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Shop owner shot, killed over rainbow flag outside clothing store near Lake Arrowhead

2y 9mon ago by lemmy.world/u/TheJims in news from www.sbsun.com

The bio of the victim from her store's website:

Lauri Carleton's career in fashion began early in her teens, working in the family business at Fred Segal Feet in Los Angeles while attending Art Center School of Design. From there she ran “the” top fashion shoe floor in the US at Joseph Magnin Century City. Eventually she joined Kenneth Cole almost from its inception and remained there for over fifteen years as an executive, building highly successful businesses, working with factories and design teams in Italy and Spain, and traveling 200 plus days a year.

With a penchant for longevity, she has been married to the same man for 28 years and is the mother of a blended family of nine children, the youngest being identical twin girls. She and her husband have traveled the greater part of the US, Europe and South America. From these travels they have nourished a passion for architecture, design, fine art, food, fashion, and have consequently learned to drink in and appreciate the beauty, style and brilliance of life. Their home of thirty years in Studio City is a reflection of this passion, as well as their getaway- a restored 1920's Fisherman's Cabin in Lake Arrowhead. Coveting the simpler lifestyle with family, friends and animals at the lake is enhanced greatly by their 1946 all mahogany Chris-Craft; the ultimate in cultivating a well appreciated and honed lifestyle.

Mag.Pi for Lauri is all about tackling everyday life with grace and ease and continuing to dream…

What a waste. A tragedy for that whole family for literally nothing. No reason at all other than small minded assholes.

there aren't enough psychopaths to have a civil war over lgbt flags

Bring it on fate. You useless fucking concept developed by village shamans

Not just the shamen, but the shawomen, and shachildren, too!

These same people couldn't go three weeks without a haircut in 2020. There are some who'll shoot someone over a pride flag, but not enough to fight a war. They'd be begging to surrender the first time their grocery order doesn't arrive.

Yes, they have a lot of guns. On the other hand, we've had to tell them, at least twice in my lifetime, not to drink bleach to cure diseases.

They won't last a week.

I'd say there are more gun-owning Democrats than there are critically thinking Republicans. Trump voters are the kind of people that fall for Nigerian prince email scams...twice.

They elect figurative Nigerian princes… every fucking time

You're confusing normal Americans with the owners of the country. Also, plenty of militant leftists are armed in the US and not all gun owners are crazy fascists.

The ones that think they can win a civil war are pretty fucking dumb. They do have a lot of weaponry though and that is something we should be concerned about and needs to be acted on.

A bunch of Dems arming up isn’t the answer though. We need to make sure the war mongers don’t get back in charge and we need to keep hunting down the dangerous threats and arresting there asses.

I've seen enough Doomsday Peppers to know that these "prepared" right wingers will be gasping for breath on the floor when it actually comes time to run and do something physically strenuous. Fat fucks couldn't even breath through a thin mask, their brain cells are the only thing they'll slaughter due to lack of oxygen.

That's what you hope. The reality is that they're armed and militant, and people will be shocked when they start going door to door.

Are you confusing Y'all Quaeda with the Gestapo? Wtf. Even if 100 militias somehow defied everything we've been seeing for decades and somehow evaded getting caught early in the planning phase due to the surveillance state, what makes you think anything they'd do wouldn't be shut down by military police within a week?

It sounds almost like you're getting off on a weird horror fantasy from a super shitty movie.

The denial about encroaching fascism makes about as much sense as denying climate change.

Right, comparing me to a science denying asshole without providing a single shred of argument.. definitely has me convinced now

RemindMe 1 year

Your ass is not a legitimate source to pull facts from.

As a left leaning individual with multiple firearms and plenty of ammunition for them, might want to consider there are plenty of us are part of that 47%.

Obviously a sample bias, but quite a few fellow veterans that I went to college with could put my meager collection to shame and share similar viewpoints.

That being said, your doomer outlook and gross oversimplification/assumptions are a joke. There will be no civil war, assholes will continue to be assholes, and you are still making this shit up as you type. Most of these Meal Team 6, cosplaying motherfuckers are too chickenshit to have an altercation where they aren't the only one with the scary broomstick, and 99% of the blowhards wouldn't last a day in an actual combat scenario let alone a "war".

Bigots are bigots and will constantly attempt to suppress that which doesn't align with their narrow minded worldview, however a civil war is not on the horizon.... JFC get over yourself.

I think liberal gun owners have 1. A much better grasp of the first rule of fight club, 2. Don't have a fetish about what amounts to a tool.

And you think all of that 47% are not only right-leaning, but crazy enough to use those firearms to murder people unprovoked?

What moved you from a centrist to a militant leftist?

I take offense of your using "the left" to refer to the unarmed liberal masses.

Ok lib

I think you're confusing us finding you insufferable with us being offended. Your weird little fantasies are cringey and boring, not offensive.

500-1k rounds is nothing. Most of us have usually 10-20k rounds. 500 rounds is what I burn through in a range day. Hell I've got probably 50k 22lr at this point alone. And that's just for plinking. 9mm/308/x39/556/54r/20g/12g/45 combined that's probably another 40k rounds.

Most of us buy in bulk, ammo isn't cheap, so when deals come around you buy as much as you can afford.

So I'd say your estimates are on the low end.

Huh? Having ammo doesn't make anything worse. People have been stock piling it for decades now. Ammo doesn't expire if it's properly stored. I don't see how having it magically makes anything worse.

It kinda sounds like you listened to the original run of the "It Could Happen Here" podcast series a few too many times. It could happen here, but the probability of it sparking is very low, and even then the probability of that spark growing beyond anything more than localized/isolated incidents is even lower.

Flat out stupidity, this comment

OH MAN IM SO SCARED

The right seems to be blinded by the thought that the US Military would support them, but luckily the modern US military would never support any side of a civil war and would simply squash any serious attempt of a fascist rebellion. What are they even going to be able to do? They can't shoot down drones with their AR-15s.

They would quash any serious attempt at civil war or revolt of or between any political extreme in order to maintain the current status quo. The government and the military are both owned by the corporate class. The left is a very very small minority in the US and they don't even have a mainstream political influence or party. The US just has the socially liberal right-of-center Democrat party and the far-right conservative Republican party.

Well, I suppose we'll just have to disagree, but even though I find your opinions and perspectives to be mostly generalized embellishments and without nuance I still appreciate you for providing them.

Glad that you agree.

Imagine speaking derisively about anti-fascism. That kind of makes your a fascist.

Right wing gun owners average BMI is like 40+

All the guns in the world won't help you win a war if you can barely walk a mile without getting winded.

if there's a civil war that stupid, then the country deserves to end

Nah, it's just a chance to finish the job Reconstruction failed to do.

Lmao.

While I agree that is what should happen, there is literally nothing about current day Democrats that makes me think they'll actually take the hard stance and punish people for their actions. We'll have Biden or whoever is in charge at the time saying some bullshit "we need to heal now. We've been though rough times, let's welcome our neighbors back home. Blah blah blah no repercussions other than for the ring leaders."

why are they downvoting you? fuck america suck my balls lmao

They said the same things in Germany in the 1930s

Yeah, it’s the second civil war starting

The first civil war never REALLY ended, just went a bit cold.

I'm curious, do you actually think there is going to be another civil war?

The first civil war never ended. It entered a cold phasw for 150 years or so. That's heating up now.

There were even people waving the battle flag of the Confederate army/navy when the neoconfederates invaded Congress on January 6, 2021.

I still can't believe that these people are getting such light sentences for taking up arms and invading the Capitol.

If they were communists, they'd have been executed by now.

A viewpoint like that is very subject to confirmation bias. Literally any crime is held up as evidence that it is correct. Look at the terms you are using "cold" "about a decade". It isn't a who, what, where, why, and how. It is vague.

Reverse it for a moment. Treat it like a claim in science. What evidence would you use to try to prove your hypothesis wrong?

These are rhetoric tricks. Refusing to defend your viewpoint and trying to use carrot+stick.

Why not answer my question? It will be easier than bring out stuff that would have been caught that easily.

…what the fuck are you talking about.

’s like asserting that because I can’t give the scientific explanation for why the grass is green, it must not be, while I am pointing at the grass on the ground and showing you its color.

Your analogy is false. We have as much data as we want that grass is green. We have no data about the future since it hasn't happened yet. To predict the future to any degree we have to look at trends of the past and apply the scientific method to it.

Again, it’s up to you to be willing to accept the reality in front of you

Forgot the name for this one. It is when you assume the conclusion to get the conclusion. I know it's a basic logical fallacy.

I can only lead you to water.

Ok your Cassandra/Jeremiah routine is wearing thin.

Choose wisely. Your family depends on it.

Bifurcation, and FUD.

Forgot the name for this one. It is when you assume the conclusion to get the conclusion. I know it’s a basic logical fallacy.

Tautology. Circular reasoning, if you will.

…Right. So, based entirely on faith, with nothing to substantiate it, and with a healthy dose of some weird Messianic complex.

Also, as another commenter pointed out, we actually have surprisingly robust data affirming that yes, indeed, the spectral albedo of grass does show peaks in the 530-550nm range correlating to M-type cone photoreceptor cells­— I.E., Is green. Civil war isn't the sort of thing you're going to be able to pass off as self-evident.

Here’s a podcast where the first handful of episodes lays out what it’d look like if a civil war were to happen and why the author thinks there’s a reasonable chance that it could happen.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/it-could-happen-here/id1449762156?i=1000433661458

I do really like Robert Evans, but this is something I wholeheartedly disagree with. Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo could definitely happen, but I think it's far more likely that we'll see an American version of The Troubles. I don't think there are enough people who would truly be willing to fight and die over this; but there's plenty of people willing to commit terrorist bombings or acts of sabotage if they think they can get away with it.

I think the most likely scenario is a dissolution limitation, similar to what happened with the soviet union.

The Soviet Union didn’t collapse from political rhetoric and hurt feelings.

And the morons with enough guns and ammo to fight a war are far too economically comfortable to want actually want one.

If the shit really ever did hit the fan having a few chickens and a garden is going to get you a lot farther than a few thousand rounds.

I haven't listened to the podcast, so maybe I'm wrong... but isn't the "it" in "it could happen here" referring to fascism, not a second civil war?

Pretty important distinction imo

The bar for starting a podcast is a 10 dollar headset.

You should probably look into the person behind it before you throw out your own worthless opinion that had no bar at all towards publication.

Show me what I said that was opinion. Oh I am sorry, was that a strawman?

I stated a fact. "The bar for starting a podcast is a 10 dollar headset."

Oh so that was a non sequitur unrelated to the podcast link posted, since you didn't specifically criticise that specific podcast?

Robert Evans is a journalist btw

So he has a 11 dollar headset?

Stochastic terrorism.

If you just call it terrorism more people will understand you. I understand you’re trying to draw a distinction and I’m here to tell you as someone who grew up in a rural town of 1200 people…just call it terrorism. These people aren’t backtracking on language because they thought of an exception. It’s part of why they hate us.

Only the left has to use language accurately. The right does not care about language.

Or facts.

Petty and weak is THE character trait of conservatism.

Brigading incoming.

There are enough conservatives on lemmy for that to work? I honestly have been on the lookout and it feels like 99% of people are actively anti-conservative here.

Idk how effectively, but it happens. Cool sn.

Thanks! Edward Snowden is definitely not well appreciated enough.

The systemic favoritism the right gets is insane, even from left wing people. We need to atop biasing in their favor, they don't deserve it

This thread is about someone who was murdered over a rainbow flag and you’re talking about people being too rude online?? Please get some perspective.

Good points. And anyway, once the trigger was pulled it became normal terrorism.

All the regressive media bullshit that poisons these peoples' minds is the stochastic terrorism.

Yeah they’re no different from people calling a fatwa on a journalist.

Kill-billies.

It absolutely is. We need laws, and police forces which aren't overrun by these same criminals, to handle these terrorists.

I blame the gop for radicalizing the shooter.

I threw one of those blue lives matter flags in the trash. It blew in from my neighbors house fuck hate the traitorous fucks.

gotta rip it down before shoving it up their ass.

They outright kill someone over a flag and you’re fantasising about politely ripping one down?

Really puts it into perspective huh? Unfortunately we can't afford to be polite with savages.

Blat blat. Fire power's something no american has bragging rights over `cause we all can get it. Legal or illegal. We're in a slow motion civil war so don't go bragging about shit everyone has access to if you're a soft handed new age patriot.

People should be building up rations of medicine.

And participating in mutual aid.

I smuggled home a confederate flag I found in a drawer at my grandmother's house. Disposed of it with a bag of cat shit.

Bruh, you just stole G-Ma's emergency TP reserve left over from the early days of covid. Nothing else attracts shit like the stars and bars.

There's a guy in my rural northern NY town with TWO confederate flags in the back of his big ass truck 🙄

I find it important to make clear it was a hate crime, but Lauri Carleton was NOT killed "over a rainbow flag outside her clothing store".

No one gets killed because of a rainbow flag. You get killed because an asshole who wants to rather die than adapt to the world changing wants to spread fear with his last action and needs desperately to find a "reason". Let's not pretend he had a reason any other than being a coward.

My heart goes out to her family, friends and the community impacted.

That headline is doing the murderer's work by literally propagating his anti-LGBT terrorism. Shame on that periodical.

Why has calling murderers cowards become such a thing? I blame someone who acts out of fear less than someone who acts out of hate or greed. Fear is a normal emotion and often reasonable. I don't think this person acted out of fear though.

A lot of them are terrified of LGBTQ people and mask it as outrage. They honestly believe the shit they get told and it terrifies them what the world is becoming.

The reality is that terrorists like this guy are armed and carrying all the time, but the second amendment is for all Americans including liberals, lefties, moderates and everyone in between.

Im not advocating for violence, in fact having a concealed carry permit nearly always means the exact opposite. Someone being aggressive? You walk away and let them win. Someone tailgating you? Let them pass.

Carrying is about situations like this, between a shop owner with a rainbow flag and someone out looking for an excuse to murder someone over rage bait.

the problem I have with this is that you're basically saying more people should have guns. a significant part of the issue is that there already are too many guns around and accessible and that is statistically going to result in more alterations resulting in shooting. you can talk about how much respect guns should be given all you want. but if more people have guns then there will be more gun violence.

You're not wrong and I mainly don't disagree with you.

But look at it from another perspective.

Those millions of guns in households are largely in the hands of conservatives since gun ownership skews heavily towards white people, males, and those living in rural areas which we already know also skews conservative, within which is a subset that fantasize about having a reason to murder their neighbors over dumb shit like colorful flags or opinions.

Liberals are much more diverse of a population than conservatives which means that when it comes to liberals, women or poc the odds of them having a fighting chance are not great in a life or death situation they didnt create, vs who is most likely to be the aggressors, conservative white men.

My take on it is that the cat is already out of the bag. In a perfect world I would prefer not having easy to operate life-ending tools spread freely throughout the country, but that's not the reality we live in. The best shot we have is to even the playing field so to speak even with the downsides it presents. The current status quo is letting terrorists gun us down with impunity and that doesn't sit well with me.

I disagree and think the core problem of too many guns could be solved the same way other Anglophone nations did it.

However, your argument was very well written, and I appreciate both its intention and its focus on the human.

I'm open to a solution, but it's unrealistic to expect Americans to give/sell back enough of their guns for it to work like it did in Australia.

We have A LOT more guns here, and each one lasts 100 years or more. We could give up 99% of them (we wouldn't though) and there would still be like 6 million guns here.

Demanding people give up their guns would just cause an open civil war. The solution that worked in other countries wouldn't work here because the ideology is different.

I have no faith that what has worked in europe would work here given the political and cultural landscape before us. If it was feasible for america I'm not sure we would be in this situation now.

I wish it was, you and me both, but until that changes I'm simply accepting the lay of the land for what it is and reacting accordingly. We can work towards a better solution in the meantime; these actions and thoughts are not mutually exclusive.

However, your argument was very well written, and I appreciate both its intention and its focus on the human.

Thanks for the kind words. It is rather annoying being the change I want to see in the world though.

I mean.. I kind of get where you're coming from but "with impunity"? The shooter is now dead. If they weren't dead they'd be either executed eventually or in prison for 50+ years, or more likely, life.

The trouble with this is that like Liz@midwest.social pointed out in her comment about individual rights vs societal safety, from the perspective of the individual being shot, it is with impunity.

That woman had a right to life and safety and some stupid asshole came along and ended that no matter what justice the shooter rightfully faces after the fact.

Yeah that's fair.

It's a balance between individual rights and societal safety. You have a right to defend yourself from threats to your life and safety by using deadly force. To say otherwise removes the ability for a good chunk of the population to adequately defend themselves. I'm related to plenty of people who cannot defend their life against the average male aggressor without a gun, and you are too. At a certain point size and strength are insurmountable.

But yes, encouraging people to responsibility engage with firearms for self defense use means that there will be more guns floating around, which means more accidents, suicides, and murders. Just as with any other choice for the rules of society, it's a trade-off. How much do we value keeping the right to adequate self-defense as a universal right? How much do we value preventing accidental injury and death?

The classic comparison is cars, simply because the annual death numbers are similar, and pretty much no other reason. But even so, we can draw parallels. Cars have mandatory features that reduce the likelihood of injury without impacting the usefulness or general experience of using a car. So too do guns, with nearly all guns having to meet industry requirements for safety, like being able to handle an overpressure event, and being drop-safe.

Cars have a licensing procedure (though it's essentially a joke here in the US) and a licensing procedure would be fine for guns, so long as it can't be used to restrict access (racist approvals and denials would become a problem in a hurry). My ideal licensing program would be a free handling skills course where failure would require some sort gross negligence, and even then you'd still get racist denials.

And really, this is the fundamental problem with guns: I (and many others) view them as a necessary tool to accessing a highly valuable right. The chances you'll need a gun are very low, but the cost of not having it can be very high. You don't have full control over whether someone else will attempt to take your life, and I don't want to say to a large chunk of the population "we're going to take away your ability to defend yourself in order to save other people who would still have that option either way."

And I want to be clear, I completely agree with the other person. If you're going to bring guns into your life, you had better learn medical skills, social skills, and you had better train with your firearm in somewhat realistic conditions. You should carry pepper spray, you should practice learning how to actually effectively calm people down, you need to learn how to safely store your guns and ammo, etc. Etc.

I get the desire ban guns in order to save lives, but you'd also be endangering others. Compare that with the car analogy, and banning cars would have a similar trade-off. Some people would live thanks to not getting in a car accident, others would die thanks to not having the same level of mobility (which has about a billion knock-on effects for quality of life).

Without regard to the rest of your comment, somehow the lack of guns works ok in Europe and they aren’t all exactly equally sized.

So, two things:

  1. If you read that comment and didn't realize I knew perfectly well that an increase in access to guns results in an increase in gun violence, I don't know what to tell you. That whole comment was about balancing the needs to the individual against the needs of society.

  2. By your own data, the rape rate in the US was seven times higher than in Europe. Surely we would be talking about how common rape at gunpoint was in the US if that crime was increased by access to guns. The study you cited makes it very clear that direct, unqualified comparisons of crime rates between nation is a bad idea, since there's a million factors that influence crime.
    One of those factors is access to guns, but so are things like poverty, population density, education level, pollution, social services, community engagement, access to green space, noise pollution, after school programs, etc. And the thing is, I want to fix and improve all of those things, something which seems to be lacking among hardcore gun nuts. I also want to fix and improve our relationship to guns, I'm just unwilling to restrict access in a way that can become a civil rights issue on a hurry.

I think your argument sounds good until you look at other countries. I don't know for sure but I'm guessing there aren't more violent attacks on vulnerable people in countries that have gun bans. I think it's possible you're exaggerating the fear of attack without factoring in the overall safety benefits of removing so much gun violence. I'm convinced that if it could be done the benefits would fast out weigh the draw backs.

obviously the reality is that actually accomplishing this task in a country whose identity is so pathetically attached to guns is the impossible task. there's already just too many gun nuts so that ship had long sailed.

regardless, to me there's no question whether it would be better or worse for there to be more people with guns.

Oh, no, it's just that I don't weigh all violence as equal. I have a different value system then you do when it comes to interpersonal violence and that's okay that we disagree there.

To me, removing a potential victim's ability to protect themselves isn't worth removing a potential victim from being attacked at all. To me, they're not a 1:1 trade. You probably disagree, and that's okay, but I place a high value on an individual's agency, to the point where I'm willing to let them live in a slightly more dangerous society to get it.

This trade-off exists in all areas of life, and I don't necessarily side with personal freedom in all of them (I would ban cars if I could), but I do in this area.

so selfishness then. got it. your desires for yourself are more important than what's better for everyone. you can't pretend this is your choice for others. it's definitely for yourself.

Uh, no, it's so that everyone has the ability to make the choice for themselves. We could force everyone to live in padded cells for their own safety, but we both agree that's ridiculous. We're just arguing over what is and is not an acceptable trade-off between safety and agency.

in this case there's only really 2 options: better for society or better for yourself. you can't argue it's better for everyone to have the choice to own killing weapons when it's clear that position results in more gun violence and death.

Carrying doesn't do crap for self defense. The moment a crazy asshole pulls their gun at you and shoots you won't even be able to comprehend the situation quick enough and get your own piece out of the holster.

The crazy asshole always wins as they shoot first (they are usually cowards on top, so you might just get shot in the back).

More guns just leads to more crazy assholes with guns, I feel much safer in European countries.

You mean start arming black people. Fastest way to get gun regulation in the US.

In the situation you outline, yeah you'd have no real chance at protecting yourself. And those situations do happen in cases like the Las Vegas hotel shooting or any of the various school shootings we're seeing all over these days.

In many other cases even the most craven assholes need to work themselves up to shoot another human being.

That means arguments, harassment and threats.

These are helpful advance warning signs that tell you that you're entering dangerous waters and de-escalation tactics take priority. Many of our lady friends can already tell from a mile away if someone is dangerous even before they start flapping their mouthholes as a matter of everyday survival.

If all of that fails and I hope to god that it doesn't, that's when having a concealed weapon gives you a fighting chance at defending your right to live. Especially for women, guns are the great equalizer.

More guns just leads to more crazy assholes with guns

You're right, this is true.

Unfortunately the cost of encountering a rather persistent strapped terrorist is extremely high even if the chance of it happening to you is low.

Well, I rather live in a country where pretty much no one is strapped (except police and military and even then not all of them).

Even the whole hero fantasy a lot of Americans have, it doesn't work out. There is a famous video of someone shooting up a mall. A random guy carrying tried to sneak up on him. Then the girlfriend of the shooter popped him right in the head from behind (as he didn't notice her following at a distance).

We need more people who think like you

There's more than you realize.

You likely don't hear much about it because liberal gun owners don't fetishize guns or base their personality around them like the chuds on the other side of the fence do. Guns are tools, not an identity.

It's odd, I don't think I've ever heard of a lefty or a gay person outright killing someone over a Dixie or Trump flag. I keep reading about far-righties killing people over the scary rainbow flag though

How much of a pussy do you have to be to go shoot somebody over a rainbow flag. What a fucking fairy. People are so sensitive these days and don't know how to act. We can blame the internet all we want, but at the end of the day, people need to learn to have some social skills. How to talk disagreements out and let people have an opinion, even if it may be wrong or stupid in their eyes. It absolutely infuriates me that people gotta die over stupid shit.

Just another example of far-right extremist violence.

Ever notice how there's no such thing as a liberal hate crime?

"We are all domestic terrorists".

How much more do we have to put up with before we do something about this? Sadly I'm guessing it's a lot more.

Did you have a stroke while writing this? Hope you're ok

Brown shirts aren’t inherently bigoted, but they can be a reference to the colloquial name for the SA, the brownshirts, called that because their uniforms included brown shirts and also to differentiate them from other fascist militias of the era that wore different colored shirts. The SA used similar styles of military imagery, threats of violence, and acts of violence to modern right wing militias.

If I am ever killed over my rainbow stuff, I'm haunting the son of a bitch who killed me as a rainbow.

I'd tend to trust someone haunted by a rainbow personally, I don't think it's the best plan

Leprechauns are starting to make sense.

I would love to have my personal rainbow, could you haunt me a little as well? Maybe Tuesdays?

They want you dead. It's time to return this sentiment.

Normalizing political violence will inevitably, and possibly literally, blow up in your face.

We are not going to sit here and watch people get killed for no reason just for nothing to happen to the terrorists in return. As terrorists, they deserve to be treated as terrorists. A hundred years ago killing Nazis after the liberation of Germany was the right thing to do, but now it's supposed to be wrong?

There are more like him

So what are you recommending? It sounds like you're recommending pre-emptive violence towards people with no crime, no trial, no jury. That is likely to end badly. It's also likely to be used as an excuse to kill people who aren't involves in hate in the first place.

All i am saying is that if someone were to kill one of those terrorists, they wouldn't get my pity

What do you define as "one of those terrorists"? Any person who is a conservative, or any person who has already murdered someone for being gay? Or somewhere in the middle?

Who is they?

If we acted the same way it would reinforce their agenda. My comment blew up.

Update/Edit: if you think killing people is the answer to solving the world's problems then you are a fucking premtitive shitty human being and are a part of the problem.

No action will also reinforce their agenda

There's a gap a mile wide between doing nothing and stooping to the same level of violence. Come on...

I question this idea that violence should only be viewed through a lens of who is superior to the other. Morality is not about being better. It's about reducing suffering in the world. And your opponents think nonviolence simply doesn't accomplish that, and in this case I don't blame them.

All I'm saying is there's a that universally every nation in the world has constructed laws on this; that just because you disagree with an opposing view vehemently you cannot strike out physically, violently. Inevitably, if you abandon this notion, then it will backfire by those most willing to commit violence — and in that regard, we revert back to survival-of-the-fittest winner-take-all mindsets. When that happens, will we have "reduced suffering in the world?"

Quite a bit of space between 0 and 100

Yeah hence why when the Nazis invaded Europe we never invaded them back, because that would have just reinforced the Nazi agenda.

Not sure if you are aware but the Nazi agenda is still around.

One could make the argument war didn't get rid of them and had just reinforced their way of thinking even moreso for the ones who still supported nazism.

One could also make the argument that the best way to deal with hitler was to send him chocolates and ask him to leave France very nicely. Doesn't mean its a good argument.

You're not allowed to get strapped up like a larping moron in every western country in the world that isn't the US.

The US would be doing a lot better if they stopped pretending like they were the only country in the world that's ever tried to solve a problem. Owning guns just increases the chance that you or a family member will commit suicide or a murder suicide.

No they wouldn't. Our military doesn't even need to respond most of the time, just the cops, and when they do these jackasses are so poorly trained and organized, The National Guard doesn't even get to play with their big toys.

Source: lefty (in both ways) Navy Veteran, and there are way more of us than the braying jackasses want to admit

Lately I've been thinking that if congress got shot up as often as schools did, we would have sane gun control with bipartisan support

Gun control only really became a thing once Black people started arming themselves.

Negative. Gun Control in the United States predates the founding of the country and it was both racist and classist from the very outset. As documented in that link Gun Control laws have been around for over 200 years and were instituted against Blacks but also against the Irish, the Chinese, and Native Americans.

Your comment is based on The Mulford Act, a stupid and racist piece of California legislation passed with bi-partisan effort and signed by then Governor Ronald Reagan in response to publicly armed Black Panthers. It wasn't even close the first serious gun control law to get passed.

For instance Mulford was modeled on The Sullivan Act enacted by New York State in 1911. It intentionally targeted Italian immigrants, another distinct minority at the time.

This country has ALWAYS enacted Gun Control in response to racial and class elements.

Also holy shit, why would any reasonable person support stupid shit like gun control in that light?

In yesterday's society it was to protect the wealth and position of the Upper and Middle classes. In today's society it's because it seems like an obvious response to things like Mass Shootings and Gun Crime. The hidden in plain sight truth though is that modern day Gun Control proposals are doing the same thing as yesterday's Gun Control proposals because if you have enough money they will not apply to you.

Pass a new Federal Assault Weapons Ban? No problem for the wealthy, they'll just drop $20,000 on a pre-ban machine gun that can be legally transferred to them. Pass a Federal "Red Flag" law? They don't care as they know it'll never be enforced against them; their connections, money, and lawyers will see to it. Federal UBC? Again, no worries as their connections, money, and lawyers all make sure they won't be impacted. Remove the 2nd Amendment and ban the private ownership of firearms? No worries, the bodyguards surrounding them and their families will still be armed, just like they are everywhere else in the world.

What makes it even more stupid is that no direct causal link between the number of guns in circulation and the amount of "Gun Crime", however you define that, has ever been shown. In fact the data shows something very different than the reality most people believe in.

The household ownership rate has been bouncing around the low to mid 40s since 1972.. The population of the US grew from 240M in 1972 to 322M in 2014 too, so that 40% household ownership rate includes an addition 80 Million people.

The number of NICS (Federal Background Checks) in the United States quadrupled from 10 Million per year to 40 Million per year between 1998 and 2020.

Meanwhile Intentional Homicide fell from it's high of 9.82 in 1991 to 4.4 in 2014, a decrease of 50%. Gun Crime specifically peaked in 1993 and then declined by 49% over the next 20 years.

In short US Citizens bought a SHIT ton of guns starting in the 90s and tens of millions of new owners were added as our population grew...all while both Violent and Gun Crime continued to drop. We have a problem for sure, but it ain't the number of guns in circulation.

It's a good theory and one that I bought into as well but the statistics should have stayed down if that was the cause. Since they didn't there must have been another factor.

Unfortunately Violent and Firearm Crime statistics started climbing again in 2015. The pandemic may have played a role but it cannot be the cause.

So? In what world does that necessitate you owning a gun? One where Robert Evans's civil war happens?

The idea that everyone needs to be strapped because a few morons are, is paranoid race to the bottom thinking, not how you make a better future.

Oh yeah, Canadian and European women are just casually murdered and raped all the time cause they're not strapped. That's so totally a thing that happens and we all hear about in the news day after day!

1 in 6 women is raped in their lifetime

Is that stat higher in Canada / Europe or the US?

And many of them could have been prevented if they had a firearm.

[citation needed]

My sensibilities are more important than yours.

Yes you've made it very clear that you value your own paranoia over the statistical safety of everyone.

Is that star higher for Europe or the US?

It's higher even than that everywhere because the number of reported rapes is lower than what the numbers show.

Yeah, you didn't answer the question. European and Canadian women do not get raped at a higher rate than American women, despite not being strapped up like a commando.

And guess what? They suffer lower rates of spousal killing, and their children do not die from gun violence at any statistically meaningful rate.

But let's say what you want to believe is right -- that rape is extremely rare, too rare to justify gun ownership or self-defense in general.

Never said rape was rare, just pointed out that making guns easy for every psychopath to gets their hands on doesn't make it less rare. Increasing gun ownership increases the rate of rapists who own guns as well, you, evil evil gun wielding rapist supporter 🙄

Congratulations on living in the only country in the world where dozens of children are regularly gunned to death at school. All your decisions are going great.

You're more likely to be killed by a mosquito than raped, and men are far more likely to be murdered than you. You might want to reevaluate your threat assessment.

@AngryCommieKender @pinkdrunkenelephants

Got any proof for those statements or are they just your opinions?

I remembered the Texas economy lower than it is

https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/gdp-by-state/

I was thinking they were only at 1.6-1.8 trillion

@AngryCommieKender

You wrote about mosquitoes, rape and murder, not GDP.

Those were the data I asked about.

Sorry I got confused about the thread.

https://www.mosquito.org/vector-borne-diseases/

Over 1 million people per year die from mosquitoes world wide.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime

Males were more likely to be murder victims. (78.6%)

https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/fastfact.html

There's the best SA statistics you'll find, but even they admit that the data on the men's side is flawed and incomplete at best.

@AngryCommieKender

Thank you for the apology. It's appreciated.

Statistics for rape conclude that 10% of the world's female population are raped, which equates to about 400,000,000 girls and women. Stats on male rape are fairly non-existent (from a PDF here https://www.equalitynow.org/resource/the-worlds-shame-the-global-rape-epidemic/).

That's 400x the amount of people killed by mosquitoes.

edit to correct numbers

No it isn't. That's 400,000,000 total, not per year.

The total number of humans killed by mosquitos is in the billions. Mosquitoes have killed more of us than anything else including us and war

Oh, and that million+ per year is way down. Before we figured out how to cure malaria it was tens to hundreds of millions of humans per year.

@AngryCommieKender

It would take 400 years for mosquitoes to kill as many people as rape has affected.

Only at today's death rate. Prior to malaria being cured it would have taken 4 years to 40. PS. They've been at it for 250,000 years the death toll isn't even close. You're arguing in bad faith.

I love how tough and secure you are! So impressive!

So tough and secure! Most impressive!!

No, I'm just saying you're gay and afraid to admit it. And Republican. And also a gay too.

History has shown time and time again that pacifism cannot defeat conservatism. Conservatives see pacifism as an invitation to attack.

They do no rely on our actions to advance their agenda of hate. Conservatives will advance their agenda of hate with or without our input. They can only be stopped by force.

I dunno. I've thought, for quite some time, that we'll lose because the only way to combat the far-right is to stoop to their levels and we, naturally, are to ethical to do so. I'm increasingly on the side of see-a-nazi-punch-a-nazi, although I'm horrified by violence and probably wouldn't have the courage to do so.

If you are unable to fight, then prepare yourself in other ways. Teach your family how to help fighters who are injured, how to evac people who need help and how to escape/survive a conservative attack (such as an active shooter).

Even if you are not a fighter, there is a ton you can do to help those who will fight.

At minimum, teach your children why we don't do business with or engage in personal relationships with conservatives. Together we can maginalize hate by marginalizing haters.

I hope you realize that you're falling right into the far-right playbook. This right here is their goal. Not sure if you're familiar with ProPublica's research but they seek to muddy the waters. The whole punch a nazi thing actually helps their recruitment. They turn around and go, "See? They're no better. They claim to preach these beliefs about a civil society and freedom of speech and not preemptively striking, yet here we are."

Either way they lie and recruit the same. I'd much rather just punch the Nazis and anyone who sides with them.

In a way wouldn't we all. But this is clearly posturing anyway since I'm not seeing much in the way of nazi punching. For instance we saw how many nazis were in DC on January 6th or at Charlottesville, yet not much punching occurred.

Either way there are better ways to undermine their goals.

Yeah because rational humans were at home being their non violent selves having no idea what was about to unfold. How stupid are you?

That just helps prove my point. One side is just not violent to begin with and to expect to beat violence with violence from a group unwilling to stoop to such a level themselves is absurd. Either way there are better ways to solving the problem. Nobody is going out "punching nazis" as much as it may feel cathartic to say. That will literally just land you in prison and feed their cause.

So, they act like children?

Nobody said they're bright.

It seems unlikely that this would have any political effect, let alone a negative one. Perpetual gun violence is an unremarkable feature of life in the United States.

All the downvotes you're getting on this one... YIKES I don't think this is a very good community.

There are times violence is necessary, with Nazi Germany being the classic example.

That said, most of the time, even for many times where violence might be "right" it's still a strategic error. It's much harder to build than destroy and any "successful" deployment of violence requires physical and institutional/relational rebuilding.

Violence can make it harder to attract supporters to your cause. It gives your opponents the feeling of moral justification in also exercising violence. In a full on conflict, it reduces the ability of key supporters (the young, elderly, disabled, many women) from contributing to the struggle compared with non violent action

Militant trans sentiment is growing.

Everyone talking about the victim, etc what happened to the murderer? Is they in prisión now?

According to the article they were shot and killed by law enforcement

Murica

Good. Hopefully, they suffered before being thrown back into the hole they crawled out of

Shot them back.

"The suspect was found and shot dead by responding officers"

I don't think they made it to jail.

Extremely extremely uncommon police W

Unless the shooter was African American and they had no idea about the shop shooting which I wouldn't doubt

I don't call it a win. That murderer deserved to be tried and convicted for their crime and serve decades behind bars. They gave him the easy way out.

From another article (The Sun is owned by Murdoch iirc), they suggested that the murderer did not want to get arrested and was aggressive. It's sad that people get so hateful that they would rather die hating people than just going about life.

Do they ever want to get arrested? That sounds like a poor excuse not to hit him with a bunch of taser darts and take him down that way. Sure, that might kill him too, but at least there would be a chance. Easier for the cop to reach for their gun and "solve" the problem.

How is tasering someone less safe than shooting a gun?

Because despite what you've seen on television tasers aren't as effective in threat suppression.

My cognitive dissonance is thinking both you and the guy you replied to are correct.

As much as I will defend my stance that I'm glad the shooter is dead, I still do agree with Flying Squid to an extent. Immediately murdering the aggressor goes against the whole of the system of law, I suppose a fair trial should still be taken place, but I'd be the happiest if they got the death penalty. Keeping him behind bars just keeps the hate alive

Oh yeah, police just shooting who they feel like is a modern day miracle! Nothing bad can come from that! Totally won't end with a police officer kneeling on a man's neck and slowly choking him to death for being black!

They're replying to the comment celebrating the fact the suspect was given a quick and cheap death by the police.

Maybe the police actions in this case were warranted because of self defense, but that's not what the comment was saying at all.

Don't participate in a discussion thread if you don't want to talk about that topic. It's not complicated.

Lol I didn't tell you not to say what you want, I said not to shut others down. Maybe drink less or ask a human to type for you before posting.

The moral authority to tell someone that their stance that police can shoot anyone they want without due process because it's cheaper that way is morally wrong?

Yeah, everyone has that.

I'm not trying to make light of the tragedy that happened to the original victim, nor am I saying it's sad that the killer got killed himself. But if someone is arguing to eliminate due process because of this case, I'll argue against that. And so should anyone else.

Final reply, because I feel this not going anywhere.

I, or the person I was defending, was not talking about this specific situation. Of course they have the right to self defense. I explicitly mentioned that before two comments ago.

I'm also not trying to defend the killer or feel sad at all he got killed by the police.

All my replies were aimed at the comment from CoffeeJunkie who apparently was advocating for the police to be judge, jury and executioner because that's cheaper. That's a major simplification and I'm sure that's not what they meant, but that's how I, and probably others, interpreted it and why I chose to go against it.

Again, I'm done arguing with you. You're resorting to ad hominem attacks because you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

It's not the job of the police to dispense justice.

Yeah it is really easy to fall for the schadenfreude when a POS gets got by cops but don't forget cops are wrong about who did what all the fucking time...

I hope they weren't wrong here...

It's not their job to execute people. It's their job to arrest them and provide evidence in a court of law to get them jail time. Even if it's the perpetrator.

That is why I'm arguing for not celebrating this way of handling problems. Executions, even official ones that are done "correctly" by the state, often kill innocent people. And, as you said, people that have directly commited a crime still deserve their rights.

Situations like this, where no one wants to see a killer like that get away, it becomes easier to overlook bad policing, and everyone should make a conscious effort try and hold police to a higher standard to do things properly.

I am actually interested to know the race of the murderer. I know some people are against giving that information, but truth is, that provides a lot of information.

Good. Thank you.

If you can't be bothered to read TFA, please don't enter the discussion.

Trying to make memes is a waste of time. Spend an hour trying to make something funny in photoshop, 4 upvotes. Literally just read the second line of an article and put it in the comments, 50 upvotes. Not that I care about internet points, but if I did I would never waste my time actually trying to make something insightful!

Is this the start of them hunting down libs? Party of law and order people.

War is here? We have 350 million plus people. I don't see how you can call the occasional incident "war". If it was violence targeted at non-conservatives even once every few days I could see your point maybe. But as violent and awful as America is, I think the vast majority of our violence is not political in nature.

I will probably get downvoted for saying it, but this post and the response here reminds me a lot of things you'd see on r/conservative in that people take an isolated hateful incident and extrapolate to say that this is the start of a civil war and we need to mount an equally forceful response. Yes this is a tragedy, unhinged, and terroristic behavior, but, as someone from a deeply red state who has some ultra-conservative family, 0 of them are even remotely close to wanting to fight and die over pride flags.

I only say this because the sentiment that "there is no other way out of this but civil war" is not anywhere close to true, in my mind, and only serves to stop coherent discussion.

Perfectly said. I'm with you. I do think it's a distinct possibility at some point but this news story is not a part of some inevitably imminent civil war. If nothing else, 99.9% of people are way too comfortable and lazy currently to even attempt to create that sort of chaos. Something to still be watchful about but nothing like some of the comments in this thread are saying.

I only say this because the sentiment that “there is no other way out of this but civil war” is not anywhere close to true, in my mind, and only serves to stop coherent discussion.

It is also not at all the appropriate response to hearing about an innocent person being killed. No sympathy or concern or even tact for the victim nor her community nor loved ones— Instead, fantasizing about even more of the same thing happening so you can mentally LARP as a hero. Even if you're right, this is not the place to scream your violence-fantasy slogans.

Interesting that as communities become more radical and more specialized— Not that that's always a bad thing; It's probably a natural part of the memetic processes by which communities evolve— But it's interesting that they also seem to become less and less empathetic at the same time.

I think the vast majority of our violence is not political in nature. Of course, but the rate that it's rising is very concerning. The rhetoric is also getting more heated.

Wouldn't be surprised if things did indeed boil over.

Your tone in no way helps the conversation. Bye.

California has entered the chat with a bit more money at over double the economic productivity of Texas (#2) and New York (#3)

California is where the money is at, New York/ New England just has a higher proportion of rich people living there.

Funny how these murder-babies are never from the north east

New York State isn't in the North East? I seem to remember a really bad day at a grocery store in Buffalo, a deli getting blasted in NYC, a subway getting shot to shit in NYC, and recently some psycho on a scooter running around popping people at random.

Tragic and unacceptable.

Why are you associating that with this?

I'm hoping they never release the killers identity to the public. Spreading around that hateful persons likeness and beliefs all over media and articles only empowers others to do the same thing. Leave them as a nameless pictureless murderer with no agenda or beliefs, just some bigoted murderer.

Kill-billies kill. It's all they know, it's all they can do.

Damn my hometown...

This shit is why I just stay at home.