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Two Gunman Killed Outside "Draw the Prophet" Event In Texas

cosm writes: ABC news reports that two armed gunman were shot and killed outside a "Draw the Prophet" event hosted in Garland Texas. From the article: "The event, sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative, featured cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and scheduled speakers included Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who has campaigned to have the Quran banned in the Netherlands. The winner of the contest was to receive $10,000." In light of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks, the Lars Vilks Muhammad drawing controversies, and the American show South Park's satirical depiction of the state of Muhammad phobia in the US and elsewhere, is there an end in sight to the madness associated with the representation of this religious figure?

16 of 1,097 comments (clear)

  1. Like deer hunting in Texas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They place containers of corn in plain site of their blinds for weeks, then hide out on opening day of hunting season and take the deer by the dozens

    Seems like they were baiting for 'terrorists' in a similar way

  2. Suicide mission by CaptQuark · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The unfortunate part is the two gunmen knew this was a suicide mission before they attempted the attack and decided a less violent form of protest didn't convey their message well enough.

    ~~

  3. Schmuck bait. by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You would think even people stupid and fanatic enough to do this would know that Texas is the wrong place to try and pull a Charlie Hebdo.

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  4. tip of the iceberg by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't think anyone is shocked. The shock for me comes when the suggestion is made that we should do a little self-censorship. Yeah, sure... this is just the one taboo we have to respect... this is the only bit of sharia law we infidels have to obey, right?

    Except it doesn't end there. It can never end there. I mean hell, the hadith have in the past been widely interpreted to forbid all artwork of animals and humans. They've given up that battle... for now. But rest assured, they have not forgotten. None of this barbarous shit in any of the Abrahamic faiths can ever be truly forgotten, because all sitting there in the unalterable book waiting for someone to decide to take it literally again."Respect" for religious insanity is a continuous spectrum of masochistic self-censorship trailing down into an infinite abyss. Or do you really, honestly believe that ISIS's current set of laws is the most extreme interpretation possible?

    It's possible to resist the scaremongering of the right (no, neither ISIS nor any of the other bearded fuckwits are in any position to do us significant harm at this very moment ) while still acknowledging that over the long run this is a zero sum game with no possibility of common ground.

    We cannot share a planet with these people. So yes, let's keep making the bastards angry.

  5. Re:They wanted to die in a suicide attack. They di by foreverdisillusioned · · Score: 3, Interesting

    To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens: "They want to be martyrs? Well, good--we're here to help."

    I think this would work in a Texan accent, too.

  6. No, probably not by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You might recall that during the whole "draw Mohammad" controversy South Park took it on. While the were not allowed to show Mohammad at all, they did show people literally shitting on Jesus, the American flag, and so on. They received zero threats in relation to that, there was no action taken against them.

    It's not like Christians didn't know either, it is a major syndicated TV show that is produced in the US.

  7. Re:Those terrorist sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am missing something or they were totally utterly untrained with the used weapon.

    Aiming is considered pointless by devout muslims. It is not the aiming that decides where a bullet goes, but Allah's hand. If you are destined to hit, you will; if not, you cannot override Allah's will by aiming. Same thinking (to use the word loosely) goes for e.g. wearing seatbelts - Allah decides whether you survive a car crash.

  8. Liberty by AndyCanfield · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Reliance upon the government to protect you after you have insulted someone is not freedom. Freedom requires courage, and sometimes the price of courage is high. Ed Snowden is my hero - he paid the price.

  9. Wait, what? by soccerisgod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So..... these guys set up an event supposedly to protect free speech and all, and then they invite a guy "who has campaigned to have the Quran banned in the Netherlands."

    I can't put my finger on it but something here doesn't fit :P

    --
    If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
  10. Re:Those terrorist sucks by itzly · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I guess you're the kind of person who thinks is a woman dresses provocatively, she has it coming, right?

    And 'provocative' means without a headscarf.

  11. Re:Oblig. answer by Loki_1929 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Your equivocation is showing.

    Nobody shows up to just start opening fire on everyone involved when some art exhibit depicting Jesus in some terrible way is shown (though they may show up to damage the artwork). Piss Christ is just one example. The Misadventures of the Romantic Cannibals is another. South Park has done plenty of cartoons depicting Jesus in a less than respectful manner as has Family Guy, yet no murders. Leon Ferrari lived to a ripe old age despite his many works of blasphemy that even drew the ire of Pope Francis (Mary in a blender comes to mind). Yet again, some of the artwork was vandalized, but the man himself was never harmed. In fact, the threats he received were for his earlier political work (which drove him to exile). Ants of a Crucifix, Phallus-faced Jesus, Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary"; the list just goes on and on. Protests, lawsuits, condemnations, funding being pulled; these are the reactions from Christians.

    But draw cartoons of Mohammed? Guys with guns show up to murder people.

    There's a fucking difference.

    --
    -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  12. Re:Looks like the prophet's gunmen by jjhues7676 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Was this staged to see if there were fanatics in the U.S.A. that would take it to the extreme as in Europe?

  13. Re:Looks like the prophet's gunmen by g0bshiTe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Given the uses for a gun exactly what use would you have for one that would merit bringing it to work with you?

    If you are so afraid that you need to carry a gun to work with you, then you may want to consider moving to a safer area.

    Life long gun owner here, but I see no reason to bring one to work with me. In my 30 years of owning guns, I've drawn a weapon on a human being precisely zero times. I've used a gun to shoot at or injure a human exactly zero times. My personal experience guns don't hurt people if they aren't used against people.

    Please enlighten me as to which shining new law that doesn't currently exist would stop the next senseless gun death.

    Exactly which law including banning firearms will keep them out of the hands of criminals.

    Please feel free to succeed where countless politicians and anti-gun lobbyists have failed.

    I'll also refer you to look up statistics for laws and gun ownership from the last 40 years in the US, see the trend where fewer gun laws equated fewer gun deaths per capita, until today where more gun laws equates to more gun violence.

    You are blaming a symptom not the cause.

    --
    I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
  14. Re:Looks like the prophet's gunmen by Wycliffe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Texas". That's really the only part of that sentence you need. I would be surprised if the people attending and local homes weren't about as well armed as the police in the article.

    Even if I wasn't normally armed, there is no way I would go to a rally like this without a weapon.
    You basically knew you were walking into a war zone. My guess is that the reason it was held
    in Texas was exactly because of the available gun laws, the death penalty statutes, and other
    similiar laws. This was pretty much a honeypot operation with the SWAT team on standby.

  15. Re:The nature of any polygamous religion by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the biggest problems in any polygamous society is getting rid of young men. Every man with 4 wives leaves 3 angry, young, horny men in his wake who got no wives.

    This is not only a problem in polygamous societies, but also in countries with gender selective abortions, including China and India. There are already more than 10 million "missing" women in China, and the problem will get far worse in the next decade, as millions and millions of young men reach maturity to find there are no women available. This is very likely to have a destabilizing effect throughout East Asia, since unattached young men tend to support political leaders who advocate nationalism, militarism, and confrontation.

  16. Re:Looks like the prophet's gunmen by DaHat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Less weapons, less deaths.

    Really? Or do you want to ignore the fact of the low murder rate in easy to legally get a gun Plano, Texas (.4 per 100,000) and the highest murder rate in the hard to legally get a gun city of Detroit (54.6 per 100,000)? The numbers are striking: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

    I'm afraid such crimes are not uniformly distributed across the country as your stats attempt to portray, and if you exclude a few notable locations which disproportionally have rather high numbers, the national average begins to drop quickly.