It will be one year ago tomorrow that Anders Breivik went on a mass shooting spree in Norway.
He has been arrested, and tried; we are awaiting the decision of the court as to what basis he will be under arrest for the foreseeable decades - insane, confined to a prison hospital cell; or sane, confined to a jail cell.
In either case it appears he will be in the same special facility, well away from the prison population. A few appropriately trained and skilled men will be hired to interact with him, men who have the training to defend themselves against unarmed physical attacks, should Breivik become hostile and aggressive.
The lack of a willingness to discuss the issues of mass shootings and guns, and the very different ways we look at Islamic terrorist activity with zero tolerance, while the right in particular is willing to look past domestic mass shootings of any other variety, or effectively to ignore the totality of individual deaths and injuries is a stunning example of emotion rather than intellect in action.
We should have the same opposition to each of these kinds of killings - mass shootings under cover of ANY justification, or the cumulative individual killings in similar numbers. The figures I am hearing in the media are that we average 80 killings EVERY DAY, and 87 injuries EVERY DAY, from firearms.
Those who are pro-gun will often be islamophobic, like our Minnesota horror Michele Bachmann, willing to be intolerant of anyone that can be characterized in any way as foreign, not extreme right wing, not Christian (or occasionally on short sufferance Jewish). But those same people who see jihadists hiding under every bed, including in the State Department, or in our military, turn a completely blind eye to the kind of mass shootings we have seen this week here in the U.S. in Aurora, Colorado, or in Tuscaloosa, Alabama ( a mass shooting that has fallen off the media radar) or over the border in Toronto, Canada.
We have walking, talking jackasses like Louis Gohmert claiming the mass shooting is because we have attacks on our Christian Judeo beliefs.
No, we don't. There are no religious attacks, nothing at all along the lines of past Anti-semitism where there were incidence of active violence, or the more passive form of attack, discrimination. We don't have mass shootings because of a lack of conformity to fundies' freaky religious obsessions and superstition passing under guise of faith.
We have these shootings, both individual and mass shootings, because we have people who have guns who then go out and, in the mistaken belief they are somehow in the right and others are somehow in the wrong and deserve to be punished, they SHOOT people.
We see this in the murder suicides that occur on the average of 3 times a week or more. We see this in the gang related gun violence, where someone feels justified in killing others, both targeted and innocent bystanders, because of some rivalry or conflict. We see this in the justification by George Zimmerman for the wrongful shooting of Trayvon Martin as 'it was God's plan' that he shoot an unarmed teenager minding his own business whom he STALKED first.
NO!
Wrong!
Bad!
There is NO RIGHT to shoot someone, not because of rivalry, not because of a conflict, not because they don't do what you want them to do, not because you failed to persuade someone of your political belief.
Shooting people, especially unarmed people, for any reason by individuals, or groups of right wing nuts, or any other group of people for that matter, is WRONG, morally and legally WRONG.
It is the fundamental basis on which the gun culture fails.
He has been arrested, and tried; we are awaiting the decision of the court as to what basis he will be under arrest for the foreseeable decades - insane, confined to a prison hospital cell; or sane, confined to a jail cell.
 |
| Breivik in his fantasy photo, with his fetish objects |
The lack of a willingness to discuss the issues of mass shootings and guns, and the very different ways we look at Islamic terrorist activity with zero tolerance, while the right in particular is willing to look past domestic mass shootings of any other variety, or effectively to ignore the totality of individual deaths and injuries is a stunning example of emotion rather than intellect in action.
We should have the same opposition to each of these kinds of killings - mass shootings under cover of ANY justification, or the cumulative individual killings in similar numbers. The figures I am hearing in the media are that we average 80 killings EVERY DAY, and 87 injuries EVERY DAY, from firearms.
Those who are pro-gun will often be islamophobic, like our Minnesota horror Michele Bachmann, willing to be intolerant of anyone that can be characterized in any way as foreign, not extreme right wing, not Christian (or occasionally on short sufferance Jewish). But those same people who see jihadists hiding under every bed, including in the State Department, or in our military, turn a completely blind eye to the kind of mass shootings we have seen this week here in the U.S. in Aurora, Colorado, or in Tuscaloosa, Alabama ( a mass shooting that has fallen off the media radar) or over the border in Toronto, Canada.
We have walking, talking jackasses like Louis Gohmert claiming the mass shooting is because we have attacks on our Christian Judeo beliefs.
No, we don't. There are no religious attacks, nothing at all along the lines of past Anti-semitism where there were incidence of active violence, or the more passive form of attack, discrimination. We don't have mass shootings because of a lack of conformity to fundies' freaky religious obsessions and superstition passing under guise of faith.
We have these shootings, both individual and mass shootings, because we have people who have guns who then go out and, in the mistaken belief they are somehow in the right and others are somehow in the wrong and deserve to be punished, they SHOOT people.
We see this in the murder suicides that occur on the average of 3 times a week or more. We see this in the gang related gun violence, where someone feels justified in killing others, both targeted and innocent bystanders, because of some rivalry or conflict. We see this in the justification by George Zimmerman for the wrongful shooting of Trayvon Martin as 'it was God's plan' that he shoot an unarmed teenager minding his own business whom he STALKED first.
NO!
Wrong!
Bad!
There is NO RIGHT to shoot someone, not because of rivalry, not because of a conflict, not because they don't do what you want them to do, not because you failed to persuade someone of your political belief.
Shooting people, especially unarmed people, for any reason by individuals, or groups of right wing nuts, or any other group of people for that matter, is WRONG, morally and legally WRONG.
It is the fundamental basis on which the gun culture fails.
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