Media started it. So strict gun laws would not have prevented anything, correct? An armed society is a polite society. Gun free zones are victim rich environments.
Honestly . . . I doubt much would come of it and I have seen and heard worse just curious to me that someone I don't recall seeing in the D&D that often just out of the blue comes up with an attack So either 1. He been lurking and picked this moment to jump out with his narrative or 2. he is someone that has been here a while and decided to make a new account to speak their real mind while keeping their other identity 'pristine' and clean from the drivel they spew. Either way . . . . they are what we think they are . .. . Rocket River
I don't know if the uncle had any motivation other than to give his nephew what he believed was a nice gift. I'm not saying that the uncle had anything sinister in mind. What I'm concerned though is if the uncle knew that Dylann Roof was troubled or even if he didn't know him that well at all. To me that would be irresponsible on the part of the uncle to do so. A gun is very powerful instrument and should come with a lot of responsibility yet in this case and the Newtown shooting they ended up in the hands of young men who clearly were troubled.
That is such a ridiculous catchphrase that is put out there and frankly shows a lack of individual thought that you would regurgitate that. If an armed society makes a polite society then Syria would be the most polite place on Earth right now. Anyway I'm not even talking about gun laws. I'm talking about responsibility. Young men statistically cause the most acts of violence and according to insurance rates are the least responsible. If I'm giving someone a gun, or anything that is potentially dangerous, I would want to know a lot more about them and if they did appear to be troubled I wouldn't give them something that makes it very easy to kill people.
LOL stupid ass slogans. We're as armed a society as any in the first world and our gun murder rate bears that out.
FWIW I think racist violence is worse than terrorist violence. And the 'hate crime' label is important. Even if it doesn't affect the punishment here. Hate crimes are targeted at a group of people rather than just the individuals involved or even their beliefs. That should be acknowledged. I suspect this isn't the time to get into this debate -- but possibly since this is the D&D it's not quite so insensitive. Or possibly not. I don't think justx was diminishing the nature of this crime. If anything, I think we lose a bit of the gravity of what this really was by stretching the terrorist label to it.
In my post, that's clearly what I was saying. If the uncle knew of his arrest record before giving him the weapon or, as you point out, knew that he was "troubled" before giving him the firearm, then he bears some responsibility for what happened, in my humble opinion. Whether he actively encouraged the fellow is unknown, at this point. He may be as shocked as everyone else. We'll find out. Early days.
Initiating counting down for the obvious insanity defense even thought every action this POS took screams premeditation.
You say that, but if a few members of the church were armed, fewer people would have died....possibly no one. I don't think we should politicize this, but that statement is almost certainly true.
Actually with Hassan it does change a lot of things. It helped to understand how Al Qaeda was radicalizing people here in the US and even in the military. If we just called it workplace violence and / or a hate crime (it was also those) that would have limited our understanding of Hassan's actions and made it harder to deal with other threats like him.
Yes. I agree far too early to know and I'm just expressing my concern. I doubt that the uncle had any motivation other than to give what he thought was a nice gift and he is probably innocent as far as any criminal culpability. What I am concerned about is how responsible he was giving a gun. I've been critical of gun owners and of the gun culture in the US but I also sympathize with gun owners too. Most gun owners are responsible and the vast vast majority of the one's I've known treat their weapons with the proper respect. As with many things though it only takes a small few to ruin it for everyone. In Newtown Lanza's mother appeared to be a very responsible gun owner yet she still armed her son who went on to kill her with that gun and then several school children with his mother's weapons. That should be a concern for everyone.
I don't know enough Military Law if they have a specific "terrorism" charge. That said Hassan was widely referred to as a terrorist and his actions where classified as terrorism under official Congressional reports.
This was a big debate in the media between the President and Congress. Congress pokes the president in the eye by calling it a terrorist attack. The President was insistent that it was workplace violence.
For those having some question about the "rush to judgment" there is quite a bit of precedent regarding white racist assholes and black churches... Thugs and Terrorists Have Attacked Black Churches for Generations ... Black churches suffered at the hands of thugs and terrorists throughout the Civil Rights era, as they had for a century before, but such attacks aren’t a matter of remote history. As recently as the 1990s, a wave of fire-bombings hit black churches. Congressional hearings were held in 1996 at the end of a two-year period when such arson spiked across the southeast. In South Carolina alone, black churches that suffered probable arson attacks included Mt. Zion AME Church in Williamsburg, Macedonia Baptist Church in Manning, Saint Paul Baptist Church in Lexington, Rosemary Baptist Church in Barnwell, St. John Baptist Church in Dixiana, Effington Baptist Church, Mount Olivet Baptist Church, and Allen’s Chapel. One member of Congress likened fire-bombings in those years to “the return of a biblical plague.” The most recent burning of a black church to make national headlines occurred in Massachusetts the day Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first black president. A white man was later convicted in what prosecutors called a racially motivated arson attack. One wonders how many black congregants are remembering bygone fires today. In 2013, the most recent year for which federal data is available, the FBI identified 3,563 victims of racially motivated hate crimes. Black victims constituted 66 percent of the total. 21 percent were victims of anti-white bias. 4.6 percent were victims of anti-Asian bias. And 4.5 percent were victims of anti-Native American bias. (Most of these hate crimes were not fatal.) If Wednesday’s attack is confirmed to be a hate crime (as authorities said in early reports) or domestic terrorism, it will share horrific similarities with the 2012 attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, where a white supremacist killed 6 people, as well as other attacks here and abroad on synagogues, mosques, and churches by religious bigots. ... more at the link
The President didn't engage in this debate - the debate wholly happened within the confines of cable news yammering. The workplace violence/no terrorism finding was from the Army's own investigation.
