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Guns + Hate = Death
Author: BobR    Date: 06/15/2016 13:17:41

The horrific mass shooting in Orlando has once again ripped the scab from the nation's wounded psyche, a festering bullet hole never healed from Sandy Hook, when innocent children were slaughtered like sacrificial lambs on the altar of America's sacred idol - the gun. When I wrote about America's romance with firearms, it was the hope at the time that something would be finally be done about our country's sick infatuation with lethal firepower. That hope was in vain, as someone said recently: "If the mass shooting of elementary school children didn't change anything, then there's no hope for change after a bunch of gay Hispanics are murdered".

The reality is that what used to be an outlier is now becoming a norm. Conservatives are tripping over themselves to label this an "islamic terrorist attack", when all signs point to it being a hate crime against gays. The murderer's father has railed against gays. An Islamic "scholar" has proclaimed it is the government's duty to put gays to death. How does one who is secretly gay and trying to deny his own self deal with this? Time and time again, those who are most vociferously anti-gay turn out to be self-hating gays themselves. In this case, the attacker decided to commit suicide by cop, and take out as many fellow gays as he could, and hide his true motive by claiming allegiance to ISIS.

Whether the ISIS claim is valid, it's very clear he was striking out against that which he hated within himself. Even if he had some ties with them, would he have lashed out like this had his religion, his family, and society in general been more accepting of his homosexuality? We'll never know, of course. We do know that if he only had access to a hunting rifle or revolver, a lot fewer people would be dead today, and he may have been taken alive.

FWIW - Those who think Islam is a religion of hate and Christianity is not, has obviously not paid attention to this guy:



or this guy:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Eric_rudolph.jpg/220px-Eric_rudolph.jpg


or this guy:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/2b/Scott_Roeder.jpg/150px-Scott_Roeder.jpg


Christians will likely label them as "whackos" or dissassociate themselves from them, declaring them not to be "normal" Christians. Muslims will say the same about ISIS, and the three "lone gunman" who have recently taken it upon themselves to project their hatred upon others in a burst of hot lead, and use their religion as an attempt to justify their actions. I see no difference between those who do it in the name of Islam and those who do it in the name of Christianity.

I am not laying all of the blame for the hatred on the feet of religion. Some of it is certainly justified (in particular - this case, with fundamental religions of many stripes having a problem with LGBTQ people). In many cases, though, it is the combination of hatred and massive firepower - and a justification to pin it on - that leads to these horrendous incidents.

Tens of thousands of people are killed in America by firearms, however, and most of those go under the radar, repeated ad nauseum on local evening news and then quickly forgotten by all except for the victims' families. Only when events of this magnitude occur do we stop to consider that something must be done. These events are just the tip of a bloody iceberg that is the shame of our nation. It is a health crisis that needs to be addressed. Why do so many Americans get killed by guns? Why do so many Americans think more guns will solve this? Why does America have an infatuation with guns?

These are the questions that need to be answered before anything meaningful can be done to fix our problem. Simply yelling "Less guns!" / "More guns!" is just not getting it done.
 

32 comments (Latest Comment: 06/15/2016 22:47:44 by Will in Chicago)
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Comment by TriSec on 06/15/2016 13:34:09
B-but, the Second Amendment!

Comment by Mondobubba on 06/15/2016 13:49:41
Quote by TriSec:
B-but, the Second Amendment!


Muh freedums!

Comment by Scoopster on 06/15/2016 14:00:44
Mornin' all!

Shit is just getting more & more bizarre by the day.

Comment by Raine on 06/15/2016 14:06:19
Comment by BobR on 06/15/2016 14:06:23
BLOG IS POSTED

Comment by Raine on 06/15/2016 14:27:24
Thank you for the blog today Bob.

Comment by wickedpam on 06/15/2016 14:27:30
Morning

Comment by BobR on 06/15/2016 14:29:21
HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS?? - holy christ...

Comment by Raine on 06/15/2016 15:14:56
Quote by BobR:
HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS?? - holy christ...

Yes, that poor baby.

Comment by Raine on 06/15/2016 15:21:09
Dear caller: Bernie lost.

(I am really getting sick of the Bernie coddling at this point)

Comment by wickedpam on 06/15/2016 15:54:09
Someone live tweeting Trumps Greensboro rally last night - its horrifying.

Comment by Scoopster on 06/15/2016 15:54:30
Quote by Raine:
Dear caller: Bernie lost.

(I am really getting sick of the Bernie coddling at this point)

Speaking of which...
She [Clinton] just puts a friendly face on fascism," Merrick continued. "I was excited, eight years ago, to vote for an African-American for president. But it essentially put someone that pushed the same agenda, kept the same Defense Department, the same CIA, the same Wall Street policies, with a black face. It didn't do us any good. So now we're going to get a female face on the same policies. Not going to do us any good.

He concluded, "I would probably vote for Trump, to burst the bubble, to finally pop the zit."

Erm.. how the FUCKING HELL idiots like this guy think Obama is anywhere CLOSE to Dubya on any of these things is beyond me.

Comment by wickedpam on 06/15/2016 15:54:49
Quote by Raine:
Dear caller: Bernie lost.

(I am really getting sick of the Bernie coddling at this point)


Right there with ya.

Comment by Scoopster on 06/15/2016 15:55:15
Quote by wickedpam:
Someone live tweeting Trumps Greensboro rally last night - its horrifying.

I was reading some of that feed last night. It was beyond disturbing.

Comment by wickedpam on 06/15/2016 16:03:18
Quote by Raine:
Quote by BobR:
HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS?? - holy christ...

Yes, that poor baby.



That poor family

Comment by BobR on 06/15/2016 16:09:27
Quote by Scoopster:
Quote by wickedpam:
Someone live tweeting Trumps Greensboro rally last night - its horrifying.

I was reading some of that feed last night. It was beyond disturbing.

It's the more scary part of Idiocracy

Comment by Scoopster on 06/15/2016 16:59:24
Epic Twitter takedown of Trump's insult to the troops

Note: most recent posts are first, so don't forget to read it in reverse order.

Comment by BobR on 06/15/2016 17:16:59
I was looking for some gun stats, and came across a couple older blogs that might still be useful to others:

Breaking Down the Gun Arguments

Live by the gun, Die by the gun

Also - this roundup of statistics by CNN

Comment by Mondobubba on 06/15/2016 17:38:08
George Takai says the gay community can easily lead the gun control fight.

Much like the meme that says "Angry queens can get shit done."

Comment by Scoopster on 06/15/2016 17:56:15
Okay kids, it's time for... SCOOP'S TINFOIL CORNER!

By now I'm sure you've heard about the Russians hacking into the DNC and getting access to all the party's opposition research on Trump, and possibly more.

WHAT IF.... this is something akin to the Watergate break-in, and the Russians/Putin are working with Trump to spy on the Dems via spyware instead of bugs?

Comment by Mondobubba on 06/15/2016 18:08:55
Quote by Scoopster:
Okay kids, it's time for... SCOOP'S TINFOIL CORNER!

By now I'm sure you've heard about the Russians hacking into the DNC and getting access to all the party's opposition research on Trump, and possibly more.

WHAT IF.... this is something akin to the Watergate break-in, and the Russians/Putin are working with Trump to spy on the Dems via spyware instead of bugs?


Where was this reported?

Comment by livingonli on 06/15/2016 18:15:52
Quote by Mondobubba:
Quote by Scoopster:
Okay kids, it's time for... SCOOP'S TINFOIL CORNER!

By now I'm sure you've heard about the Russians hacking into the DNC and getting access to all the party's opposition research on Trump, and possibly more.

WHAT IF.... this is something akin to the Watergate break-in, and the Russians/Putin are working with Trump to spy on the Dems via spyware instead of bugs?


Where was this reported?

I had heard that Julian Assange had been trying to get his hands on the Clinton e-mails and was going to post them on Wikileaks.

Comment by Scoopster on 06/15/2016 18:16:15
Quote by Mondobubba:
Quote by Scoopster:
Okay kids, it's time for... SCOOP'S TINFOIL CORNER!

By now I'm sure you've heard about the Russians hacking into the DNC and getting access to all the party's opposition research on Trump, and possibly more.

WHAT IF.... this is something akin to the Watergate break-in, and the Russians/Putin are working with Trump to spy on the Dems via spyware instead of bugs?


Where was this reported?

Was all over the place yesterday. I think it got buried because of the Orlando shooting reaction.

Comment by TriSec on 06/15/2016 18:19:36
Urgh. We could have gone to Spain this summer. Suddenly, the bigger risk seems to be Disney World.

Comment by Mondobubba on 06/15/2016 18:20:44
Quote by livingonli:
Quote by Mondobubba:
Quote by Scoopster:
Okay kids, it's time for... SCOOP'S TINFOIL CORNER!

By now I'm sure you've heard about the Russians hacking into the DNC and getting access to all the party's opposition research on Trump, and possibly more.

WHAT IF.... this is something akin to the Watergate break-in, and the Russians/Putin are working with Trump to spy on the Dems via spyware instead of bugs?


Where was this reported?

I had heard that Julian Assange had been trying to get his hands on the Clinton e-mails and was going to post them on Wikileaks.


He says he has, but in was only reported on the Russia Today site, not a paragon of accurate reporting.

Comment by Mondobubba on 06/15/2016 18:21:11
Quote by TriSec:
Urgh. We could have gone to Spain this summer. Suddenly, the bigger risk seems to be Disney World.


No gators in Spain.

Comment by TriSec on 06/15/2016 18:26:05
Quote by Mondobubba:


No gators in Spain.


Indeed, but TriSec also knows to stay the hell out of lakes in Florida. Or the ocean, for that matter. (Hammerheads, barracuda, man-o-war...)

Comment by livingonli on 06/15/2016 18:47:07
Randi's return to the air is now set for July 5th on her web site, You Tube, and progressive voices.

Comment by wickedpam on 06/15/2016 18:56:09
Quote by livingonli:
Randi's return to the air is now set for July 5th on her web site, You Tube, and progressive voices.


awesome

Comment by Mondobubba on 06/15/2016 19:01:42
Quote by TriSec:
Quote by Mondobubba:


No gators in Spain.


Indeed, but TriSec also knows to stay the hell out of lakes in Florida. Or the ocean, for that matter. (Hammerheads, barracuda, man-o-war...)


Pretty much any fresh or semi-fresh body of water very well might have a gator in it. this includes runoff ponds. There was a big ass gator that lived in the lake on the Merrill Lynch campus.

Comment by Will in Chicago on 06/15/2016 22:47:44
Hi, bloggers!!!

BobR, thanks for a great blog. I th ink that we need to have a serious talk about hatred and guns in our country.

In some sad news, I learned that my Aunt Marlene, whom I visited this Saturday, passed away this morning.