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Garmin Engineer Shot And Killed By Man Yelling 'Get Out Of My Country!' (theverge.com)
lxw56 writes:
Garmin engineer Srinivas Kuchibhotla was shot and killed at a local bar in Olathe, Kansas, the U.S. headquarters of Garmin. Co-worker Alok Madasani was also injured along with bystander Ian Grillot, who attempted to help the men. "The suspect in the shooting, Adam Purinton, was drinking at the bar in Olathe, Kansas, at about 7:15 p.m. that night," reports The Verge. "A witness said he yelled 'get out of my country' to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were 'Middle Eastern.'" In 2015, Garmin employed 2,700 workers in Olathe and has plans to double this number, which the article notes has led to "increasing diversity" in the community.
Oh wait, no... he actually shot and killed someone. KellyAnne, get out there and do what you do...
Police found him there after putting out an APB (Applebees Point Bulletin), which is the tool they use to find all racists in the Midwest and South.
Something about making psycopathy great again, something like that?
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic. Indians are Caucasian, by the way.
Do you read the news at all? This has been well covered.
You should start by looking in the mirror and see how the election of Obama moved the overton window enough to make trump possible. Alas such honest reflection from the left is why the democrats are as decimated as they are.
Cool. Then let's blame Obama for Orlando, San Bernardino, etc.
See how fucking stupid you are?
I blame booze.
http://abcnews.go.com/Internat...
Even if every detail in the summary is true it's STILL likely to not be an accurate depiction of the entire profile of the gunman.
http://abcnews.go.com/Internat...
That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked.
Trump may be aggravating it, but this isn't new. Some idiot attacked Sikhs a few years ago because he thought their turbans meant they were Muslims.
Racism doesn't always attract the brightest bulbs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"That man opened the door for lunatics like this. His followers are gleefully jumping through the door and this is what we get as a nation. I also blame the GOP for this because of their desire for power in Washington. They let this happen unchecked."
Ok. much more serious response to your post this time. The guy was a nut or a broken nut. Blaming Trump is like Blaming Obama for the Texas nut who flew his plane in to a building more than a few years ago. And I recall on this very board everyone speculating he was a right wing nut because "Texas". Turns out after his manifesto came out that he was a left wing nut.
Maybe we need to drop the modifiers and just call them what they are. Nuts.
Why not call this guy a terrorist ?
If he had been a Muslim shooting an American it would be classed as terrorism.
Or does it not suit the US narrative ?
"Get out of my country, immigrant"
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
the comments section, i mean. honest question.
why do you guys bother keeping this comment section running, when it has clearly devolved into one of the worst, most openly racist and least interesting communities on the internet? okay, sure, there are communities specifically geared towards right-wing fascism and racism that are probably worse, but this site is supposed to be about, you know, tech news and stuff. but you guys have let it erode into something gross that almost nobody other than despicable morons want to participate in. i remember years ago when articles would have hundreds of interesting and insightful comments, with actual experts weighing in with well thought out reactions. those people are all gone, and with very good reason. are you glad they're gone? do you miss them? do you miss relevancy?
i doubt you are proud of providing a forum dominated by some of the worst elements of humanity. so that's why i'm asking why you continue to do so.
i could live a little longer in this prison
We don't hire any Trump supporters
So you discriminate by political party in the hiring process. Interesting. Do you do it by color and religion, too?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I agree with you. People say a lot of stupid things when they are drunk. But let's not let any opportunity to blame Trump go to waste, right?
And Leftists wonder why they are getting tuned out.
500 white people are killed by blacks every year and 200 blacks are killed by whites every year. One group is 70% of the country, the other is 13% of the country. I notice the same people whining about this event aren't paying attention to those statistics. A couple people assuredly died in interracial murders since that story broke.
But this one drunken fight in Kansas - we have no idea what was actually said and what provoked this - is somehow more significant.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The difference is, Obama didn't spend years going on TV and convincing Muslims that Americans are bad hombres who are out to get them around every streetcorner. Trump has spent the last year and a half on TV espousing exactly that kind of FUD about people with brown skin. Trump's fearmongering rhetoric comes with a price, and innocent people are paying it.
Per your a:, Indians and Europeans came from the same stock, part of the Indo-European migrations.
Keep going. There's more:
a : a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock
b : a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
: any one of the groups that human beings can be divided into based on shared distinctive physical traits
2: a group of individuals who share a common culture or history
3: a major group of living things
These are all from the very same page you linked. If you're going to use a dictionary to slap someone down, make sure you understand every way the dictionary says the word can be used. Not just the one that suits you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
you mean religion?
Which is why they come here to steal your job
No, that is not why they come here. They are brought here, to suppress your wages, by wealthy Americans of every race, gender, religion and orientation that has the means to do so. They are given a temporary license to stay, provided they remain cheap, then they get cast back to where they came from (or get labelled enemy of the state, evidently).
This is what is being lost beneath the racism, the Indians, Mexicans, Chinese, etc. are not your enemies, they're just people trying to make a buck. Your enemies are Americans.
Under Federal law, employers generally cannot discriminate against employees on the basis of:
Race
Sex
Pregnancy
Religious Affiliation
National Origin
Disability
Age
Military Affiliation
Bankruptcy
Genetic Information
Citizenship Status
Funny, political party isn't up there. What a wonderful false equivalence you've devised.
And don't forget bona fide occupational qualifications! If the job skill required is logical thought and the prospective seeker voted for Trump, that'd be legal discrimination even if they *were* a protected group. Which, again, you're... I mean, *they're* not.
Likewise, Obama's expansion of H-1b visas during a freakin' depression eventually pushed this guy over the edge.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics
So WoW players, cat fanciers and gun enthusiasts are races now? Not sure that will fly with the UNHRC...
So now along with 5000 Genders, we got a million races based on beer preference.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I've been on a lot of right-wing boards. Those fuckers are triggered by everything. I really can't get that stressed over loopy college girls being scared of shit, but supposed bad-ass conservatives being terrified of Muslims/poor people/leftists/the gays/blacks/millennials/a cool black president/taxes etc. Just makes me want to slap every last one of them preferably with a chainsaw. What's the deal guys? Are you all on medication or just I'll in the head?
ðY
I am not doing your homework for you. If you really think the reporting in this case is in doubt, then God and Trump bless you.
If your numbers are accurate, it means that a black person is twice as likely to be killed by a white person as a white person is to be killed by a black person.
Wow, 2 incidents over the course of 10 years in a population of 300 million people. What conclusion should we draw about the general population from these incidents?
Murder an innocent man because you think he's middle-eastern? Clearly the fault of the VA,
It is because he couldn't get the treatment he needed. Without that he became unhinged.
I believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe that if peel cannot get the help they need society is partly to blame. You apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Trump, even though Trump didn't come into the picture until recently and the shooter has been falling for years. Yet you twist the truth to blame Trump for a tragedy much longer in the making - sick man, you are as sick as the shooter or heading that way. How long before you punch a Trump supporter because you think they are racist? How long before you yourself are gunning down those you are against?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
About US military bases in their country.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Man has a point. If you only hire H1-Bs, you won't get many Trump supporters.
About TFA: is a sad commentary on the US education system that our rednecks can't tell the races they're supposed to hate apart. But then, I guess it's not the smart ones who do this sort of shit in the first place.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I work for Garmin at a different location and information I got from a co-worker, who used to be based in Olathe, was that the shooter drove to another bar where he told the staff he was in hiding from police. The staff there then called police who arrested him.
I have been to the USA often and have friends there. The one thing I know is you can not have a rational discussion with them about gun control. They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom. I realise that any critique of US gun control or freedom means I will now be modded down.
I have 15 mod points now that I can't use since I am posting here. I could have used them to mod down the hateful posts but I want to post. I am genuinely saddened to hear of the death of a co-worker and such a needless death is so hard to understand. I have no idea how to fix the gun problem in the USA, if it was easy it would have been done already. Sorry America, you have a problem and the stats are pretty clear on that point.
My thoughts go our to Srinivas' family, I am sorry for your loss.
Unless you are a native american, you should be packing too.
#DeleteFacebook
Well, that's one way of looking at it. Another way is that black people do a lot more murder on a per capita basis. As it turns out, the chances of getting killed by a white guy are less for a black person than the reverse. Which is indicative of the overall murder rate in the black community being several times (something like 5+ times) what it is amongst whites.
Some source data
Anyway paying undue attention to a single person amongst the 6k or so that are going to die this year is politically motivated, as usual.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Society breeds behavior.
Dialectician. Archology.
They migrated here too. There are no humans native to North/South America.
could you post the name of your company? I don't vote for Trump but I want to be sure I never end up working for your organization by mistake.
Also I was wondering: do you have a diversity program in place? And if so, how can you possibly justify the hypocrisy of selective diversity based on political views?
Of course you won't post the name because you're a liar and/or a coward. But thanks for playing.
lucm, indeed.
I would guess that the same people concerned about this event are also largely the same people advocating for stricter gun controls. So it would seem that they are indeed concerned about those other shootings.
What is more interesting is that Trump is pushing his travel ban while far more people are killed by fellow Americans using guns than are killed by terrorists. Over 150,000 gun related homicides since 2001 vs 3,046 killed by terrorists. While 3,046 is indeed a large number, 2,996 of those happened on 9/11. None of those perpetrators were from the seven countries on Trump's list. The bulk of them were from Saudi Arabia, where Trump has significant business interests.
All that being said, I don't think gun control is THE answer to gun related homicides. There are deeper problems that need to be addressed. A travel ban is an order of magnitude worse solution to a much smaller problem. It serves to aggravate anti-US sentiment and makes recruiting people of any nationality an even easier task for terrorists. It makes enemies out of people who might otherwise be allies and promotes an environment where hatred and fear of "outsiders" is encouraged.
Well-played, sir.
OP said:
when it has clearly devolved into one of the worst, most openly racist and least interesting communities on the internet
So he's clearly new here. We get far fewer GNAA posts here today than the early days. The political stories that don't belong here are, in fact, clickbait to broaden the appeal of /. beyond "news for nerds", since "news for nerds" is what's makes it the least interesting community for more people out there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I work for Garmin in New Zealand and have been to Olathe a few times. Garmin has great inclusive culture to it and I am genuinely saddened to hear of Srinivas' death.
I am disappointed to read posts that somehow infer that Srinivas' employment in the Olathe office was at the expense of a US resident getting a job. That is simply not true. There is a world wide shortage of skilled workers. We have two US employees in our Auckland office and no one here complains about them taking our jobs. We employee every skilled Kiwi we can find but the shortage means over half my team are from China and Taiwan. We welcome them as we need more skilled people to get keep our business competitive. None of the locals, such as myself, see these people as stealing our jobs.
It is the same in Olathe, they will employ any US citizen with suitable skills ahead of a foreign worker as it is less hassle but they can not get enough staff with right skills, in part because Garmin set the bar quite high when it comes to skill levels. I have meet people with a wide range of backgrounds in the US Garmin offices and have never seen even a hint of racism or sexism.
My mind can not comprehend how the shooter could feel justified in taking a life even if he really thought immigrant were taking local jobs. These kind of people need to stop blaming immigrants for stealing jobs and take a good hard look at themselves.
Man has a point. If you only hire H1-Bs, you won't get many Trump supporters.
About TFA: is a sad commentary on the US education system that our rednecks can't tell the races they're supposed to hate apart. But then, I guess it's not the smart ones who do this sort of shit in the first place.
White guy in Kansas shoots foreigners because he's a racist and/or ethnocentric. ....
Black guys beat and torture white guy in Chicago because they're racist and/or ethnocentric.
White cops beat black guy in California because they're racist and/or ethnocentric.
Black guy kills a bunch of white cops because he's racist and/or ethnocentric.
Middle Eastern guys rape a bunch of white women in Sweden because
There are dicks everywhere. People of all religions, ethnicities, colors, and even financial backgrounds don't like and/or trust other people who are not like them.
Actually there is a "correct" side, the side that says my coworker would not be dead if he meet the same type mentally deranged guy in New Zealand, Australia, Britain, China and most of Europe. If that had happened here my coworker would be in the office the next day with a broken nose and the other guy would be in court on an assault charge.
Innocent gun owners didn't shoot these guys. Scapegoating and sending the police after innocent people isn't the answer.
Just about every other developed country in the world disagrees. The few that have a similar (well, within a 2-3x factor, the US is just that much of an outlier) level of gun ownership (like Switzerland) do it in a way so incredibly different it may as well be another concept entirely.
It just so happens that the rest of world is also doing fine without all those guns.
In the 1900s (and earlier) people came here to work hard and succeed.
The murdered man was an engineer working for Garmin. It seems pretty obvious he came to the U.S. "to work hard and succeed".
#DeleteChrome
Shooting foreigners isn't being racist, it's being xenophobic.
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive - and, quite often, they happily go hand in hand.
#DeleteChrome
It's not a good thing, but you're also making a big assumption. That he wouldn't have killed otherwise if this guy didn't have access to firearms. There are many, many ways to kill someone. The guy could have waited for your coworker to leave the restaurant and simply run him over with his car or attacked him with a machete. You're only limited by your imagination. This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense. The bottom line is that if this guy REALLY wanted to kill middle easterners (or whatever), he would find a way. Guns are just one of a million ways to express violence.
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
No your coworker is dead because a racist bigot decided to kill him.
Nuts don't grow in a vacuum. I have no idea how much (if any) impact Trump had on this guy. I would guess though that he had plenty of contact with like minded people who at least talked about wanting to do this kind of thing. Trump's policies and penchant for "alternative" facts helps fuel the misguided hatred that feeds this stuff.
Entire societies have been complicit in unspeakable crimes including genocide. Where they nuts? No. They were surrounded by people and institutions that legitimized that kind of thinking. I don't believe Trump even knows how dangerous he his. It was never so important before to know the facts. It was never so important to be careful about what one says. He's not qualified either in experience or temperament for this job.
No he isn't.
Your co-worker is dead because some fucking asshole shot him.
Taking away guns does nothing to fix the underlying issues in a situation like this. That fucking asshole who shot your co-worker is going to hate your co-worker and do violence to him, guns or not.
There is no silver bullet. These are complex times with complex social issues that take insightful determination to solve. Knee-jerk reactions like "take away guns", "kick out the Muslims", "build a wall", "get a gun" and the like do not go very far in terms of a solution. Bigotry, hatred, sexism aren't going to be fixed like that.
"Doing something" for the sake of reacting may not be the best choice.
Beware of the Leopard.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment. The Founding Fathers used their own experiences to craft a document which (was supposed to) enshrined rights to people while limiting that of the government. However, as James Madison pointed out, there has been more abridgement of freedoms of the people by the silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations (paraphrased).
The second reason for the amendment, and one the NRA absolutely refuses to recognize, is those who had weapons were during that time required to register with the government so they could be called up as part of the militia. Unlike today, the Founding Fathers envisioned a small standing army, if at all, with the militia doing the brunt of the work to slow or repel foreign invaders or put down rebellion, as George Washington did during the Whiskey Rebellion.
Men who had firearms would register with their local government and if the need arose, they would be called up. The government maintained that list so they knew who they could call on.
The original amendment, as proposed by James Madison, the guy who wrote the Constitution, was:
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
You can see how cutting out and rearranging a few words has people imaging the amendment to be something it is not.
This is why gun control is such a contentious issue. The Constitution, the supreme law of the land, says citizens are allowed to own firearms. Where the argument comes in is where to draw the line on a) who can own a gun (as a rule, anyone convicted of a criminal offense cannot) and b) what restrictions on gun ownership (type of weapon, amount of bullets, etc). As you have seen, some believe there should be no restrictions and others say there should be plenty of restrictions or even no ownership at all.
We already have plenty of gun control - any talk of additional gun control is only talk of further chipping away at this basic American right.
I think the statistics are pretty good. The last I read, nearly half the households have firearms. There are usually about 33,000 firearms related deaths a year. More than half of those are suicides, so only about 15,000 are left. There was just an article that over 1,000 of those are people killed by police. A lot of the remaining 14,000 involve garbage killing garbage. What is left - people murdered - isn't bad when you consider how big and diverse this country is. In fact it is pretty amazing when you think about it.
And yes, that is the price you pay for that significant bit of extra freedom. It isn't just about self defense. In this day and age where there is so much going on between climate change, political unrest, and outright attacks taking place within the borders of the US armed citizens are just as necessary as they have ever been. It is the difference between being a citizen and a subject.
I'd mod you down if I had points,
Don't mod down someone if you disagree with what they wrote. That is abuse of the moderation system. Write a reply instead.
but instead I'll just say the right to bear arms is a good thing.
You might want to provide some arguments for that.
I am not really here right now.
You push hate, bigotry, violence, and xenophobia, so of course this kind of stuff escalates. :(
Stay tuned, more acts of horrific inhumanity to come
That's one possibility. Another possibility is that, if your coworker would instead have been killed with a knife or other non-gun weapon.
How do we distinguish between these possibilities? Fortunately, we have an easy case study available in Australia, which abruptly decreased its level of gun ownership with a buyback scheme in 1996/97, in response to a mass shooting in Port Arthur. If guns are an enabler of homicide, we would expect homicide rates in Australia to have fallen at this point; if guns make little difference, and murderers are equally effective with other weapons, we would expect homicide rates in Australia to remain constant.
The data are here. In 1996, the last year before the buyback scheme, the total number of homicides was 354; in the next few years, it was 364, 334, 385. That doesn't look like a decrease. (Nor does it look like an increase: statistically, we would expect homicides to follow a Poisson distribution, with variation of +/- sqrt(354) = +/- 19 or so, which is about the scale of the observed variation.)
So, simply put: the evidence suggests that you are wrong. Reducing gun ownership, in a particular culture, does not seem to have any effect on the homicide rate.
Disclaimer: I'm Australian, but I've never owned, fired, nor even touched a gun. I held fairly strong anti-gun beliefs until I looked up the above statistics while writing a response in an internet argument, and realised that my beliefs were contradicted by reality.
We all come from the same stock, sport.
Unfortunately, 'terrorism' is now a code word for Jihad, and the term has elbowed out all other terror acts committed by non-Muslims. If everybody would use the j word to describe terrorism done by the allahu-akbar screaming crowd, and the t word for its doing by anyone else, that would clear things up a lot
Not surprised at the huge negative response. Most of the responses back my statement "They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing". My point is if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... you will see you are 10 times more likely to be shot to death than places like New Zealand. Some of you claim it is need to defend your democracy but there is nothing wrong with democracy here. We rise up and protest as needed and if the worst came I am sure people could overthrow an unjust government without mass arming of ourselves.
One poster pointed our that to disarm your country would result on mass deaths. I think that poster was right and wouldn't suggest trying that. They easy no easy fix for your problem, and I am not proposing any. I am suggesting that you are in denial that a problem even exists, despite the figures, and before you can improve things there you need to change you way of thinking.
Never mind that this unskilled redneck would never get a job at Garmin anyway if all the immigrants left, not even to clean the toilets.
Make Olduvai Gorge great again.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
in a particular culture
Highlighted a key part for you. Australia even before the gun ban didn't have a culture of openly carrying guns in the street. We didn't have a trigger happy culture. We didn't get into an argument and shoot people. The gun buyback and ban was never intended to have anything remotely to do with the murder rate. It solved one problem and one problem only: Mass killings.
America on the other hand, ... well two of my colleagues from our Texas office got into a heated discussion on an engineering problem and ended up pulling guns on each other. The situation was de-escalated though. In the kind of culture where you reach for your piece instead of just punching a man in the face like they deserve, a gun ban may have a very different outcome.
We don't know because as you so rightly pointed out we only have data from particular cultures, very different ones to the "omg the mentally unstable need a right to bear arms too" culture.
I'd rather have "Knee-jerk reaction" and take away guns from society that has a "Knee-jerk reaction" to kill someone. It is common theme: can't solve it, can't talk, can't discuss it, I have more power b/c I have a gun and I will just shoot to prove my point - is approach that kills people!!! In less civilized countries you will get a hit in the face, get a couple punches, moronic opponent will get arrested, and be done with "dispute" - but at least you will be alive.
The man that was murdered migrated here legally too.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
your odds of surviving a knife attack are orders of magnitude better than surviving a shooting.
You might think that folks getting shot is a price to pay for the freedom to own fire arms. I'm not gonna bother arguing that point yay or nay (and I wish the left would drop it, it's a losing issue). But the phrase "Guns don't kill people" is verifiable bullshit. It bothers me that a sentiment so obviously wrong can get so much traction with the American people.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Thank you for your reasoned response. Rifles are common here and not to hard to get but you never see then in the city, only on farms, at the homes of hunters and out the bush. I would image it possible to get a hand gun but I'm 54 and in my entire life I have never seen one here outside of a gun shop or on the police at Auckland International Airport (rare even there).
Yes, knives etc are an issue in bar fights etc but are a magnitude less dangerous and I think your average bouncer would consider take on such a person.
There's no amount of massaging of the statistics that will change the fact the US gets waaaaay more gun deaths per capita than any other Western country. You're up there with Uruguay and Panama. That, alone, is proof enough that the bandwagon fallacy doesn't apply.
Silly excuses for killing other humans. For the record, contrary to what you may have heard from Fox News, Obama did not touch the H1B visas. Under section 214(g)(1)(A)(vii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1989, only 65,000 H1B visas may be allocated each fiscal year, and that has remained so. The only thing Obama did and his powers were very limited as the President, is that he allowed spouses of H1Bs called H4 visa holders to work legally, and he allowed H1Bs who were already waiting for green cards to change jobs without losing their position in the green card queue, which makes H1Bs less like bonded labor and makes the employment market fair for all.
You apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Trump, even though Trump didn't come into the picture until recently and the shooter has been falling for years. Yet you twist the truth to blame Trump for a tragedy much longer in the making - sick man, you are as sick as the shooter or heading that way.
And yet, from your previous post, you "apparently feel no blame at all should fall on anyone but Obama." I quote:
What triggers this shooting was a vet who couldn't get assistance from the VA [wibw.com]. After eight years, that is on Obama - as is Obama and supporters stirring racial tension and giving focus to a violent angry drunk man.
Look -- I feel like I have to say this on the internet every other day now, but events can have multiple causes. They certainly always have various factors that have to be in place for them to come to pass.
I frankly don't know this man. I haven't researched his story in detail. And I certainly don't feel that *I* have any business pontificating on the internet about what "triggered" this event.
In legal terms, this is generally known as the "proximate cause," something more immediate in the chain of causality. For all I know, this guy could have been ultimately set off because somebody gave him the green Jell-O instead of the red Jell-O in the lunchline that day.
Anyhow, YES, if this guy was denied proper care from the VA because of some shortfalls under Obama, SOME of the causality may be blamed on Obama (or, probably more likely, on various underlings who made poor decisions too).
On the other hand, Donald Trump has spent nearly the past 2 years creating a climate of xenophobia and hatred against immigrants in his rhetoric. GP wants to blame this entirely on Trump, but I'm sure that's not the case. On the other hand, you seem to want to shift the blame entirely AWAY from Trump and focus on a potentially more remote cause. (And note -- even if this guy was denied VA care, do you have specific proof that it was an Obama policy that denied him that care? Did Barack Obama personally reject a request from him for care? Or was this part of a chain of causality that actually makes more sense to blame someone who made poor decisions at a lower level?)
I really don't know. But I do know that Trump tries to get attention every day. He seems to thrive on "speaking" (tweeting) directly to the "people." If some of his anti-immigration rhetoric was heard by this guy, could it have had some significant impact?Maybe, as the news story you cite says, "this wasn't who he normally was," but a combination of mental problems AND pervasive news stories on immigrants as enemies in the conservative media... maybe that was something?
Again, I certainly don't have all the facts. But can we all just take a step back here and CALM THE [BLEEP] DOWN!?! Stop trying to find the one person to blame for anything. As I mentioned above, Obama was not the single person in charge of every decision at the VA. And Trump is certainly has been created by plenty of other supporters egging him on and encouraging him to continue his rhetoric.
There's lots of blame to go around. But can we all just acknowledge that -- regardless of the proximate causality chain here -- the current climate of xenophobia is likely to result in increased violence against immigrants overall??
Pardon me, but I wasn't born yesterday. When an entire motive is determined by the statement of one unnamed witness, and it just so happens to be a rare validation of a major unsubstantiated trend narrative, I am suspicious. I'll be waiting a few weeks to let this story play out before I believe it.
"Hands up, don't shoot" anyone?
"This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense"
Well, no. You can't just spur-of-the-moment pull a machete or a car out of your pocket, point it at someone, pull a little lever, and they die. Guns literally DO have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere. They make killing far, far, far, far easier and more accessible than other means, and that's the problem.
Sure, a firearm wasn't the only factor here, and yes it's possible the guy would have ended up dead otherwise. But let's not pretend that firearms aren't actually anything other than highly efficient killing devices.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
I stole this Sig
Guns kill easiest. Guns kill efficiently. A car and machete are tools that have many uses. A gun is a weapon, and has a single purpose. It kills. It kills well.
Cool. Then let's blame Obama for Orlando, San Bernardino, etc.
See how fucking stupid you are?
No, because Obama was always condemned the extremism that led to those attacks, and condemned the acts themselves after they happened.
Trump, on the other hand, was completely silent the last time a right wing terrorist killed people, and has done basically nothing to speak up against the extremists in his base. Even getting him to disavow the KKK or condemn anti-Semitism is like getting a toddler to eat vegetables.
There is absolutely no double standard in holding Trump accountable for this.
I stole this Sig
the dangerous ones in the US to worry about are a certain kind of gun owner.
they wear blue uniforms when they go to work each day.
you know what I'm talking about.
those gun owners are scary and can end your life. try to avoid them, even talking to them.
then, chances are, you'll generally be safe in the US.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Pretty much all Trump supporters are not racists
Everybody is racist. At least to some degree, if you think you're colour-blind or your biases are grounded in dispassionate statistics then you're delusional.
Now, do Trump supporters show more racial biases than other people? Yes. Whether you call them "racist" is just a question of where you draw the line on using that particular label.
that is yet more Fake News
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.
In the face of a shooting why are you trying to make people hate others more, not less?
We're trying to wake people up to the danger posed by the rhetoric that Trump is pumping out, and he's not just creating threats on the right, if I were an Al-Queda or ISIS recruiter right now I'd be over the moon.
What triggers this shooting was a vet who couldn't get assistance from the VA.
Are you always so understanding when seeking the root cause when a Muslim does something terroristy?
After eight years, that is on Obama - as is Obama and supporters stirring racial tension
Yeah! What was Obama thinking Presidenting while black??
and giving focus to a violent angry drunk man.
I don't think Trump drinks.
Mathews apologized to the family's in her statement, calling Purinton's actions "senseless." She said he had a drinking problem that became worse since his father passed away in October 2015, and he'd been trying to get assistance from the VA.
The families of home-grown Muslim terrorists tend to be very apologetic and horrified by the actions of their relatives, do you also bold their family's response when trying to humanize the perpetrator?
I stole this Sig
My ancestors were Neanderthals you insensitive prick
Getting drunk and doing stupid things is not racist, alchohol fucks everyone up, just in different ways, none good and many lethal. Now if only dude had been stoned, sure he could likely have shot himself whilst stoned trying to clean his second favourite toy but at least he would not have shot someone else. Guns and alchohol do not mix https://psychcentral.com/news/.... That is all that this story is about, once drunk, all logic and reason is gone to be replaced by alcohol fuelled depression and stupidity. Shooting people whilst drunk is either racist or xenophobic, it is simply alchohol fuelled stupidity. Would it have happened sober, no. Would it have happened stoned, no.
The reality is alcohol cost far more in losses to society than the profit it provides. Out suffering and wallets, are alchohol industry profits. For every dollar you spend buying alchohol, that alchohol will be spending another dollar in wasted taxes paying for the damage alchohol causes.
People are self medicating with all sorts of crap as a result of the stresses of psychopathic capitalism, it is time to ensure the mendicants do not cause more harm than good (people have a right to feel good, even if via intoxicants and fuck any sick fuck who demands people must fucking suffer, they must be fucking miserable, that they must slave and die on the inside every day, those people who demand it are disgusting).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
There's an even more correct side -- the side that goes along with the overwhelming amount of research (not to mention common sense) that suggests more guns = more gun accidents (and of course, more gun violence.)
The pro-shooter types will always love to drag out an anecdote of some woman about to be raped and her only solution apparently is to shoot the guy dead (and of course its usually a hypothetical story since few people actually know of any such cases, though I'm sure you could find one or two if you try hard enough. Even then, proving that there were no other options is not always straightforward.
Unfortunately we now live in a world where feelings matter more than facts not only in people's minds but in the office of the leader of the "free" world, so trying to convince anyone that their rare case anecdote is less useful on a large scale than actual scientific research requires a level of patience and eloquence few people can master.
But whatever.. I put up a post on /. once in a while hoping to convince someone somewhere that guns are actually dangerous but in the grand scheme of things I'm just a scrub behind a screen I don't expect that I'll be the one to change the world.
Let's be honest: guns are an inexpensive handheld point-and-click device designed to kill things.
There are dicks everywhere. People of all religions, ethnicities, colors, and even financial backgrounds don't like and/or trust other people who are not like them.
Well yes, but using extremes can often lead to a sort of moral relativism where everybody is equally bad even though one is a fringe movement and the other a mainstream sentiment. I'm sure there were a few black supremacists, but nothing like the KKK. I'm sure some Jews hated the Nazis, but nothing like the Holocaust. I don't know if it's been listed as a fallacy but the appeal to indifference certainly should be, like they were probably just as bad as us. No, they probably weren't.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Although the math doesn't require an absolute population value, it's a bit easier to reason about it if one is used, so I'll round the population of the country to 300 million.
If whites are 70% of this population and 500 whites per year are murdered by blacks, then the white population is 210 million, and the rate of whites murdered by blacks is 500 per 210 million -- about 2.4 whites per million are murdered each year by blacks.
If blacks are 13% of this population, and 200 blacks per year are murdered by whites, then the black population is 39 million, and the rate of blacks murdered by whites is 200 per 39 million -- about 5.1 blacks per million are murdered each year by whites.
Ergo, as I said, these numbers, if believed, show that a black person is twice as likely to be killed by a white person as a white person is to be killed by a black person.
Well, only approximately, since 5.1 is not exactly twice 2.4, but that wasn't your quibble now, was it?
As other commenters have pointed out, that statement is fairly meaningless without further context, but I'm not the one who posted the context-free numbers. All I did is point out one conclusion from them. Another conclusion, of course, is the one probably intended by the original poster, e.g. that on average, black people commit more interracial murders than white people, but that conclusion likewise requires additional context before you could consider it to be actionable data.
Here's one piece of context for you -- "on average" has its own problems. As Dylan Roof illustrates, a single white guy easily supplied 4.5% of the carnage in that white-on-black number.
Should that make blacks feel safer or less secure?
Geographically, yes. However Russians are also "Asian" (and depending on the textbook occasionally Europe and Asia aren't even referred to as separate continents anymore - just "Eurasia" since it's all really the same landmass).
While Indians may be from Asia, they are not Mongoloid which is what most people think of when they say "Asian".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Sounds like the "you can't compare the US to other countries because we're special and unique" card.
Or in other words "you cant compare a Fuji Apple to another apple because it's a different apple!"
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There's a (IMHO) simple reason for the divide on gun control in the U.S. The issue mostly breaks down into urban (pro gun-control) vs rural (anti gun-control). And if you analyze it that way, I think the reason is obvious: Urban areas have faster police response times. If you live in a city, it makes sense to just call someone else with a gun (the police) and wait for them to arrive if a crime is in progress.
But in rural areas, waiting for police can often get you killed. So people there prefer to have their own gun for protection. The stats seem to bear them out too - violent crime rates are lower in rural areas despite the rate of gun ownership being 2x higher in rural areas.
Which brings us to what I think is the real problem with the gun control debate - too much emphasis on a uniform national law. When you have a strong geographically correlated trend like this, the solution is simple - allow different regions to enact different laws. The rural areas can have lax gun laws, the urban areas can have strict gun laws, and everyone is happy (well, happier than they are now). But no, we've got pro-gun people wanting easy access to guns for the entire country because anything less would diminish the 2nd Amenedment, and anti-gun people wanting to ban guns in the entire country because you can transport guns from rural areas to urban. Both arguments have merit, but I think we need to ask ourselves if our attempt to create one national law on this issue isn't doing more harm than geographically different laws would even with all the flaws.
The buyback scheme was 2003, and 1996, there is certainly a drop there. You conveniently mention 1996, where there were still a lot of gun, but not 2003 the second buyback. I wonder why. Maybe because that woulds not support your contention I guess. Murder rate 2001- 2003 :310 , 318, 302. 2004 and following years : 263,259, 280, 255 ,263. What other stuff happened in 2003 beside the buyback ? Nothing.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm in Britain, and guns here are not readily available. You can get them as a criminal, yes, but only if you have the right connections - it's not something that every street thug can obtain. That's why our petty street thugs mostly carry knives.
It was. You could get new land without having to pay for it. Instead of welfare money. the U.S. handed out welfare property.
Given recent events in Europe, with so many people getting killed by being run over and stabbed, I don't think Europeans have any standing to be smug about their gun laws.
We had exactly two cases in Europe where a terroristic attack was performed with a truck, and at least in one case, it was gun related (the Berlin attack), where the suspect captured the truck at gunpoint. At both occasions, the total number of people killed in car accidents in Europe at the same day is about the same range (the average number of traffic deaths per day is about 70 in the E.U.). Stabbings happen, but most of them are between family members and acquaintances (as most homicides are in general). Terroristic attacks with knifes are a very rare occurrence. Right now, I remember only three cases with only one victim dead that was not the attacker himself.
So yes. Europeans still can be smug about their gun laws. Given U.S. numbers, it saves us about 40,000 gun related killings per year in the E.U.
I wasn't presenting an opinion, I was presenting a fact. ... don't act like I'm just presenting some unsubstantiated opinion.
So you're presenting an ... unsubstantiated fact? I'm not sure that's a thing. For most of us a 'fact' based on your gut feelings is a type of opinion.
More more guns you have the more murders you have, and the more society-wide anxiety...
I see no evidence of either. I have yet to see a study that shows that (legal) gun ownership is a significant factor in homicide rates, some have even found a modest negative correlation. And you and I might be anxious around guns, because we aren't used to them, but people that grew up with them don't seem to be.
...since you realize that aggressive obnoxious guy at the bar might be packing
Right, 'cause if he only might be packing a knife, or have a bunch of buddies back at a table, or just be bigger than me, he's totally non-threatening.
I don't think it's coincidence that gun-rights activists are generally in favour of harsher laws and more aggressive police. When you think you're in a dangerous society you want a strong government to keep control.
Most gun-rights activists are for a smaller, more constrained government, so they must not think that they're in a dangerous society. When they advocate for "harsher laws and more aggressive police", they're only talking about the narrow group of things that they believe are the government's business - that's more libertarian than authoritarian.
They genuinely believe that the right to bear arms is a good thing and the deaths that result, while tragic, are the price of freedom.
Here is the thing foreigners don't understand about guns in America. The reason we have an amendment to the Constitution which permits citizens to own guns is twofold:
1) The Founding Fathers, almost all of whom were British subjects, saw firsthand what happens when only the government has firearms. They can use those weapons to quell public outcry over anything, claiming the people were "rioting" or were "a threat to peace and order" because the people can't effectively fight back. If you read The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison and Jay all say the same basic thing: citizens who have weapons are more fully able to defend themselves from the government.
That may sound odd to Europeans, but if you look at your history you should be able to see the logic behind this amendment.
Non-Americans understand you believe that, but we also understand that you're wrong.
Guns might have been useful before the 20th century, but they are not a good defence against a modern government, if anything they actually enable authoritarians by giving them a reason to crack down on the civil liberties that actually do keep governments in check.
This is just plain wrong. You should read/watch the news. Land wars, the kind fought with rifles like the ones you say are useless, still make up and decide 99% of armed conflicts. You think because drones entered the scene everything is magic hollywood effects? We blast and just send in soldiers to hand out food?
Don't be so daft. You are the one that is wrong, and the numbers show it.
How about you go tell ISIS how futile a rifle is, meanwhile they're about to seize a landmass a quarter the size of Europe.
Getting drunk and doing stupid things is not racist,
No, but getting drunk and shooting a brown person while yelling "get out of my country" is racist, drunk or not. Being drunk doesn't make it magically not racist, much like punching someone while drunk droesn't magically become "not assault" just because you're drunk.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Assuming 400 years sticks, most of my ancestors arrived in North America just shy of 300 ago, from France, England, and Ireland. I'm sure I'm not the only one of "mixed" descent. Which branch represents the "native" homeland that we're supposed to go back to?
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
I did. You pointed to a bunch of tools that have different primary uses then killing people and that are used at rates drastically lower than guns to intentionally kill people and then you point to a minor side use to guns as if all that stuff is the same. I thought maybe you didnt articulate your point properly but it seems like you just made a poor point now.
As stated in the post you replied to, guns are far more efficient at killing people then anything you listed because that is a guns primary purpose and what they have been designed for.
Any rational person would rather have someone try to kill them with a knife then a gun because knives can be run away from. It's why waaaayyyy more people are intentionally killed in this country with guns than knives or any of the other nonsense you mention (bombs kill too!? Good thing they're totally legal!).
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
"This notion that guns have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere is pure nonsense"
Well, no. You can't just spur-of-the-moment pull a machete or a car out of your pocket, point it at someone, pull a little lever, and they die. Guns literally DO have some kind of magic killing power that doesn't readily exist elsewhere. They make killing far, far, far, far easier and more accessible than other means, and that's the problem.
Sure, a firearm wasn't the only factor here, and yes it's possible the guy would have ended up dead otherwise. But let's not pretend that firearms aren't actually anything other than highly efficient killing devices.
It's kind of amusing how the same folks who argue that without a gun people would still be able to kill other people without too much trouble are the same people who interpret the Second Amendment's Right to Bear Arms as meaning...... Guns!
Next guy who tells me, "Firearms in the hands of the citizenry are the way to assure that governments do not assume tyrannical power, therefore the Second Amendment" or similar gets a dose of "Guns are not the only way to kill a person, if somebody wants to kill government tyrants they will find a way, even if guns are not available" etc.
And I'm not even a real gun-hater.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Americans go from "all gun ownership is legal"
Who's for that?
Illegal guns all START OUT as legally owned guns.
For the most part, yes.
But guns don't start out illegal -they get made, legally, in a factory and sold, legally to somebody. Somewhere along the line this status changes - usually as a result of them being stolen from legal owners, but contra your beliefs -that's not an argument for increasing the supply of guns to steal.
What does this have to do with the homicide rate? Sure if you got rid of all guns in the country (even cops, military, and the illegal ones), and prevented any new ones from being smuggled in (how is that border wall working?) that might prevent homicides committed with guns, but that's not even an argument about overall homicide rates.
I don't see the benefit if 'gun violence' just gets moved to the same amount of 'non-gun violence'. All that does is take away some people's choices in order to make other people feel good.
I was addressing the specific claim: that gun violence cannot justify gun control laws which may affect current gun owners because it's largely committed with illegal guns
I've never claimed that - I was just trying to keep my claim about sources more conservative.
But let's address YOUR claims then:
Followed by two paragraphs that in no way address any of the arguments I'm trying to defend (which aren't mine, by the way - I was just pointing out the nonsense in quantaman's post).
So in fact homocide rates as a whole DO go down - a LOT. ... Well good thing there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this happens, and no sane reason to think it MIGHT.
30 seconds of Googling (none completely unbiased, but they have actual numbers and citations, unlike some people):
Washington Post: Zero correlation between state homicide rate and state gun laws
Washington Examiner: No, states with higher gun ownership don't have more gun murders
Crime Research: COMPARING MURDER RATES AND GUN OWNERSHIP ACROSS COUNTRIES
It's because a gun is the worst thing in the world to for self defense. A tool that can only be reliably used...
Scaring people off is self defense, even if you never draw your weapon.
I wouldn't be betting on an overrule here. ... Politics are part of reality, and political victories create and change reality - they are not nothing.
But in an argument over facts, they are. If every country on Earth banned everything more dangerous than a thumbtack, would that mean that guns cause facism or increase the homicide rate? If they all ordered citizens to be armed when in public would that change the facts we're discussing?
The image in your head of you shooting the big bad criminal before he can hurt your family is a fantasy - we can't base real world policies on daydreams.
Again, I've never even held a gun, I own no guns, I wouldn't even know how to turn off the safety. I'm only arguing facts, which for you seem to be the least important part of an argument you're having with a cartoon gun-nut straw-man.
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Rate of fire.
They're the same - they're semi-automatics. (Unless you're saying 'hunting rifle' means bolt-action. Or you're talking about ones modified to emulate fully-automatic behavior, but as you've mentioned even the NRA seems to be OK banning/regulating those.)
Homocides in Australia is way down since hte gun ban
And they've halved in the US over the last 20 years, while civilian gun ownership has gone up 50%. All that tells me is that even if they're related other factors are far more important.
there has not been a single mass shooting since it was instituted
Which is irrelevant - ten people dying is terrible, but does it matter if they got shot or someone drove a truck into a parade?
But lets check the List of massacres in Australia to be sure - Monash, Hectorville, Hunt family, Logan ... wha?
A gun is a horrible, horrible tool for self defense ... Bruce Schneier
Again, that's not something I've made a claim about. But at least you've sort-of mentioned a source, even if it isn't an actual citation.
And these facts ... They won't go away because they are inconvenient or don't fit your personal narrative of how things work.
Same to you.
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That's a ridiculous notion - because ALL slippery slope arguments are ALWAYS ridiculous notions
Care to back that up with something?
Nobody increased pilot's licenses until ONLY airline employees and fighter-pilots could qualify
Was there a large movement and a major party with the stated goal of banning all personal flying? Has it already been done in other countries? No? So why would this be at all similar?
In no other country with a license-to-own-a-gun scheme has this happened ... Why do people fear something that has absolutely never happened to anything, ever - on the basis of fallacious reasoning?
But earlier - "And so does the outcome in every country that has instituted strict gun control or bans.". So countries have banned guns, but never one step at a time?
if a civil war creates a need they will FIND them
No legal guns means no illegal ones, because it worked so well for drugs? But if there's a war, they'll suddenly appear? From where?