oh yeah they announced it was some South Korean guy named Cho Seung-hui. imagine if the guy was arab.
Imagine what? The guy that shot up and killed all those folks in Utah a few weeks back was Muslim and shit was barely said about it.
Yesterday I listened to a bunch of hot air right wing wind bags claiming that the reason it took so long for authorities to reveal who the shooter was, was due to him/her not being caucasion.
its amazing how some of the pro-gun lobbyists think that students should be packing guns to go to uni and consequently could have dealt with the situation. some fucked up logic.
Let me tell you something. If I was one of those poor kids in one of those four classrooms with nowhere to go, starring down the barrel of that maniac's gun, I'd at least want to have a chance.
Sure. I just wouldn't want to get into a drunken argument with you at a bar though.
oh yeah they announced it was some South Korean guy named Cho Seung-hui. imagine if the guy was arab.
Imagine what? The guy that shot up and killed all those folks in Utah a few weeks back was Muslim and shit was barely said about it.
Muslim and Arab are not interchangeable. The shooter in Utah was not an Arab.
Here's one person's take on it.
___________________________________________
From The Blade (Toledo) Jack Lessenberry
Utah shooting rampage received adequate coverage
Ron Bliss thought he had found proof The Blade suppresses news that doesn't fit its "slant left" agenda.
"I was browsing the Internet and ran across a story on the 18-year-old mall shooter in Salt Lake City (who) was a Bosnian national. It told in the article that he was a Muslim and while he was killing the mall shoppers he was shouting Allah Akbar (Allah is Great.)
"Now then ??? this means it was either a terrorist act in America or at the very least, a hate crime."
Yet Mr. Bliss said he searched our archives and found nothing at all on the Feb. 12 shooting. If we deliberately suppressed it, he felt we should remove "One of America's Great Newspapers" from the front page.
Indeed, he would be right about our slogan if The Blade were deliberately censoring stories about Muslim terrorists. And if that were going on, I would have no desire to be associated with this newspaper.
But that's not what happened. In fact, The Blade ran at least five stories about the mall shooter, Sulejman Talovic, who had lived in Utah since his family fled Bosnia when he was 9 years old. Curiously, the newspaper did not report that he shouted "Allah Akbar" during his killing spree, which took the lives of five people before the police killed the gunman.
I have no idea why The Blade left that detail out since the Associated Press and other news services the paper subscribes to reported it.
We did however report that he was a Muslim, and ran a story about how terrible his relatives felt, "We are Muslims, but we are not terrorists," his aunt said in one of them. His father condemned his son's actions.
Should The Blade have given the story more prominence? Did we deliberately ignore an instance of terrorism in America?
I don't think so. Had all the details been available when the story first broke, it might have ended up on the front page. But by the next day, it was clear that every sign pointed to this being a case of a troubled teen acting out.
And Salt Lake City is a long, long way from our circulation area. Yes, Talovic was a Muslim, and he appears to have wanted people to think he was part of some terrorist movement when he launched his murderous killing spree, which was plainly designed to end his own life.
Had the evidence shown that he was acting on orders from Osama bin Laden, it would have been front-page news everywhere. But the movement he served was entirely within his head. And blaming Islam for what he did would be like blaming Christianity for David Koresh or Jim Jones.
Anyone with a concern about fairness or accuracy in The Blade is invited to write me, c/o The Blade, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660, or at my Detroit office: 189 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202; call me at 1-888-746-8610, or email me at [email]OMBLADE@aol.com.[/email] I cannot promise to address every question in the newspaper, but I do promise that everyone who contacts me with a serious question will get a personal reply.
Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade???s ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.
oh yeah they announced it was some South Korean guy named Cho Seung-hui. imagine if the guy was arab.
Imagine what? The guy that shot up and killed all those folks in Utah a few weeks back was Muslim and shit was barely said about it.
I don't think race is going to be a huge issue here. They'll be some nuts who will argue that we should restrict student visas (this has already happened) or some dumb shit like that but for the most part, I don't see South Koreans, in general, catching heat because one of their brethren went psychotic.
Had the shooter been Middle Eastern (vs. Bosnian as in the Utah case) though? A very different story.
This is total madness. There was a shooting on a college campus just a few blocks away from my university's offices about 6 months ago. I don't understand why these things happen. What a fucked up life.
oh yeah they announced it was some South Korean guy named Cho Seung-hui. imagine if the guy was arab.
Imagine what? The guy that shot up and killed all those folks in Utah a few weeks back was Muslim and shit was barely said about it.
What's the Utah shooting you are referring to -- hadn't heard about this.
And this is not, repeat not, about nationality, religion, race or anything.
It doesn't take a genius to see that the guy who committed these horrible acts was mentally disturbed. Koreans, Arabs and others who will undoubtedly be labeled as "foreigners" in the inevitable frenzied debates that will soon come, do not have a predisposition to go mental and start killing innocent people.
Let the debate be about recognizing the signs of mental illness and intervening before the next mass murder occurs. Leave out the comments about where he was from, what his nationality was, etc. He was a f*cked up individual first and foremost and his nationality is irrelevant to the discussion. Any remotely xenophobic arguments will do a huge disservice to all the people who have tragically died.
Speaking of 9/11, it's remarkable how people (mostly on the Right) are almost chomping at the bit that this might be a terrorist attack (vs. a really fucked up act of psychosis).
It seems like the inital report of every shooting/explosion/suspicious vehicle-package since 9/11 has the disclaimer "it's not clear yet wether this was a terrorist incident." They always have to suggest it!
Let me tell you something. If I was one of those poor kids in one of those four classrooms with nowhere to go, starring down the barrel of that maniac's gun, I'd at least want to have a chance.
yea, brilliant solution. now, aside from lunatics killing people, we'd have sane people who lost control of their emotions killing folks. Every type of concealable handgun should be illegal.
Sad news. I feel lucky to have been going to school at a time when my only fears for safety would have involved a few kicks and punches. RIP to those students.
RE: 9/11. I don't think there can be any correlation with this campus massacre and 9/11. Once a plane has flown into a building/whatever and blown-up, that's the last time that plane will do so. There was no realistic reason for the majority of people at the WTC to think another plane was going to do the same thing (unfortunately the one person who was alert to the danger was ignored); guns are not one-shot weapons. This is not the time for the people affected by the Virginia Tec killings to be debating gun control; there just shouldn't be a debate, and as long as this is ignored as "...easy to say in hindsight", hindsight will continue to be used in the future instead of foresight being used in the present.
yea, brilliant solution. now, aside from lunatics killing people, we'd have sane people who lost control of their emotions killing folks. Every type of concealable handgun should be illegal.
See what I mean Cousin Larry?
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, keithvanhorn, but I can't possibly accept such an accolade. My idea/desire to not be a sitting duck in such a situation is in no way "brilliant". But thank you just the same. Common sense, perhaps. Brilliant, no.
The quote before yours said Arab and your reply was about a Muslim.
Yeah. Because the story I was referring to was regarding a NON-Arab Muslim, which is why I clearly wrote Muslim and not Arab. My apologies for not making that extra clear.
I actually see Paul's point, insofar as if any of us were to imagine ourselves in such a situation, we'd probably want to be armed vs. unarmed. But that rationale isn't convincing, to me at least, to suggest that students should walk around campus or the dorms with concealed guns. I sure as hell wouldn't want to send my kid to a school where she's living next to someone whose got a 9mm on them at all times. I think MOST parents would feel the same way.
I'm curious what major schools allow concealed weapons on campus. UT?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Pauls point is that if there were hundreds of loaded handguns floating around college campuses, there would be less shootings. And if there is a shooting, all you have to do is immediately lock down all 25,000 students. Its that simple folks...
yea, brilliant solution. now, aside from lunatics killing people, we'd have sane people who lost control of their emotions killing folks. Every type of concealable handgun should be illegal.
See what I mean Cousin Larry?
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, keithvanhorn, but I can't possibly accept such an accolade. My idea/desire to not be a sitting duck in such a situation is in no way "brilliant". But thank you just the same. Common sense, perhaps. Brilliant, no.
if handguns were illegal (to buy, own, or even manufacture)
1) you could still protect yourself in your own home with a shotgun or other non-concealable weapon. you could still protect yourself outside your home, just not with a handgun (perhaps even a handgun, but with rubber pellets).
2) we'd still have cops
3) handguns would be around via the blackmarket but there would obviously be a dramatic reduction in the number of guns available, making it difficult (or at least much more burdensome) for crazy people to get a handgun over the weekend and shoot 32 kids the following tuesday.
4) imo, there would be A LOT less murders every year.
Speaking of 9/11, it's remarkable how people (mostly on the Right) are almost chomping at the bit that this might be a terrorist attack (vs. a really fucked up act of psychosis).
It seems like the inital report of every shooting/explosion/suspicious vehicle-package since 9/11 has the disclaimer "it's not clear yet wether this was a terrorist incident." They always have to suggest it!
Here's what right-wing idiot Debbie Schlussel wrote (racial slur hers, not mine):
Here's what we know about the murderer of at least 32 students and maimer of at least 28 more at Virginia Tech, today: * The murderer has been identified by law enforcement and media reports as "a young Asian male." * The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner). * Pakis are considered "Asian." * There were 2 attacks at least half a mile apart. * There have been at least two bomb threats to this campus in the last two weeks.
When she learned the guy wasn't a dreaded Pakistani Muslim, did she rescind her bullshit statements? Nope, she simply said, "Yet another reason to stop letting in so many foreign students."
Uh-huh.
Meanwhile, various other righties are insisting that this shooting spree was, in fact, a terrorist "dry run." These people are like fucking ambulance chasers.
yea, brilliant solution. now, aside from lunatics killing people, we'd have sane people who lost control of their emotions killing folks. Every type of concealable handgun should be illegal.
See what I mean Cousin Larry?
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, keithvanhorn, but I can't possibly accept such an accolade. My idea/desire to not be a sitting duck in such a situation is in no way "brilliant". But thank you just the same. Common sense, perhaps. Brilliant, no.
if handguns were illegal (to buy, own, or even manufacture)
1) you could still protect yourself in your own home with a shotgun or other non-concealable weapon. you could still protect yourself outside your home, just not with a handgun (perhaps even a handgun, but with rubber pellets).
2) we'd still have cops
3) handguns would be around via the blackmarket but there would obviously be a dramatic reduction in the number of guns available, making it difficult (or at least much more burdensome) for crazy people to get a handgun over the weekend and shoot 32 kids the following tuesday.
4) imo, there would be A LOT less murders every year.
Speaking from a country where you can't own a handgun, legally (not even our police are armed). This make sense to me.
It's not like the people who commit these acts are from a criminal background. Most seem to have bought guns legally or at least from a legal outlet. If you take away the ease of which people like this, can buy a gun, surely you reduce the risks of this happening again.
^That second link is a chart that shows life expectancy WITHOUT homicide factored in vs. the rate of homicide in 70+ neighborhoods and apparently what it concludes is that there is a very close link between a high mortality rate and willingness to be involved in a criminal subculture w/ gun violence.
its kind of a 'well duh' but i think its interesting to have the stats back it up ... its a much closer link than income/poverty, apparently.
^That second link is a chart that shows life expectancy WITHOUT homicide factored in vs. the rate of homicide in 70+ neighborhoods and apparently what it concludes is that there is a very close link between a high mortality rate and willingness to be involved in a criminal subculture w/ gun violence.
its kind of a 'well duh' but i think its interesting to have the stats back it up ... its a much closer link than income/poverty, apparently.
I think 'day to day' gun violence in a community or criminal subculture, is completely different situation to a guy who's clearly mentally unwell, shooting several people. So 'the solution' would also be different.
^That second link is a chart that shows life expectancy WITHOUT homicide factored in vs. the rate of homicide in 70+ neighborhoods and apparently what it concludes is that there is a very close link between a high mortality rate and willingness to be involved in a criminal subculture w/ gun violence.
its kind of a 'well duh' but i think its interesting to have the stats back it up ... its a much closer link than income/poverty, apparently.
I think 'day to day' gun violence in a community or criminal subculture, is completely different situation to a guy who's clearly mentally unwell, shooting several people. So 'the solution' would also be different.
To be fair, we don't really know that the guy was "clearly mentally unwell", he might have just been pissed off and murderous.
Comments
Yesterday I listened to a bunch of hot air right wing wind bags claiming that the reason it took so long for authorities to reveal who the shooter was, was due to him/her not being caucasion.
I thought to myself, "BS, why would that matter"
Apparently it does to some people.
Sure. I just wouldn't want to get into a drunken argument with you at a bar though.
the Utah shooting you talked about didn't make the news over here, just checking it now.
Muslim and Arab are not interchangeable.
The shooter in Utah was not an Arab.
Here's one person's take on it.
___________________________________________
From The Blade (Toledo)
Jack Lessenberry
Utah shooting rampage received adequate coverage
Ron Bliss thought he had found proof The Blade suppresses news that doesn't fit its "slant left" agenda.
"I was browsing the Internet and ran across a story on the 18-year-old mall shooter in Salt Lake City (who) was a Bosnian national. It told in the article that he was a Muslim and while he was killing the mall shoppers he was shouting Allah Akbar (Allah is Great.)
"Now then ??? this means it was either a terrorist act in America or at the very least, a hate crime."
Yet Mr. Bliss said he searched our archives and found nothing at all on the Feb. 12 shooting. If we deliberately suppressed it, he felt we should remove "One of America's Great Newspapers" from the front page.
Indeed, he would be right about our slogan if The Blade were deliberately censoring stories about Muslim terrorists. And if that were going on, I would have no desire to be associated with this newspaper.
But that's not what happened. In fact, The Blade ran at least five stories about the mall shooter, Sulejman Talovic, who had lived in Utah since his family fled Bosnia when he was 9 years old. Curiously, the newspaper did not report that he shouted "Allah Akbar" during his killing spree, which took the lives of five people before the police killed the gunman.
I have no idea why The Blade left that detail out since the Associated Press and other news services the paper subscribes to reported it.
We did however report that he was a Muslim, and ran a story about how terrible his relatives felt, "We are Muslims, but we are not terrorists," his aunt said in one of them. His father condemned his son's actions.
Should The Blade have given the story more prominence? Did we deliberately ignore an instance of terrorism in America?
I don't think so. Had all the details been available when the story first broke, it might have ended up on the front page. But by the next day, it was clear that every sign pointed to this being a case of a troubled teen acting out.
And Salt Lake City is a long, long way from our circulation area. Yes, Talovic was a Muslim, and he appears to have wanted people to think he was part of some terrorist movement when he launched his murderous killing spree, which was plainly designed to end his own life.
Had the evidence shown that he was acting on orders from Osama bin Laden, it would have been front-page news everywhere. But the movement he served was entirely within his head. And blaming Islam for what he did would be like blaming Christianity for David Koresh or Jim Jones.
Anyone with a concern about fairness or accuracy in The Blade is invited to write me, c/o The Blade, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660, or at my Detroit office: 189 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202; call me at 1-888-746-8610, or email me at [email]OMBLADE@aol.com.[/email] I cannot promise to address every question in the newspaper, but I do promise that everyone who contacts me with a serious question will get a personal reply.
Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade???s ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.
I don't think race is going to be a huge issue here. They'll be some nuts who will argue that we should restrict student visas (this has already happened) or some dumb shit like that but for the most part, I don't see South Koreans, in general, catching heat because one of their brethren went psychotic.
Had the shooter been Middle Eastern (vs. Bosnian as in the Utah case) though? A very different story.
The boy Kenneth Eng, for instance, is a firecracker waiting to go off.
Sorry, I know. I'll go back to cleaning records now...
What's the Utah shooting you are referring to -- hadn't heard about this.
And this is not, repeat not, about nationality, religion, race or anything.
It doesn't take a genius to see that the guy who committed these horrible acts was mentally disturbed. Koreans, Arabs and others who will undoubtedly be labeled as "foreigners" in the inevitable frenzied debates that will soon come, do not have a predisposition to go mental and start killing innocent people.
Let the debate be about recognizing the signs of mental illness and intervening before the next mass murder occurs. Leave out the comments about where he was from, what his nationality was, etc. He was a f*cked up individual first and foremost and his nationality is irrelevant to the discussion. Any remotely xenophobic arguments will do a huge disservice to all the people who have tragically died.
Fair enough. But I'm not the one who brought that shit up.
Tell me something I don't know.
It seems like the inital report of every shooting/explosion/suspicious vehicle-package since 9/11 has the disclaimer "it's not clear yet wether this was a terrorist incident." They always have to suggest it!
Do you think everything in this thread is directed at you?
Right. Because we don't hear about South Koreans (of any faith/religion) going around murdering people on a near daily basis.
Yes.
Particularly when my name is in the reply heading.
yea, brilliant solution. now, aside from lunatics killing people, we'd have sane people who lost control of their emotions killing folks. Every type of concealable handgun should be illegal.
Sad news. I feel lucky to have been going to school at a time when my only fears for safety would have involved a few kicks and punches. RIP to those students.
RE: 9/11. I don't think there can be any correlation with this campus massacre and 9/11. Once a plane has flown into a building/whatever and blown-up, that's the last time that plane will do so. There was no realistic reason for the majority of people at the WTC to think another plane was going to do the same thing (unfortunately the one person who was alert to the danger was ignored); guns are not one-shot weapons.
This is not the time for the people affected by the Virginia Tec killings to be debating gun control; there just shouldn't be a debate, and as long as this is ignored as "...easy to say in hindsight", hindsight will continue to be used in the future instead of foresight being used in the present.
The quote before yours said Arab and your reply was about a Muslim. I thought it was a fair clarification to make.
See what I mean Cousin Larry?
I'm not quite sure what you're saying here, keithvanhorn, but I can't possibly accept such an accolade.
My idea/desire to not be a sitting duck in such a situation is in no way "brilliant".
But thank you just the same.
Common sense, perhaps.
Brilliant, no.
Dude, I wasn't talking to you.
Nah I see what you mean I read it wrong.
Yeah. Because the story I was referring to was regarding a NON-Arab Muslim, which is why I clearly wrote Muslim and not Arab.
My apologies for not making that extra clear.
I'm curious what major schools allow concealed weapons on campus. UT?
if handguns were illegal (to buy, own, or even manufacture)
1) you could still protect yourself in your own home with a shotgun or other non-concealable weapon. you could still protect yourself outside your home, just not with a handgun (perhaps even a handgun, but with rubber pellets).
2) we'd still have cops
3) handguns would be around via the blackmarket but there would obviously be a dramatic reduction in the number of guns available, making it difficult (or at least much more burdensome) for crazy people to get a handgun over the weekend and shoot 32 kids the following tuesday.
4) imo, there would be A LOT less murders every year.
Here's what right-wing idiot Debbie Schlussel wrote (racial slur hers, not mine):
When she learned the guy wasn't a dreaded Pakistani Muslim, did she rescind her bullshit statements? Nope, she simply said, "Yet another reason to stop letting in so many foreign students."
Uh-huh.
Meanwhile, various other righties are insisting that this shooting spree was, in fact, a terrorist "dry run." These people are like fucking ambulance chasers.
Speaking from a country where you can't own a handgun, legally (not even our police are armed). This make sense to me.
It's not like the people who commit these acts are from a criminal background. Most seem to have bought guns legally or at least from a legal outlet. If you take away the ease of which people like this, can buy a gun, surely you reduce the risks of this happening again.
someone posted this elsewhere on the internets and i thought it was fascinating
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/314/7089/1271/
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/314/7089/1271/F1
^That second link is a chart that shows life expectancy WITHOUT homicide factored in vs. the rate of homicide in 70+ neighborhoods and apparently what it concludes is that there is a very close link between a high mortality rate and willingness to be involved in a criminal subculture w/ gun violence.
its kind of a 'well duh' but i think its interesting to have the stats back it up ... its a much closer link than income/poverty, apparently.
All the reports I've read say the guns this scumbag used were illegal and had the serial numbers removed.
And please define "the problem".
I think 'day to day' gun violence in a community or criminal subculture, is completely different situation to a guy who's clearly mentally unwell, shooting several people. So 'the solution' would also be different.
To be fair, we don't really know that the guy was "clearly mentally unwell", he might have just been pissed off and murderous.