well, how about the fact that two-thirds of the population of Atlanta is black. So, just off the top of my head, I'd say that there's a good chance that two-thirds of the criminals are black. But that's just me.

And the rest of his statistics are equally idiotic. They're debunked or explained on a regular basis, but they're still quoted. By racists, who refuse to admit that their statistics are crap.

Nor is this the first time Boortz showed his racist side (and again, nice long quotes to let you get everything in context).

So, yeah, I think I'm more than happy to label him as a useless, bigoted fucknozzle, and racist to his evil little core.

Right-Wing Harassment of Liberal Bloggers

For seven years, our good friend Libby of The Impolitic has been writing a column for the Detroit News. Hers is a thankless task because she is a token liberal at a right-wing rag, which means she is also a frequent target for harassment. On any given day, trolls will gang up on her, fabricate lies from thin air, lift phrases out of context and misquote her, and assassinate her character. Ugly stuff! To make matters worse, the folks who run Detroit News hold liberal bloggers to a different standard, which means rapacious right-wingers get to ride roughshod and rampant while comments from liberals are sometimes deleted. The latest example is Libby’s post, Another 'Lone Wolf' attempts domestic terrorism, about the arrest of the would-be bomber of a Detroit mosque. Predictably, the rabble ganged up on Libby … shamelessly attributing "anti-Bush liberalism" as the motive behind the madman. In Libby's defense, I left this comment:

Libby,
I referenced your links including the Detroit News coverage of this story, and NOWHERE DO ANY OF THESE SOURCES MENTION ANYTHING about the partisan leanings of the accused. Nowhere is the name “Bush” even mentioned. Yet there are three critics below who fabricate stuff for only one purpose: To HARRASS ANY LIBERAL in this forum. Notice the same bogus claim and parallel structure in each of the following comments:

IFindThisHumorous - the guy was an anti-Bush liberal [my bold]
Sensical Thinker - he was a Bush-hating liberal [my bold]
Herb Smoker - He is a Bush Hating pot smoker just like you [my bold]

These comments confirm the impression that there are Freeper trolls who single out liberals for bullying, harassment, and ultimately persecution. I am even more shocked that your bosses who run this forum tolerate this kind of gang-up mentality, especially in the aftermath of the recent Tucson massacre. Evidently, Detroit News has learned nothing from this tragedy and continues to purvey a business-as-usual form of low-life partisanship. This is junk journalism at its worst.

A quick Google search of “anti-Islam" rhetoric retrieves 421,000 articles in 0.14 seconds, articles such as these:

White Supremacists Find Common Cause with Pam Geller’s Anti-Islam Campaign

Media rife with anti-Muslim rhetoric

Anti Muslim Rhetoric Reaching a Dangerous Level

Anti-Muslim rhetoric threatens fundamental rights

Over 420,000 more just like the above; hate speech from pols and pundits such as Newt Gingrich, Martin Peretz, Patrick Buchanan, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Morris, Tea Party candidate Lou Ann Zelenik, and Republican Congressman Peter King; in towns and cities from coast to coast such as New York, Gainesville, Murfreesboro, Oklahoma City, and now Detroit.

Predictably, right wing trolls crawl out of the woodwork and double down on stereotypic rhetoric … accusing all liberals of “Blood Libel” in the name of that dreaded liberal conspiracy of all conspiracies, political correctness. Character assassination, sandbox bullying, and slander - these are not free speech. We do not allow children to bully children at school; yet we tolerate this kind of bullshit from adults!  How many innocent bystanders, judges, and children will be killed on the street before the mental and moral midgets of the far right finally get the message!

Just keep saying it. "Words have consequences"

Good freaking god, right wing! What the hell is the matter with you? Can't a guy take a break? I mean, don't you know that Fallout: New Vegas is out there? And it's not going to play itself! Can't you just chill the hell out for a while?'

But no. It's Glenn Beck, it's Sarah Palin, it's all the rest of you ignorant fucks. You go spewing your violent rhetoric when you don't think it means anything, and then try your damnedest to back away from it when your chickens come home to roost, don't you? Seems to me like the only person who would, you know, "retreat," instead of "reload"... well, hell, if you can't live up to the stupid philosophy you've been spouting for the last three or four years, then I guess you're kind of a pussy, aren't you?

I mean, come on!!

It's sad when you've got to let your congressbitches Durbin and Alexander make excuses for you because you're too scared to face the demon you raised.

And you know, it's even sadder when people have been pointing out that the crazies are coming out of the woodwork on this very issue, over this specific graphic, for almost a year, and you still can't figure out that maybe you're part of the problem.

OK, let's be real. Every time you meet up with some rightard screaming about how "liberals just want to blame this on Palin," there's a couple of things to remember.

If they say "well, lefties talk mean about Republicans, too," remind them that there's a big difference between "talk" and "shoot." (The saddest part, of course, is the right wing trying to justify Sarah Palin's rhetoric by digging deep into the farthest depths of the internet to find leftists making threats, too.)

On July 27, 2008, Jim Adkisson walked into a Unitarian church, killed two people and wounded two others, because he "wanted to kill... every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book,” but knew he couldn't get to them.

On April 4, 2009, Richard Poplawski shot and killed three police officers, because he was scared of "the Obama gun ban that's on the way." He was an avid watcher of Glenn Beck.

There are literally dozens of examples of increasing, escalating rightwing violence over that last three years. It's time for these frothing media types to get a clue, that maybe their spittle-flecked rants are only making things worse.

As usual, Keith Olbermann said it best. And if you haven't seen this yet, you need to.


And, you know what? If you just have to get your violence on, you could try Fallout, where you get to kill people virtually for a while, instead of out here in meatspace. Give it a shot (so to speak). Nobody gets hurt, except for a couple of pixels. Try it.

Glass houses

Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time understanding the pervasive attitude toward the Chinese crackdown on rioting Muslim separatists in Xinjian - if indeed that's what is happening. Articles like this one at Newsweek.com stress the "spin" being put on the rioting and the government response to it and indeed the reasons behind the unrest. I don't pretend to have facts that would challenge any accounts of what's going on, but I do have some history that fairly screams hypocrisy.

How many countries, including our own, treat separatist, secessionist movements without violence? How many can claim fair treatment for ethnic minorities? After all we've taken the opposite side in Israel, we came down hard and violently against the rather small Black Separatist movement here in the 1960's and there can't be anybody who hasn't heard of the bloody suppression of a Southern separatist movement in the 1860's. And then there were the Indian wars. There was the brutal supression of the labor movement in tth 1930's, brutal supression of anti- Vietnam war protesters and enough more to suggest that we're living in a glass house.

We concoct stories of Mexican separatism to scare children and Republicans and to support arguments for ethnic cleansing, yet we allow freedom of speech protection to White Separatists and Alaskan Separatists. I could go on, but it's easier to ask what the US would do if Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were to ask to secede, taking all the mineral and oil resources with them for ethnic and religious reasons. I think you know the answer.

Are we going to tell ourselves we support the Uighurs while a good part of America writes me e-mails demanding that "we" throw the Muslims out of the US? While we won't accept Uighurs we've falsely accused and jailed and abused because we are afraid of them?

Sure, China is trying hard to suppress news coverage. Heard much first hand coverage from Afghanistan lately or from any of the provinces where we're bombing and killing civilians every day in Pakistan? Were you accused of being a terrorist supporter or accomplice for questioning the WMD idea or the destruction of a neutral country? Many of us were, yet here we are, China bashing with tarnished halos and blood on our wings.

VIOLENCE AT PALIN RALLIES

The über-patriot in action again, here is Sarah Palin delivering a speech at Elon, North Carolina, yesterday :

We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.

Does Petite Syrah mean to imply that other parts of America are less wonderful, less patriotic, and less pro-America?  According to another report, her speech was briefly interrupted after a protester was led away in handcuffs.  Here is how Sarah Palin responded:

"You know what, maybe we need to tell security that maybe he need not go," she said.  "Maybe he needs to stay and learn a little from all of you."  The crowd then cheered.

What exactly did Sarah Palin have in mind? Did she intend to have the protestor drawn and quartered?  Have him fed as raw meet to the cannibals? Here is another account from Mark Binker who was covering another rally:

I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.  As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.

"Hey, hey, " I said. "I'm trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay?"

The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building.   We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.

This was met with curses, screams and chants of "U.S.A" by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.  It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.

"Oh, you think that 's funny?! " the large bearded man said.  His face was turning red.  "Yeah, that 's real funny…" he said.

And then he kicked the back of [my] leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.

Yup, it’s sure getting ugly out there.