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Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting (wired.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: In the wake of Wednesday's Parkland, Florida school shooting, which resulted in 17 deaths, troll and bot-tracking sites reported an immediate uptick in related tweets from political propaganda bots and Russia-linked Twitter accounts. Hamilton 68, a website created by Alliance for Securing Democracy, tracks Twitter activity from accounts it has identified as linked to Russian influence campaigns. On RoBhat Labs' Botcheck.me, a website created by two Berkeley students to track 1500 political propaganda bots, all of the top two-word phrases used in the last 24 hours -- excluding President Trump's name -- are related to the tragedy: School shooting, gun control, high school, Florida school. The top hashtags from the last 24 hours include Parkland, guncontrol, and guncontrolnow.
While RoBhat Labs tracks general political bots, Hamilton 68 focuses specifically on those linked to the Russian government. According to the group's data, the top link shared by Russia-linked accounts in the last 48 hours is a 2014 Politifact article that looks critically at a statistic cited by pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Twitter accounts tracked by the group have used the old link to try to debunk today's stats about the frequency of school shootings. Another top link shared by the network covers the "deranged" Instagram account of the shooter, showing images of him holding guns and knives, wearing army hats, and a screenshot of a Google search of the phrase "Allahu Akbar." Characterizing shooters as deranged lone wolves with potential terrorist connections is a popular strategy of pro-gun groups because of the implication that new gun laws could not have prevented their actions. Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings are already spreading misinformation about the shooter's ties to far-left group Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group. The Twitter account Education4Libs, which RoBhat Labs shows is one among the top accounts tweeted at by bots, is among the prominent disseminators of that idea.
While RoBhat Labs tracks general political bots, Hamilton 68 focuses specifically on those linked to the Russian government. According to the group's data, the top link shared by Russia-linked accounts in the last 48 hours is a 2014 Politifact article that looks critically at a statistic cited by pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Twitter accounts tracked by the group have used the old link to try to debunk today's stats about the frequency of school shootings. Another top link shared by the network covers the "deranged" Instagram account of the shooter, showing images of him holding guns and knives, wearing army hats, and a screenshot of a Google search of the phrase "Allahu Akbar." Characterizing shooters as deranged lone wolves with potential terrorist connections is a popular strategy of pro-gun groups because of the implication that new gun laws could not have prevented their actions. Meanwhile, some accounts with large bot followings are already spreading misinformation about the shooter's ties to far-left group Antifa, even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group. The Twitter account Education4Libs, which RoBhat Labs shows is one among the top accounts tweeted at by bots, is among the prominent disseminators of that idea.
The Russians are out to get me ha ha, the Russians are out to get me Ha Ha!!!!!
I canâ(TM)t shake them. I canâ(TM)t hide from them. Theyâ(TM)re always watching. Always gazing!!! The US, our liberal enclave, is now a Russian state!!!!
That Twitter bots from Russia are some super effective way to change public opinion then:
1 - Why is the anti-gun lobby so powerful and loud?
2 - If they're so smart at brain washing us, how are we sure they're not intentionally leaking the "Russian" bots so that the gun CONTROL lobby will be the one effectively empowered?
I mean, if we're going to talk about one of the worlds (if not THE) most effective propaganda organization on the planet. We're just supposed to take them at "opposite" of their words? They're smart enough to brainwash us, but not smart enough to intentionally get us to react to the opposite?
... one must divide.
You ain't seen propaganda until the NRA starts rolling.
Why do Republicans hate America?
LOL What?!
You think it's the left's fault that a gun worshipping Pro-Trump neo-Nazi shot up a school?
You fucking morons and Russian collaborators never stop sinking...
Get fucked, Nazi.
I don't want any gun control legislation. I don't care what tragedy occurred. It's unconstitutional. All of it.
If you want to restrict guns do it legally - amend the constitution first, then create laws that don't violate the constitution.
As it is, every single law, regulation, etc. that interferes with US citizens keeping and bearing firearms is unconstitutional. If you disagree you're incorrect. If you don't like that right guaranteed by the constitution, you're free to work to change the constitution. Any restriction at any other level is illegal.
More people need to get shot tbh
nothing.
Doesn't pass the stink test. They have been funding the West Coast Wall for years.
Have gnu, will travel.
The NRA and all of their members are at fault here. I am pro-gun, but extremely anti-NRA. The NRA has no interest in protecting people, just helping the gun manufacturers sell guns. People who become members of the NRA support them. They are no different than the people who support terrorists.
(Because it's full of liberals.)
You want to know who's at fault for Parkland? The left, for alienating white men and making them feel like they have nothing to lose, and for disarming the populace. If there had been a good guy with a gun there would only have been one dead person, but because of the left's hatred of self defense, 17 people are dead. That blood is on their hands. I hope they can sleep at night.
Conservatives believe in personal responsibility, and in this case (like all others) the person responsible is Obama.
I think you are saying that white men are so fragile that they will be triggered unless they are in a safe space?
But there is no alternative news source one can trust outside the net either. We have killed the print newspapers....
Wonder if Democracy can survive without a reliable news source ...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What we need is news control laws. When the Constitution was written, there were no high speed presses, no electronic news, no way people could be flooded 24/7 with "news" and commentary.
It's clear that these school shootings are driven by crazies wanting to "copy-cat" other school shooting they're heard about, sometimes just to get their own 24 hours of fame. Yet, the modern media irresponsibly continues to glorify these events and saturate every media channel with them, just encouraging more copy-cats. That clearly needs to change.
We have to do something. We already have lots of gun laws. We now need some reasonable, common-sense, media control laws. Just as an private citizen can't get and has no reason to have a machine gun, no media needs a high speed Internet web site - when the "right to a free press" was created, it was in reference to Gutenberg presses. Same with radio/tv/cable. Such powerful methods of communication, so easily abused, should be highly regulated for private use. Only the government is responsible enough to be allowed to use them. Journalists should be licensed, subject to a background check to make sure they're not mentally ill, and don't have a criminal history. Photocopy machines should be registered. Scented magazine inserts should be outlawed. Cheap, Saturday night special, smartphones should be outlawed. A license should be required to carry a concealed smartphone.
As a bonus, such restrictions would also solve all of this "Russian facebook/twitter" cruft.
None of these reasonable, common-sense actions would infringe on 1st Amendment or natural rights in any way, but would go a long way to ending the bloodshed. Think of the children.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If they're fact then they're not really biased. They're just reporting some facts vs. the other side they should be reporting... which is??? Oh wait... Hillary's Emails!! She probably instructed this kid to wait for her signal to do a school shooting. Don't tell Tomi Lahren.
Its 2018. I still don't care what you had for breakfast.
do you support ending all weapons regulations? After all, arms are arms. I've got gun nut friends who want to own grenade launchers and rocket launchers and RPGs and mortars and artillery pieces (cannons were 'arms' in the 1700s weren't they?).
Is there a line (short of chem weapons, since they're not arms)?
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Fuck you, you've become totally corrupt, you are totally obsolete and useless.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
Well, then that explains why they hate reality and pray for the end of times
There has never been a bigger bunch of rubes for the taking than religious fundamentalists, because they are well trained in believing bullshit and calling it 'faith'
The police already debunked the fake news about him being part of the White nationalist group.
The photos posted were, allegedly, from his facebook and instagram accounts but they were immediately denounced as coming from the wrong accounts but those were the ones now scrubbed and now those pics are being denounced as fakes.
So how about all the anti-gun nut bots? How about the bots spreading the fake news about this guy allegedly being a white supremacist. They ARE out there - don't you think the Russians would play both sides to increase dissension in America and not just the one side you personally find distasteful?
New low for you guys... very new low
Captcha: Stooge
Is that like how everyone the repubs hate is a "TERORIST" unless they're white xtians?
Well, you're not wrong, but you're stupid and your argument is even stupider. If you were smart, you'd have brought up some solutions. Or even a diagnosis of the problem. Here, let me try for you:
Melania Trump is right about something you've completely lost perspective on. The biggest problem facing our nation right now, if you boil it down to the root cause, is actually bullying. That's right, I said it; Guns didn't cause this tragedy - bullying did. Maybe she's smarter than she looks. She's clearly smarter than you and this poor tard that just shot up his school. Maybe she's smarter than all of us... now that's a truly horrifying thought.
Just wait until the anti-gun people start getting targeted with shootings. Then what are you going to? Ban guns?
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
Please provide proof. "Its the Russians! " narrative is getting old especially without proof. Even the NSA had tools to make attacks etc appear to have come from other countries.
Sure Ivan
Ah, the usual pathetic alt right dribble from yet another sadass cunt.
Still, its only dead Americans, raises the worlds average IQ.
because the people who oppose all gun regulation have a lobby (the NRA) telling them how to vote, they listen, they vote and above all they're single issuer voters.
Gun control is a dead issue. It doesn't matter that 94% of Americans support Universal Background checks when that's just one issue out of many for them. The gun lobby is made up of people that will vote for _anyone_ so long as they promise to let them have their guns. You can't beat that strength unless you match it, and I don't see that happening.
They won. Drop it. You can't win this. The reason is simple. Gun nuts are Otaku. They're nerds. But they're a different kind of nerd than what everybody thinks about. They're extroverted nerds. Folks are used to seeing the introverted nerd; the kind that doesn't want to be around people. But they forget about the extroverts. They _want_ to be around people, but they're weird or ugly or tactless or something else that regular people don't like. So this kind of nerd seeks a community that accepts them no matter what. And a lot of the wash up on the shores of the NRA. The reason why there are so many strange gun nuts, heck the reason the phrase gun nut exists is that their an accepting community. It's like a religion. If you buy into it everybody has to at least be polite to you. It's a community. And if you make the slightest motion to take away that community they will react with a fear and hate you can't even imagine because, well, it's all they've got.
I suppose we could work to build a society that doesn't need such communities, but this is a site for nerds, and we all know how likely _that_ is to happen.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If they can detect these bots then why isn't Twitter immediately wiping them out?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If a Bear shits in the woods and nobody is around to smell it, what difference does it make?
Why is it exactly that Russia supposedly has the monopoly on propaganda bots?
Why is it exactly that Russia's propaganda bots are the only ones supposed to be effective?
We need to start facing the fact that the leftist side of the population is literally mentally defective. They cannot handle having the same rights as sane people. All that giving them civil liberties does is cheapen the value of liberty for all of us, because the first thing they do with their liberty given a chance is self-destruct it to sabotage other people's liberties, because a leftist has no idea what to do with freedom because they are the product of brainwashing. Their free will has been stamped out.
We need a schism immediately. If you're so docile as to not see or care about the divide in mental stability and integrity, you are going to fall on the wrong side. You have to take a stand and say enough is enough, "equality" does not work and never will, and the "progress" of "progressivism" in the last 100+ years was really just a complete farce and a brazen attack on western civilization and all of its citizens.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
The 2nd Amendment is one of the most concise, clearest, direct, explicit restraints on the governments of these United States, and yet it's been flagrantly disregarded. What does that say? It says that Government WILL NOT remain bound to its own rules. Ever.
Maybe that's why the right to bear arms is so important to protect.
Wow. What color is the sky in your world?
1: The US has about the same incidence of "mental illness" as any number of advanced industrial nations (West Europe, Australia, New Zealand etc)
2: The US has far, far away more incidents of mass gun slaughter than other advanced industrial nations, only basically a daily basis.
3. The US has a patchwork of poorly thought out, and largely ineffective state based gun laws.
4: The US has a culture of worshipping guns and violence as the solution to almost any problem.
5: The US has an almost "developing country" healthcare system, particularly in mental health.
6: The US has far, far higher rates of licit and illicit drug use and abuse than other advanced industrial nations.
7: The US has a culture that idolises money above almost everything else.
8: The US has a marginal at best social security safety net. There is no limit to how far down you can fall in the US.
9: The US government is bought and paid for by large corporate interests and has no effective mechanism to remove politicians. Even voting is largely ineffective as they are locked into a two party system.
10: The US pays an enormous social cost that is socialised across the people, while the profits are privitised to the corporations.
11: The US educational system does not equip people with effective critical thinking skills, and thinking about the status quo is heavily discouraged under the guise of jingoistic patriotism.
12: A significant percentage of the US adult population is blithely ignorant of all the above points.
To talk about existing gun legislation in the US is akin to banning urination in the shallow end of the pool, yet wondering how come the whole pool soon starts to smell like pee.
As long as anyone with a car can drive 45 minutes over the state/county/city line to stock up on all manner of untraceable " no questions asked " firearms this problem will continue. How many "background checks" does the guy on craigslist, or in the 7-11 parking lot undertake ?
Finally.....to really, really break it down simple enough for even the most ardent US Yee-haw NRA flag waving gun nut to understand.
Deranged psycho in China can't get hold of a gun so attacks 23 kids at a school with a knife. Result : 23 injured kids that all survived.
Deranged psycho in the US is armed to the teeth by simply picking up the closest AR-15 laying around at home attacks a school at Sandy Hook. Result : 20 dead kids.
When companies start advertising bullet resistant book bags for school kids then even the stupidest people have to realise they're living in a shithole.
Remember the days when it was just linux nerds in here instead of bots and trolls?
The shooting was a great expression of freedom! 'murica!
The CIA director talked about them 'disrupting' the election.
I know to those on the Left, this is synonymous with "got Trump elected."
I don't know that's necessarily what he meant.
The fact is, whatever they can dump onto American social media to enhance outrage, to enhance division, to gin up anger - that all counts as 'disrupting'.
-Styopa
If you look at Hamilton 68 (http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/) which only tracks the known Russian twitter bots, the very top (i.e most frequent) hashtag is gunreformnow, and at #8 is guncontrol, and there's zero sign of any pro-gun hashtags.
I'm not seeing anything that actually justifies the Wired article's obviously liberal-biassed claims.
Looking at the sources linked in the article there were 57 tweets linked to Russian backed accounts with the hashtag #guncontrolnow.
57 tweets? Seriously?
All that from only 600 tracked accounts. I hope the bots get a day off because that is some serious tweeting. I think Wired might want to review the definition of the word "flood". The bots have learned the lessons of communism well, Russia pretends to pay the bots and the bots pretend to work.
Please don't feed the Russian trolls.
Here we have 17 people who were going about their lives to have 1 take those lives. What happened to Cruz's actual parents? An elderly couple took him in, but sadly his adoptive father passed away, and then his adoptive mother passed away. So here Cruz is with is birth parents not involved, his adoptive parents dead, and himself going down the drain of life.
There's no excuse for what Cruz did, but I wonder whether everyone who "saw" the warning signs and did nothing were perhaps too preoccupied with their own labeling to concern themselves. To me, we have a child who needed some help along the way and basically had a series of events unfold that were unfortunate...but nobody really cared to offer him help.
This isn't about people and guns; it's about common decency among humanity to lend a hand when you see someone struggling. Perhaps if we have a little more compassion and are not so critical, then maybe we have a chance.
You're about 20 years behind the curve. Religion doesn't dominate the right any more. It dominates the left. Leftists LOVE Muslims and the Pope.
Not all republicans are religious.
so does this mean my tweets could be tracked as if from Russia?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
why is it that idiots like you always talk about GUN violence and not just VIOLENCE. People have been slaughtering each other longer than guns have been around. How many people died on Bastille day in France last year? Was that a mass shooting? No fucktard,, it was a fucking truck. This kid was highly intelligent. He fucking used a fire alarm to lure people into the hallway to create a shooting gallery. Do you really fucking think a lack of guns would have stopped this massacre? He could have used IED's or just about anything else available. But feel free to post as the anonymous pussy that you are. Spineless coward should be your title.
The article Wired seems to be criticizing the politifact article because it's old but the article is still valid. Current articles are also quoting the same source, using the same stats to paint the same misleading picture. Just because Everytown for Gun Safety has published new statistics since the critical article was published does not mean their updated stats are any better.
From a recent CNBC article on the Florida shooting entitled "17 school shootings in 45 days — Florida massacre is one of many tragedies in 2018",
"Everytown has been tracking shootings in schools and universities since 2013. It reports any time a firearm is discharged within a school building or on campus, whether accidentally or intentionally and whether or not anyone has been harmed."
Is that what you think of when you see a headline that says "17 school shootings in 45 days " ?
You can find a breakdown of the types of shootings included in the Everytown data in the aforementioned old article at politifact.
Yes because 18 people represent 300 million +. "A nation of violent, murdering drug addicts." I am also sure that America is completely "fucked". This type of shooting could happen every day 17*365=6205 deaths and we still would not be remotely close to the 20,000+ malaria deaths in Congo. But we are on the same level as developing countries. Let's talk about the 60,000 suicides that happen in the EU. That gun control paradise is such a utopian people don't have to wait to be shot, they kill themselves. Perspective, get some child.
It would have been massively more interesting if this had been a massive "everybody is confused and everybody is trying to shoot everybody" situation, instead of a plain old, low-casualty one-shooter snoozefest. So I am all for arming everybody, and best also put some mines and some auto-guns on hair-triggers in schools. Honor students could be rewarded with a few grenades (give them WP for extra fun, frags are so boring) or maybe even a flame-thrower. Kids deserve some excitement in their lives!
In other news, there is not much more ignorance, arrogance and general stupidity to be found in the gun-nuts that actually believe there would be real-world situations where carrying a gun would give them a real advantage. I don't mind the ones that just like to shoot their pieces for fun, gun tech is pretty nice. But thinking that carrying a gun gives you actual power is a very dangerous (and seductive) thing indeed.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"Conservatives believe in personal responsibility,"
That explains the budget. Oh wait.
The left, for alienating white men and making them feel like they have nothing to lose
Oh dear gawd... White men are snowflakes? That if they don't have their needs fully met they are going to go on a rampage.
and for disarming the populace
I don't think anyone would characterize the US as disarmed.
Did Dr Poe write this?
Every comment a person feels is party political is now "Russian"?
Stand up for Second Amendment rights and get called "Russia".
A very chilling way to shape any freedom of speech and freedom after speech in the USA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Goddam, have you ever used a gun before? The reason guns took over the world is that their so simple even an idiot can use them. This same asshole would have never figured out how to build a bomb, and if he did, probably would have killed himself doing it.
Truck attacks are indeed extremely dangerous. Do you think we should do nothing to prevent Truck attacks? Trucks at least are harder to use than guns, more expensive, and are harder to get into schools.
Play Command HQ online
Now is not not the time to discuss ANYTHING!!!!!
They get their orders from Nancy Pelosi, who gets her orders from Maxine Waters, who gets her orders directly from Putin's testicles.
The EU has 60,000 suicides out of 551 million people.
The US has 43,000 suicides out of 323 million people.
Which perspective are we supposed to get?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess invading a country full of weapons would be kinda dumb. Though I doubt you'll have much trouble getting through California. But what they don't realize is good luck anyway because it's an utter drug infested (if there's sand or outdoor furniture, stay away), gay cruising, hipster, gunless shithole pretending to be an open minded utopia to keep them distracted with some of the most unfriendly, narcissistic people you'll ever meet no matter what economic class they belong to, and there are only two. It's one of those places laws are experimented on first to see how much humans can take before pushing it on the rest of us. Putin would probably rather just nuke the place. So, you say Russian, but it wouldn't shock me in the least if the millennials in CA are using proxies.
IMO we should recognize the right to bear flintlock rifles without a license, but require a license, psych evals, and $100 million life and property damage insurance policies for all bearers of semi-auto weapons. Better yet: we could name the federal organization that oversees all of the licensing, testing, and regulation of firearms the "militia." :)
Yeah, its a sad state of our society that kids are not allowed to open carry at school. This is totally the fault of people who oppose that.
Spotted the guntard !
... ... recognize that social media is a computer game, intended to entertain.
Taking social media seriously is totally fucked up.
And news?
Who the simple goddam in hell gets their news from within the social bubbles?
Twitter is a depressing rabbit hole.
Use it for the lulz.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
So once again, we have this "Russia" narrative that prevents having to face that there are millions of people who do not agree with you.
I am a 6yr veteran of the first gulf war. Yes i have used many of the same guns you are talking about. This guy WAS smart enough to build a bomb. For fucks sake there are uneducated jihadists in Iraq building IEDs every day and their education extends to addition, some multiplication, and fucking their sisters. He was smart enough to use a fire alarm.. where do kids congregate after a fire alarm is pulled... in a parking lot. So yes a truck would have been a very effective tool for mass murder.
Conservatives != Republicans.
only if the police and military are also restricted to flintlock rifles. See the SCOTUS decision of United States vs Miller. 2nd amendment gets us the same tools the military of the day uses.
In Israel, you see teen-agers (18+) and up walking around with semi-automatic rifles. People claim Israelis are racists, yet Israel has not had a mass-shooting like this since the psycho Baruch Goldstein, some 30 years ago. If the most rabid Settlers don't do it, then Americans have a lot to learn about gun safety and consideration for life.
then you should at least appreciate what Rand Paul said calling them out for not being the fiscal conservatives they claim to be.
i think the overdose numbers are more scary than suicide, or are we counting them as suicide now? We lose more to suicide than car accidents, heart attacks, and homicides (all kinds) combined.
good luck with your lies. naw fuck you
Yeah, but, like, cutting up the sexual organs of completely healthy children is NOT ok. Just sayin'.
Does Slashdot get paid for running Russia stories or something? I was wondering if we'd see the news of this shooting since the site seems to be getting more and more political, but for it to come across in the form of a Russia story, well, it's like a parody of itself at this point.
Hey, its the guy that will call you a terrorist for disagreeing with him. Followed by multiple lies.
He even told me that lack of evidence of a crime is all the proof needed to convict someone. Yes, he actually attempted to make this point the first time I pointed out how dumb he was.
Don't believe this asshole. He lies every time he posts. He must be paid to do for it for some reason because a sane person couldn't be as dumb as he seems to be on purpose without being paid to be so.
Look, right here he is claiming there isn't freedom of speech in the US, the ONLY country that has true freedom of speech. What an imbicle.
Some overdoses are suicides, some are accidental deaths. The accidental overdose deaths are usually lumped in with poisoning deaths, while the intentional ones are lumped in with suicides.
Accidental deaths overall make up about 150,000 per year, with some 40,000 of those being poisoning. Overdoses overall contribute 50,000 deaths.
The breakdown of the overdose deaths are hard to quantify but it seems likely that around 15-20,000 are suicides, and the remaining 30-35,000 are unintentional. Which would put unintentical OD on the same level as falling and car accidents, at 30,000 each.
Yes, drug deaths might be a problem, but apparently they're roughly as big a problem as accidentally falling down.
Say something controversial. Check
Russia has nothing to do with this. Check
Why did he use a gun instead of a truck then?
Because its god damn hard to sneak a truck into a high school, genius.
Just gonna leave this here...
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy...
Because Russia wants to give the Dems ammunition that it's only the right that produces fake news to drive a wedge between anti-gun nuts and pro gun nuts.
Here's a question: anti-gun nuts trying to jail gun nuts and the ensuing chaos. Would that a) Benefit Russia or b) Hinder Russia?
Hmmmm
Is that all it is? A platform for two groups of Russians to create a narrative and an argument between the two sides and draw the rest of us in?
So everything anti-Communist is Russian now? I get it that Russia became a country through a rebellion against USSR, but don't people realize that there are others who don't like what Communists stand for?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
So how many of you arguing over how many dead kids can fit on a Constitutional amendment are the very Russian bots the story is about?
Does anyone have any evidence that this is actually russian bots - are 'mericafags just absolutely unable to realize that someone of their own might be the culprit?
There are claims all the time. NO EVIDENCE EVER.
US Americans will still put their right to own every effing weapon they effing please over the right of other people to live. News at 11.
Once again the liberal's boogeyman is to blame, clearly!
It is sad what slashdot has become. I now rarely visit here as it seems to be rife with news that nerds couldn't manage to care less about. Well, unless they are millennial social justice terrorists or liberal crybabies lamenting the US president in what has to be the world record for the longest ongoing tantrum in the history of the world.
More geeky news. Less of the bullshit news that matters little to my nerdy side.
It just happens to like them to quarrel.
Seriously, who needs Putin to encourage murder when you have the NRA standing behind every maniac with a gun? There is no "debate" about gun control and hasn't been since the flintlock went out of fashion. The only debate is how long parents are going to stand by and let the NRA defend the right to slaughter children at will.
One day "NRA" will be consigned to the same category as "KKK", that other organisation that spouts garbage about protecting freedom when what they mean is the right to kill at will.
Every decent person in America should be down at their local NRA office and riding the people inside out of town as if they were drug dealers hanging around schools (another group of death merchants they closely resemble).
Fuck the NRA, fuck the gun manufacturers, and fuck the over-grown children that want to walk around with guns pretending that they're John Wayne fighting the Mexicans or some shit. Just fuck all those asshole "It's okay because it wasn't my kids that were killed" murder-sponsors.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I don't see why you got voted 'interesting' The leader of the 'Republic of Florida' Militia which advocates for white civil rights and an ethnostate confirmed we was a member but insisted he acted on his own. That same leader then walked those statements backward as the law enforcement agency that monitors the group can't confirm his membership either. For those not researching into it look up the 'Republic of Florida' Militia and decide for yourself before you believe an internet troll. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/f...
I don't read AC
Seriously, two first comments are about opposing views to gun control and here we go, there is practically _no discussion about the topic at all_. Call me paranoid, but these guys seem to know what they are doing.
So policies directed at mass shootings tend to be ineffective at actually reducing gun deaths. Because of the meticulous planning, mass shooters are difficult to detect. Because of their mental illnesses, they are difficult to deter. This is precisely where gun control will be least effective. The world's worst mass shooting was in Norway, not America.
How many mass shooting are in Europe and how many in US? (according to definition of 4 or more victims). USA have already 30 and it's just the beginning of the year. I will not go over your arguments because ALL of them are false and based on false dichotomies premeditate/impulsive, rifles/guns, crazy/stupid, not criminal/criminal.
Gun control works. And please do not bring the subject of Switzerland which is sooo different than US including gun legislation.
Everybody who hates America want Americans to be armed to the teeth - it takes away the need to kill them, they will do it themselves.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Maybe life on our side of the Atlantic pond is a tiny bit different than in the US, but...
I'd prefer to take it to the anti-gun's conclusion: anytime something is used for evil, the entire industry must be destroyed.
...I see quite a bit of difference between gun and all the example you cite.
In the past couple of decade I've never been through any situation where I've been thinking I'm lucky/happy to have a gun because it really saved the situation, or thinking that I wish I could have had one.
Guns don't seem fundamentally important and useful objects in everyday life. They mostly bring in a danger and useless risk without bringing much benefit.
DUI? Ban all cars,
Yup. Cars kill people (Well technically, irresponsible drivers do, whatever, bla bla...)
But cars are tremendously useful, (even though our more densely populated city tend to enjoy better public transportations).
Lots of services and people could not get their job done without one.
There are risks to car, but the huge amount of benefits largely outweigh them.
drugs (including medicines).
Medecine can kill people (errors, side effects, addiction to prescription drugs, development of drugs-resisting microbes due to industrial over-use and over-prescription, etc.)
Still, they save lives. A lot of them. Think the drastic reduction of death since the discovery and development of antibiotics.
There are risks to medecine, but the huge amount of benefits largely outweigh them.
Assault with a baseball bat? Ban sports.
Do I really need to mention the health benefits of sports ?
Every day, countless of times bats get swung, and most of the time it's to hit a ball as part of some healthy outdoor sport.
(Then a tiny proportion is to hit a ball in front of a camera as part of a heavily corrupted televisual event in order to make money,
and a couple of times it's on someone else head).
There are risks to sports equipment, but the huge amount of benefits largely outweigh them.
Cyberbullying? Ban computers.
You're writing on one. I don't think I even need to explain how my above logic applies also to this of your examples...
Works for a lot of things!
Yup, works even for kitchen implements:
knife kill people ! let's ban kitchen.
And again my argument works too :
- How many time did someone got stabbed with a kitchen knife in your neighborhood ?
- How many time did you yourself use your kitchen knife to make you a sandwich, cut some cheese, or any other common use to feed your self.
Yup, there are risks of having knife in your home. But the vast amount of time, they're mostly used to prepare food.
alcohol, and drugs
Here the situation is a bit different :
- the usefulness is a lot lower (mainly entertainment, and some social use)
- the risk aren't that great (there are long term risk on the health due to excessive use. But occasional and reasonable use isn't lethal).
End result ? These are heavily regulated.
Not everyone is allowed to acquire these (e.g.: minor aren't)
etc.
And now let's look at the gun :
like knifes they can be used to kill people.
But unlike knives, we're not in the situations (at least in our corner of the world) where everyday million of rounds are fired and thus making the life of everyone much easier.
There's no tremendous benefit in everyone of the population happily shooting each other.
Again, I've reached my current point in life without ever being in a situation where a gun was necessary, unlike any other of your example.
It seems to me that there are no obvious everyday use for guns for the vast majority of the population.
Thus in my opinion, it should go the same route as drugs :
it should be regulated.
Some professions (police enforcement) might n
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How those damn primitive, vodka-guzzling, log-cabin dwelling, almost-like cavemen Russians make you, THE EXCEPTIONAL and GOD-CHOSEN NATION dance at whim of their dirty unwashed finger flip?
Is the US constitution relevant to this day and age (I am not even speaking on the process of changing it - just whether it is relevant) ? It was written for a certain of world and that world evolved, well beyond the parameter the writer could ever see, to the point of (IMO) obsolescence for certain amendment. Many western country around the world severely limited or restricted gun ownership, the US still is holding onto it, even if the power of the weapon and their relevance to any militia isn't that obvious anymore.
Anyway it is a moot point. I view this in horror as a foreigner, but it is obvious after sandy hook that if shooting down 20 about 6-7 year old do NOTHING then nothing else will.
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That's what the rest of the world asks, every time this happens. We can all see you are being held hostage by a few gun nuts, why can't you?
It's YOUR constitution, change it (if necessary) and save yourselves. Right now, another shooter is planning to kill American children. Eventually you will realise they are YOUR children.
The NRA could increase it's funding by 1000% if it put up billboards saying how many innocent Americans have died from guns - as long as they were in Arabic and on the other side of the world.
But hey, I don't live there and my two daughters don't have to learn how to run in zig-zag lines to avoid fatal shots, what do I care? I do care and I know someday the gun nuts will fall.
shin phantomflanflinger
Everyone knew the shooter was a problem. Everyone saw something, everyone said something- to the police, to the FBI, to the school administrators- and nobody did anything. They just let it happen.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Don't argue with me, genius, argue with the alleged veteran of the first gulf war.
Everything that isn't toeing the Democrat line is a Russian bot these days. They've slid so far from reality into their delusions that they can't even fathom real people could possibly take issue with those hallucinations. The sheer lunacy would be hilarious if the breadth of the mass hysteria wasn't so broad. Just about every person who has or is taking pharmaceutical psychotropics are now engaged in a mass shared hallucination, fanned by social media and a press overwhelmingly staffed by people afflicted with the same condition. Our only hope is that they don't become bullet proof at some point.
"The ten-year ban was passed by the U.S. Congress on September 13, 1994, following a close 52–48 vote in the Senate, and signed into law by then President Bill Clinton the same day. The ban only applied to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment, and it expired on September 13, 2004, in accordance with its sunset provision."
Liberals have lost their god damned minds
LOL. Keep believing everyone who doesn't share in your delusions is a Russian troll/bot. It actually helps the cause of rational people because it misdirects your efforts. Watching the bewildered tears as you guys lose election after election is reward enough. Can't wait for November. The simple law of diminishing returns says it will be more difficult for Democrats to lose even more of the tiny sliver of political clout they still have, but they will. To think I used to vote Democrat in the days before the generation of Ritalin/Adderall/SSRI-induced psychotics came of age. It's too bad the party decided that the best path forward was to embrace the psychosis.
to try to debunk today's stats about the frequency of school shootings
Why don't you you make a list showing the number of each restriction on firearms and/or ammunition in effect each year in the United States since 1900 and the number of mass shootings that occurred during that same year. Then run a linear regression on that data and report whether that correlation is positive or negative. Oh, you won't do that because you'll see a very clear positive correlation showing that as the number of gun restrictions increase so too do the number of mass shootings? What's that old adage about the definition of stupidity? Something about trying the same thing over again and expecting different results?
"even though the Associated Press reported that he was a member of a local white nationalist group"
Yes, it is TRUE that the associated press reported that. The AP ultimately got that story from the ADL, who investigated it by using a 4chan post as a source and calling up a white nationalist kook in Florida. The kook didn't know he was talking with the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, and answered to the best of his ability (he would presumably not have been as forthcoming if he knew he was speaking with Jews, which, obviously, he distrusts and/or hates), which included claiming that Cruz had in fact participated in some of their militia drills.
Said kook had ALSO been pranked, however.
Within an hour, law enforcement in Tallahassee had put this rumor to rest. However, a lie makes its way around the world while the truth is tying its shoes, and the idea that this probably-Hispanic dude was also a Nazi who puzzlingly shot almost exclusively white people (exceptionally puzzling for Florida, which is rather low on white people) was too tempting for the mainstream media to avoid: they spammed the news feeds. And here it is on slashdot.
http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2018/02/15/florida-school-shooting-suspect-nikolas-cruz-member-white-nationalist-militia-tallahassee-leader-say/341751002/
Meanwhile, the story also claims that the Russians are highly invested in preserving the second amendment. The rational conclusion is whatever criteria they use for "Russian Bot" basically just counts right wing Americans as "Russian Bot". This test should serve to discredit whatever metric they are ostensibly using, but instead the idea that Russians are actively spamming twitter to prevent the infringement of the right to keep and bear arms will be taken uncritically by the exact same people who swore Hillary would win, amongst a wide variety of other ludicrous predictions.
PS: Trump will also not be impeached, that is also fake news.
On the extreme right everything is the fault of Jews - their disproportionate representation in media, finance and education is responsible for every problem in society.
On the extreme left everything is the fault of Russia - secret agents, bots and the fake news they spread are responsible for all political disagreements and half the country becoming irrational.
Interesting.
Both sides here have such poor grammar and spelling that its impossible to tell who is a troll and who isn't.
Is there a separate "Internet for the Literate" somewhere, that I must pass a literacy test to enter? I'm ready for it.
Is SlashDot now filled with people stupid enough to believe this bullshit? Really? The whole world laughs a the US over shit like this and yet the masses of this country eat this shit up like it is a gospel. Anything that has an opinion you don't like? RUSSIAN BOTS!!! The utter stupidity and the amount of people on here thinking "its real!" is mind boggling.
Probably the Russians are involved, stirring things up. However the NRA is a bigger problem by far.
Remember that famous saying by Wayne LaPierre, President of the NRA, "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun"?
Well the NRA wants to make sure that bad guy gets a gun. They pretend otherwise but it's true. The NRA represents gun manufacturers far more than gun owners these days. By selling guns to the bad guys, they create an opponent worthy of fear, and then they can sell guns to the good guys too. The NRA and the gun lobby wins!
To the NRA every problem is solved by a gun. Every answer contains a gun. Every issue needs more guns. It doesn't matter what it is, more guns are always the answer.
The NRA are like those shady international arms dealers. Sell weapons to both sides in any conflict and profit. In fact you could directly use that in promotional marketing. "Yeah, you'd better weapon up! I just sold a huge batch of guns to the opposing team and they look pretty dangerous now. However, I'll make you a special deal. For every 10 boxes of ammo you buy, I'll throw in one for free! That ought to help you out..."
You would need 75% of states to ratify it. That is not going to happen. Best thing you can hope for are restrictions. However the most deadly school shooting was done with hand guns. No way hand guns are going to be take away. There are over 300 million guns in the US. Even if laws are in place to make guns illegal there will still be guns and criminals and psycopaths are not going to respect the law. Sorry about reality.
the 'well regulated' part. _Nothing_ in the Constitution is there by accident. The Constitution _does_ allow arms to be regulated.
Any violence is _not_ the only option. That kind of thinking is exactly what makes a single issue voter. There's zero room for compromise or even common sense in that kind of thinking. _Anyone_ who opposes unlimited access to firearms is an enemy who's one step away from killing us all.
Among the pro-gun lobby it's impossible to imagine a control advocate who doesn't immediately resort to violence. I can think of several reasons why the pro-gun lobby is like this (none of them good) but I can't think of anything that can be done about it. I'd rather see the left drop the issue and, like that comic says, live with the occasional horrific civilian massacre.
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Every leftist I know is saying we _SHOULD_ politicize this tragedy. One of the common memes on the left it that it's always "too soon" to talk about gun control and if it's too soon to talk about it after this mass shooting how about use the last one?
Also, I don't know _anyone_ on the left who wants to ban all guns. Even the really left wing nutters I know gave up on that. And not just for politics, but because with 300 million guns in America it's virtually impossible. Remember, we don't want to lock folks up for no good reason. We support legalizing drugs for fucks sake. Hell, a lot of us support legalizing _all_ drugs like parts of the Neatherlands did (albeit also with nationalized healthcare that treats drug addiction as a serious illness). The last thing we want is to ban guns and start locking folks up for owning one. We want _less_ people in prison, not more.
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The US populace has been disarmed? What the heck are you smoking?
Fact: the shooter was not a member of any white supremicist group. The AP literally made that up, siting a Reddit troll as a source. They have since retracted.
I used to be a liberal and still am, if by liberal you mean evidence based, science respecting, reality based advocate for individual rights and responsibilities. But liberals now are like communists in 1930s Germany. They can't sustain a logical train of thought, they can't marshall a cohesive argument, all they can do is name call, threaten people with violence and attempt to fabricate the guilt of their opponents.
They have no conception of the seething hatred behaving like that engenders in people who DID get enough oxygen when they were born and whose parents DIDN"T blow dope smoke in their faces as toddlers.
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True. Some just pretend to be.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Like he said, even an idiot can.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
When a conservative hears something that challenges their world view, it is dismissed as "fake news."
When a liberal hears something that challenges their world view, it is dismissed as "Russian trolling."
Are there truly no sane, rational, decent people left in this country?
https://thefederalist.com/2018...
Yep. Merka has been waging political war against Russia since Raygun screwed with them over Afganistan and "tear down that wall" bullshit to name a couple. I don't recall that Clinton wasted his time on them all that much but the 2 losers since then did. Now it's all fair game as the soviets, chinese, jews, and everyone else in between see Merka as fair game and completely unprotected by the incompetence of all current sitting congrasslickers. Give it up. Merka's done. Gone down the toilet and been flushed by your new sex-offender spawn-of-satan dictator, calling it "draining the swamp .. only get rid of the good stuff and keep all the leeches". How fucked up is that?
"Tampering" equals "advertising"?
Good to know.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Goddam, have you ever used a gun before? The reason guns took over the world is that their so simple even an idiot can use them.
Spoken by somebody clueless.
When I took my first shooting course, there were people in the class that couldn't hit a paper plate ten feet away - with a laser sight on the gun.
That's in a low stress situation, with good lighting, and a target that isn't moving - and after receiving instruction from very competent instructors.
Guns didn't take over the world. There were plenty of guns on the losing side in the vast majority of battles throughout the past few centuries. Sometimes the losing side had more guns (such as at Isandlwana, or Singapore).
Organization, discipline, tactics, logistics, intelligence, morale, etc - a lot of factors go into winning battles.
Any port in a storm! Thank you, Ivan.