It’s WORSE. The victims are latino gays and Trump is already spinning the anti-immigration libel totally passing over the fact that maybe some of the victims are immigrants or first generation Americans.
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I think it will be useful to keep pointing out that the attacker could have chosen a lot of places in Orlando but specifically chose to target LGBT people.
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EXACTLY
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Too soon!
You were already given one warning, now I’ll say it, keep it cool and on topic. Cheers.
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Contrast this with what happens when an important person is targeted. When some clown gets too close to the POTUS with a popgun, no one cares what their politics are. The discussion is all about how he was able to get that close. Since these targets aren’t on the list of 1% who actually matter, the motivations of the killer are really all that count, not what it would take to stop him.
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A girl can dream. It may help derail some of the many anti-LGBT bills filed around the country as part of the election cycle.
But I’m less sanguine about it helping to pass nondiscrim bills in states that don’t yet cover sexual orientation and gender identity.
It might help in somewhere like Pennsylvania where there are 35 local nondiscrim laws but no statewide bill. The statehouse is run by the R’s - who rumor has it have come to an agreement to bring a bill to the floor covering employment & housing - but not public accommodations.
That is unacceptable - and this may bring more pressure to not make LGBT people a special class with lessor protections than every other group covered already. And help some groups stiffen their spines and not accept a bad bill just because they feel they have to accept something to show they’ve achieved something.
It’s a terrible precedent - and is capitulation to the nastiness the right is propagandizing as part of the election. Capitulating helps them this election cycle by giving them a way to sweep their ugliness under the carpet. And delays when a full bill could be achieved. I expect more of this approach in purple states. It must be resisted.
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But. I’m mistaken. It’s used to treat warts.
ah well.
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This says it all. What can be done to drastically lower the frequency of mass shootings? Regulate the hell out of guns. Why isn’t it being done? Because the lives lost are judged less important than the wishes of the gun owners.
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Not really. There’s a fairly long history of LGBT clubs being targeted in hate attacks. Back in the day - that was part of the reason they had - and many still have in some parts of the country - no windows.
Personally - I’ve been shot at - and had a pistol twisted into my ear.
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Tiresome, one-note idiot? Patronizing as fuck and never listens, certainly. Please shut the fuck up and let others talk about a mass shooting for once. Or do you really think you’re a goddamned expert? On anything?
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Well, he IS an expert deployer of pro-gun cliches.
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The reason I used this as an example is because of a similar line of thinking.
Both sides want to reduce teenage pregnancy, but one side also wants to curb premarital sex as well.
Condoms do a good job of curbing teenage pregnancy and STDs, but it doesn’t stop premarital sex.
Where the logic fails further is that the PRESENCE of condoms ENCOURAGES people to have sex. That is people are more likely to have sex if they have condom access. Which is true to a degree, but too many people will just have sex with out a condom any way. And as stats show if the worse ill teenage pregnancy, condoms do a better job of stopping it.
So in summary, the existence of the condom isn’t why people want to have sex. Just like the existence of a gun isn’t why people want to commit violence.
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I normally avoid gun threads because they have the tendency to be the same talking points over and over again with zero variation. Then there’s the added disincentive of feeling sick to my stomach and quiet over the senseless loss of life. 50 people? Damn, I don’t even know how to feel that except as a growing sense that all the oxygen in the room just disappeared.
First of all, let’s call this what it is: A homophobic terror attack, similar to many others before it. I don’t want people pretending this is a first when in the same week we had someone (thankfully incompetently) try to blow up a Target bathroom in a transphobic tantrum. The 1996 Olympic Park bomber blew up a lesbian bar shortly after his deadly hissy-fit at Centennial Olympic Park. That was about ten twenty years ago.
The discussion about guns seems to miss some important points, such as the fact that “assault weapon” is somewhat meaningless. It’s more than semantics: If you’re going to ban something, you should have a clear idea of what that is for purely practical purposes. Often what people associate with “assault weapons” is something distinct from what firearms manufacturers have in mind when the term “assault rifle” is used. Otherwise you end up with loopholey, poorly written legislation that doesn’t accomplish what you want it to.
That being said, it makes no sense to look at mass shooting after mass shooting and declare that nothing can or should be done. Yes, terrorists will always find a way to express their pathetic displays of rage. But as the case of the Target bathroom bomber illustrates, there is something to be said for the availability of some means over others. There is no way to stop 100% of all bad actors, but there are ways to crimp, disable, or otherwise reduce their impact or frequency, and the law is an imperfect mechanism to that end. Its imperfection is not an excuse to refuse to apply it.
The intransigence of the few to the detriment of the many grows increasingly intolerable, and by any standard starts to seem like selfishness. While many here have called for the abolition of guns, the fact remains that most people are content to see small, specific, and effective change where the greatest total detriment is most often merely the temporary inconvenience of the law-abiding. However, often what we get is “senseless” change, or change that accomplishes nothing, because we’ve decided that killing Solomon’s baby is a substitute for progress. For something that is going to be effective, we’re going to need to see some people unhappy. That’s a price I think that we as a society should be prepared to pay. There is a wealth of middle ground that few tread because of the heightened rhetoric and people who believe in all or nothing solutions. We need solutions, not predictable Internet fistfights.
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Dude… I hear gunfire way more regularly than I would like in my neighborhood, helicopters too.
Whether you are willing to admit it or not, overall gun violence in this country is too high, in general, and it’s not happening because of overwhelming responsible gun use, but a severe lack thereof.
A-freakin’-Men!
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Abstract
OBJECTIVES. Opponents of condom availability programs argue that the promotion and distribution of condoms increases adolescent sexual activity. This assertion was tested empirically with data from the evaluation of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention program for Latino adolescents. METHODS. The onset of sexual activity, changes in the frequency of sex, and changes in the proportion of respondents with multiple partners were compared for intervention and comparison groups. Multivariate regression analysis was used to assess the effect of the intervention on these outcomes after adjustment for baseline differences between the intervention and comparison groups. RESULTS. Male respondents in the intervention city were less likely than those in the comparison city to initiate first sexual activity (odds ratio [OR] = 0.08). Female respondents in the intervention city were less likely to have multiple partners (OR = 0.06). The program promoting and distributing condoms had no effect on the onset of sexual activity for females, the chances of multiple partners for males, or the frequency of sex for either males or females. CONCLUSIONS. An HIV prevention program that included the promotion and distribution of condoms did not increase sexual activity among the adolescents in this study.
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Someone didn’t recognize the Game of Thrones quote? Oh yes, yes they did!
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FYI - the target “bomber” turns out to have been cooking drugs.
bottle, believed to be the source of the explosion upon initial examination, was recovered from the stall in addition to “items that are commonly combined in a method to produce a chemical high, but during the mixture process can become volatile and explode,” according to the release. Police said Schmidt was uninjured during the incident and left the area before police and fire departments arrived.
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I have less and less sympathy for “the right to own lethal toys” club every day, the cost is to god damn high.
Only one country has this problem in such gross disproportion to every other country, and there is a clear reason why as there is only one factor that is in equal disproportion.
All the other countries who have had this problem have resolved it in the obvious way and it has worked every single time and never not worked. the prohibition analogy is contrary to all the fact.
Time for us to “man up” and realize this could be resolved if we could convince the conservative half of the country to care more about human life then their fucking kill toys.
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I thought it was a “chlorine” bomb based on what I read when the news first came out. Still, you don’t have to look far for instances of people attempting to terrorize the LGBT community both successfully and not. My point is simply that we cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that this kind of violence has long a history in this country.
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