Wow, thank god that BoingBoing doesn’t run ads on their blog that covers GamerGate. No way would BoingBoing EVER profit from the news.
Impossible. Unthinkable.
Oh. Wait.
She’d just be accused by GG of being a fake riot cosplayer, and would be shouted down by angry bros saying “You’ve never even played it!”
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Honest question: At what point would that become victim blaming?
The threat isn’t coming from, for example, a natural disaster or a choice to assemble in a condemned and hazardous building, where the decision to go ahead is clear negligence. It’s from a (assumed) lone individual deliberately exerting their will over others.
Pretend she didn’t cancel, and a gunman killed or injured several people. Can she really be considered responsible for that? If she can be responsible for subjecting her audience to that danger, can she also be responsible for creating the next gunman by giving in to this one’s demands?
Not arguing with you, just looking down the rabbit hole of the power dynamics of terrorism…
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I am curious if they allow people to open carry at events with the president? If not, how do they accomplish that legally?
I was about to rebut you, but my research suggests you are not only right (see open carry of an AR-15 at an Obama Town Hall and the discussion afterwards), but the rising number of “open carry” to all sorts of meetings, people brandishing guns at city council meetings, and so on. I find this disturbing when a man is complaining to the town council whilst wearing a loaded weapon. It just feels like intimidation, and is part of why I am reluctant to live in a place with open carry laws.
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I think it’d be victim blaming if somebody else said she was responsible for a gunman’s action, but I think it’s a fairly natural thing to assume that she might personally feel responsible or guilty, even irrationally (there are people who feel guilty for surviving a plane crash that killed everybody else, after all, and there’s no possible way they’re even slightly at fault there) and, in advance of the issue, act in such a way that prevents that. If I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t want to risk something happening because, while I wouldn’t be responsible, I know I’d feel that way. And it’s not JUST about the freaks making threats, since she was willing to go on despite that: it’s also about the venue being unwilling or unable (whether through choice or law) to take what, in my mind, would be reasonable precautions: preventing people with guns from attending. She was put in a position where, in her mind, the only act she could do to minimize risk to others was bow out. It doesn’t mean she won’t speak out elsewhere, just places that are safer.
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But I’m a little confused by that. Let me summarize how I’m reading it:
-Utah law says anyone with a permit may carry in their concealed weapon.
-Thus attendees will not be searched at the door to see if they’re carrying a weapon (or, one assumes, a permit FOR said weapon.)
-So … how are they going to know who walks in there with a concealed weapon and does NOT have a permit for it?
This assumes that people with said permits are not planning to commit violence, which may or may not be an accurate assumption. But really it reads to me like they’re saying “Well, if someone shoots up the place and they didn’t have a permit, then they’ll be in REAL TROUBLE!”
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What’s most confusing to me is that “corruption in game journalism” is suddenly this hot-button issue. I was under the impression everyone’s known for like … a decade that a lot of game review sites give favorable reviews to games that buy a lot of advertising space. And yet no one’s been asking who those guys at Gamespot were sleeping with.
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I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen them copy someone else’s design and put it on a shirt while doing so though, so that’s your own level of low.
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I have a black friend, etc. etc.
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Don’t ban the guns.
Ban carrying the permits at the event. Search for permits. Confiscate those. Without those, they can’t carry the guns.
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You made my brain hurt 
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You made my brain hurt.
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No one would have had any right to blame her. So none of us could say “she is responsible”. But if I was in her shoes, and I chose to go ahead, and some madman shot an audience member, I surely would feel responsible. Not in an “I did it” sort of way, but in an “If I had simply given up, this person would still be alive” sort of way.
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oof. i need a breather.
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Wow. Is that true? (haven’t seen anyone contradicting it, but this thread is long).
So if a movie theater were to kick me out for carrying, they’d be using the threat of not letting me see a movie in order to abridge my basic rights.
I wonder what would happen if governments started enforcing other basic rights like that.
For starters, lets make sure that my boss cannot fire me if I bad-mouth him or the company in public. After all, the threat of losing my job would seriously interfere with my free speech right of telling everyone to buy from the competition.
Come to think of it, the threat of firing me if I don’t show up to work is also used to interfere with my rights as set out in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, namely the right to freedom of movement and residence, and the right to leave my country.
Why, i’d never have to work ever again!
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After doing some research on this, what I’ve figured out is that in the case of places like state universities, libraries, court houses and other “public” buildings, in many states these venues may not ban carrying weapons. In most states (I leave the chance open that I’ve missed one or two) it seems that private businesses may ban carrying weapons but they must post and, in some states, some businesses must file with the state their intent. And there’s another big loophole; in many states, private businesses cannot ban weapons in their parking lots or potentially in other areas, even though it’s private property. This got a lot of attention a year or two ago when (I think) FedEx wanted to stop their employees from bringing weapons to work.
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I find this pretty compelling. The local culture is good with guns. That makes sense, it’s internally consistent, you guys don’t seem to have had the kind of big crazy murder fests I’ve seen happen elsewhere.
And that kind of setup will probably work just fine as long as no one comes to your town from out of state. As long as the only people in the audience are locals. It’s pretty damn likely that whoever emailed that threat does not live in Utah.
Let’s say an out of town speaker comes to your part of the world, and her out of state stalker attends as well. Then the only thing keeping the audience safe, is that 1:1 ratio of guns to people. And we just have to hope that a suicidal shooter doesn’t get lucky.
For someone not brought up in gun culture, it looks like Utah isn’t a good place to discuss controversial ideas in public.
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