Comments

1
Never let a serious crisis go to waste, especially when you can play the race card. Full stop.
2
He also owned 2 planes! Isn't that fascinating? How could someone who enjoyed flying ever do such a thing! Even his family was shocked, poor souls.

3
Considering that we don't know his motive yet, it seems very premature to speculate as to his feelings about what he was doing.
4
I've actually been counting down the hours until one of you tools turned this into a referendum on white privilege. You guys are slipping.

Cue lil smoky...
5
@4:

What else should it be? 60 dead, more than 500 wounded and injured. If this had been done by anyone other than a White American Male we would be dropping bombs somewhere by now. Instead, we're hearing about how gun manufacturers are making bank on Wall Street, and Congress is considering loosening restrictions on the sale of noise-suppressors.

Fucking insanity...
6
Who killed 49 in pulse?

Remember that?
7
To all the white men commenting with your unjustified anger. Stay so mad. You are the cancer that is killing humanity.
8
@7: Hmm. I can't see the skin pigmentation of the people behind the avatars. For that matter, I can't see their gender either.
9
Eliminationist ideation much?
10
@6 -Do you remember how that event was framed? Have you forgotten how many in the media, conservatives, and Donald Trump* used the event to spread fear of the proverbial Dangerous Foreigner? White dudes can stockpile assault weapons all their lives and be seen as weapons enthusiasts, while conservatives beg Americans to report brown people that simply might be going in and out of their garage too often**.

*
http://time.com/4367120/orlando-shooting…

**
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2…
11
@anybody stupid enough to think white privilege is a reason people become mass murderers. You look like Stretch Armstrong when you reach that hard.
13
WOW, the blood isn't even washed up and you disgorge your personal political rant to feed us readers. I'll pass. Sure, you're entitled to your view, but journalism? Naw, not even close. You're just another hack, you're just as awful as nutball hate monger Alex Jones....glad you diagnosed and solved this whole mass public shooting thing, give yourself a fucking gold star!
14
@11 Jesus Christ, who even implied that?

NRA supporters, gun control opponents, et. al. You want your guns? Just admit you think these events are worth it.
17
@10 uh, you linked to a piece talking about how everything Trump was saying was untrue. Essentially the opposite of your argument. It explicitly rejected the Trump version of events.

You can find an example of the media doing all sides of any argument. That's why it's the media. So now you can say "the media always humanizes white suspects" while simultaneously your favorite media outpost (presumably The Stranger) is trashing the guy. You can say "they always publish mug shots for black subjects and happy candids for white subjects" as again your favorite news outlets use happy candids of, (for eg) Charleena Lyles.

For that reason, the argument you are making should be dismissed out of hand. It's always correct, no matter what you say. And for that reason, it's completely useless.
18
@15: You're right, I quit reading after the second paragraph.
19
@15 GUN CONTROL?, I didn't say a fucking thing about gun control, which I am in STRONG favor on, I'm talking about the writer citing "white privilege" as the cause of this horrid violence. We have no idea, and the writer hitching their political cart to this horror is repulsive to me,,,I didn't say a fucking thing about gun control; the assumption voices in your head are screeching...and yet you listen...
20
“Motive” for gun crimes really seems to matter to right wing gun nuts. It’s super important to find a motive for them.

But nearly every other crime we don’t give shit about motive.

Why did he rape that lady?!? We simply have to know!

No. We don’t care. Prosecutors might. Cops might. But society itself isn’t really protected by knowing motives as much as understanding means.

Means are what matters. How is way more important than why.

But when the how is “laughingly casual access to an arsenal of modern firepower “ suddenly the why, the motive, becomes the debate.

And that is exclusively because of a billion dollar arms dealer lobby that has perverted our society.
21
@17 I don't take issue with your response to me, and you're not exactly wrong, but your original point @6 is still wtf.

@19 Lolz, you missed the point of the article so I wrongly assumed you were a gun nut. Showing my bias I suppose. From what I can parse together in your response, I may owe you an apology for that.
22
@21 you don't owe nobody an apology, say what you say and then say some more and shout it from the rooftops. Just remember that folks shout back. I don't agree with plenty in here, but I defend their right to write it. Stick to your guns, so to speak,,,,Me? If one fucks with me, I fuck back,,,,
23
I don't see how saying he was into gambling and country music does his reputation any favors. I'd be offended if you said I was one of those casinos and country music asshats.

All the sources who say the person "kept to himself" are just strangers.

They didn't fucking *know* the guy and you shouldn't be interviewing him. His actual friends and close associates are keeping their heads down. Think about it. If somebody you knew well did a shocking and heinous crime, would you be rushing to the first microphone to give a quote? You'd still be stunned and in disbelief and in denial that it really was that dude you thought you knew so well. It might be weeks before you'd be ready to open up. And even then you wouldn't tell all to some asshole reporter who just parachuted in from god knows where.

On the other hand, some random prick who happened to leave near the shooter but never got to know him *at all* is the first one to start running his mouth to every news guy. Oh, he was quiet. He kept to himself. Yeah, that's it.

You know, just like *every* stranger who you don't fucking know. Walk down the street and listen to what all the complete strangers are saying to you. They're so quiet! They really keep to themselves! This is one of the reason early news reports are almost always so wrong. Reporters are so hard up they'll go with any asshole who talks, no matter their nonexistent credibility.

This is how the Columbine shooters got their false image as loner geeks. Reporters talked to a bunch of kids who didn't fucking know them. The shooters' actual friends didn't say shit, at first.

Always, whatever. None of this would matter if we turned our shitbird gun industry into a shadow of itself.

Melt the guns.
24
Liberal, pro gun control here. Also a fan of facts.

CNN:
64% mass killers are white
63% of Americans are white

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/27/us/mass-sh…

The gender of the killers are disproportionately male. There is a point there. But the race thing is just unhelpful noise. Kim, you are a professional. Be better.
25
There are approximately 18 bazillion reasons we’d want to know all we can about the shooter. Otherwise, we’re left with the explanation every president and medieval priest gives after something like this: This was an act of pure evil. Which of course is no explanation at all.
26
@12 "literally no one is saying white privilege causes mass murders."Did we all read the same post? The one about a guy who just killed 58 people and that ends with, "The sound of white privilege is deafening enough."

He's white. Check. He's privileged. Check. He killed lots of people. Check. If there's no correlation, why mention it?

Literally no one but the author of the post then. Eh, what can you expect from a Wikipedia biologist?
27
@26, It is the treatment of said mass murderer as regular guy who likes country music and gambling in Vegas by the media where the white privilege shows. Had a brown person done this, do you think we'd be hearing all about their hobbies and likes on every news report? No? Why then?
28
@27: Because most of the mass shooting suspects are white. We remember quite a lot of background coverage of the non-white Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho.

We'll have to wait and see how the media treats future mass shootings by brown and black people before we get sufficient data sets to get answers to your question.
29
Domestic terrorism? You did check to see what the definition of terrorism is right? Here, let me help you. From the English Oxford Dictionary "The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims."

So unless he is clearly tied to some political group then you can't claim terrorism. A horrid crime that could have been prevented yes, but it's not terrorism.

30
First, this is a catharsis post by Selling, which is why it contains no information and nothing of value. It exists so the author can chase those feels that come from hating the right people and saying what her peer group demands. So stop taking it seriously.

Second, there are a billion media outlets and we all pick the ones we like. If you like liberal news outlets, they are going to push certain narratives (such as "white people are inherently violent killers") and if you follow conservative news outlets, they are going to push other narratives (such as "brown people are inherently violent killers"). Statistics will be misrepresented and massaged, and certain inconvenient news stories will be promptly memory holed.

So let's all stop pretending that our personal media choices are the one and only way things are. So much of what is called "news" is just propaganda, and it is driving people apart by giving them the false impression that the enemy is always at the gates.
31
We need to hear all of the humanizing elements about him so we can’t just write him off as “evil inhuman monster, total anomaly”. These mundane attributes remind us that he is “just a basic guy”, and that with an arsenal like that a basic guy can do some horrific shit.
32
Keeping my eyes on the prize. Ban the gun.
33
@30's first paragraph couldn't be more spot on, nails it with perfectly concise transparent lucidity.

2/3's mass shootings white, 2/3's Americans white, nearly all male across all races.

Higher proportion of brown mass shooters do it for ideological reasons, and so the media focuses more on that, less on biography. We want to know why, so gravitate to ideology when available. When it's not then media looks at things like lifestyle. Holds true across races.

So yeah, this SLOG post is grandstanding shrieky self-serving devisive bullshit. In it's way as harmful as when the far right does their mirror-image routine.

Now the gun industry and gun lobby - there's abundant white male privilege in a perversely feedback loop enabling that misery and despair peddling "pure evil" industry. That white male privilege is the core of the entire problem.
34
@31 - yeah, his ordinariness works against the NRA, who by insider accounts is right now in crisis mode scrambling to find any shred of evidence that colors him as anything but.

If he's simply a regular guy that's far worse for them, no excuses, no red herrings
37
All this unnecessary conflating leads to all this unnecessary misunderstanding.
38
@20 motive *is* important, if you want to understand how to curtail these events. If the motive is to kill a bunch of people, frankly setting night club fires is VASTLY more effective at that. Thankfully, most gun deaths aren't of the "i want to kill a bunch of people as fast as possible" variety, they're of the "fuck you you cut me off!" variety or of the "if I can't have you no one can". In the latter case(s), guns vastly increase the lethality of these people - but not really of the "I want to murder anonymous people" crowd.
39
@5
60 dead, more than 500 wounded?
just a typical Chicago weekend.
40
@37 says the guy who admits not reading the article. Why don't you shut the fuck up for a year or two? Literally no one here gives a single shit what you think.
41
Kim has a point, it just wasn't all the well articulated. https://theintercept.com/2017/10/02/lone…
42
"This is a tragedy that shouldn't be cynically exploited for cheap propaganda also FUCK DRUMPF AND FUCK WHIPEEPO #RESIST."
43
@39 cite your source please: we'd like to see those numbers.
45
@39/41 - Considering that the guns flow like water directly from low regulation Indiana into Chicago, it's actually more like when the bros from Bellevue decide to party on Capitol Hill and then gay bash in the process because those fags hit on them.
46
@40: Wow, you silly thing. You the one that didn't read the article. Here's proof:

In @18 I cleverly said "You're right, I quit reading after the second paragraph."

Now, Jonno boy, go back and count the number of paragraphs in the article.

47
@30 - Have you considered shortening your "this doesn't fit my narrative and therefore annoys me so it should annoy you all too" speech down to one paragraph? That will give you a straight to the point response, plus some additional sentences for your need to add rhetorical flourish. Win/win.
48
If the shooter and victims had been Black we'd be hearing nonstop about the "plague of Black-on-Black violence". Denounce the "race card" all you like, but no one ever says that about white people. Why not?
49
Because #48 that doesn't fit the racists' ideation.

But is another example of white privilege.

A white (usually man) who massacres many is always characterized as a lone wolf.

A brown or black man doing the same is a "terrorist" or "thug," who is assumed to represent multitudes ready to join in the violence.
50
When reporters are at the scene of a shooting where the event is not obviously terrorism in the "classic" sense, there's an obvious rush to determine the motive. There is no need to find a motive for a ISIL Paris or London bombing, for example.

So reporters obviously look at the background, as they did on this shooter. Hence, the stories about his hobbies and his life are eagerly sought out and extrapolated from.

So all this contorted extrapolation is for not. Unless there's a manifesto, like with Ted Kaczynski, there will be these background pieces that are, most ridiculously, conflated with white privilege.

Please wait...

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