Why attack Sikhs?

Like cars, none of these are purpose built to kill, bespoke lethal weapons are the more obvious 'target' to be concerned with.

We've had success in reducing nuclear arms proliferation, no one got hurt - apart from the defence budget which lead to a massive economic downturn - ooops. Fact is there's too much money involved in 'security' for your gun lobby to go away any time soon, and while we watch more and more atrocities taking place, they're making more money out of every one who wants 'added protection' so it doesn't happen to them.

Terrorism has become the new communism, it's the same old protection racket.

 

So we agree completely then and you make my point for me. The problem is culture rather than 'guns' per se.

Now with regard to the rest of your post: You seem to be suggesting that republicans are responsible for this attack and should be defeated in the upcoming elections as a result. I am far from being a republican and I don't have any vested interest in the success of their party, but this makes no sense to me. How exactly is a political party responsible for the actions of a lone nutcase? If the republicans are responsible for this guy then surely you believe the democrats are responsible for all the greenpeace jackasses who spike trees and maim lumberjacks...

I was never arguing that the police are reactive only. I will argue that they typically react to crimes after the fact, but that is neither the intent nor the desire of any police officer... When able they will prevent crime.

I don't see how gun laws will prevent crime considering that those areas with strict gun laws in the US seem to have an abundance of it.

 

I run into people all the time who are subject to a restraining order or are the protected party of a restraining order. people convicted of domestic violence cannot legally own a gun.

 

No, targeting the temple simply because of who was in there was not a hate crime. It was murder. It was an atrocity, but not a hate crime. Yes, it was done because he hates Sikhs for some sick reason, but it wasn't a hate crime.

There is a BIG difference between a crime done out of hate, and a hate crime. The guys who taught him to hate Sikhs committed a hate crime. He committed murder.

To imply that his murders were worse because he hated Sikhs is wrong. As I've said, the murder of these people is horrendous, but no less serious than the murder of a convenience store clerk. As for asking the Sikhs how they feel, I know the answer I get would be exactly the same as if I asked the family of the murdered clerk, or the family of a whacked out ex-spouse who kills the former partner. The last was almost certainly done out of hate... why would it be less serious than murdering a Sikh out of hate? Is a Sikh life worth more or less than an ex-spouse? I think not.

Murder is murder.

Hate crime is teaching and promoting hate. Period. The subsequent crimes committed BECAUSE of the hate crime are no more heinous than if done out of total indifference.

 

I don't agree with that, greywolf. Baraka wasn't asking you what the families of victims are thinking, but rather all Sikhs. When a convenience store clerk gets killed during a robbery, clerks all over the country aren't reminded that there are people out there who hate them just because they are clerks. Clerks take, what is to them, an acceptable amount of risk. It's a choice. Sikhs don't have a choice but to be Sikhs. Or even if they were to go so far as to renounce their religion and remove their turbans, they would still have brown skin and be subject to hate.

I support hate crime legislation because it defines very clearly our values when it comes to prejudice and violent intolerance. For as long as we still have those values.

 

If that is the case, then are you suggesting there should be no difference, in terms of legal remedies, between manslaughter and first degree murder? Or between first degree murder and second degree murder?

The difference, in fact, are the circumstances.

 

I think it is the lesser crimes, like vandalism as you pointed out, Baraka, that makes the demarcation between crime and hate crime very clear. I don't understand why that line should become more indistinct as the severity of the crime increases. In fact, to my thinking, it should be considered as an even more important factor.

 

here's how i see conservativeland as in part to blame for this sort of action: the right has been trafficking in a form of identity politics for a while now--20 years or so. it's repellent outcomes were clear in the afterburn of the wtc attacks, but it's been the same move for a while--"real americans" versus the "others"---you can see its racist underpinnings in the birther nonsense---you can see it in the redbaiting that obama's image is subjected to. there are the real (white, petit bourgeois) americans and the invading outsiders. the real (white petit bourgeois) americans are under assault. this is a normalization of the structure that neo-fascist groups operate through. in this way--which is pretty straightforward---the right has a responsibility to accept for creating a context in which this sort of ideology is acceptable. there's a line that gets crossed, of course, when one goes from fantasizing about race war and acting on those fantasies---but that does nothing to change the fact that this line operates in a continuum that should not be acceptable, but is in the u.s. of a.---in significant measure because the right has nothing but identity politics to build from in maintaining its demographic. whence the wedge issues, whence the ongoing legitimation of racism against muslims and so on.

we're seeing the usual move on the part of the press, however. pathologize the killer, make him appear exceptional using some bizarre-o version of that press favorite, the "bad apple theory" whereby a particular individual or group is designated as embodying system problems and the endgame of their activities--which typically coincides with the press constructing this frame around them--de facto legitimates the system the individuals come from by acting as though those individuals *are* the problems that the system might have. so these sorts of actions are pitched so that consideration of and action against the contexts that enable them become problematic---so neurotic is the need to reassure people that everything, really, is always ok.

within this kind of context, the problem is the way in which the use of the gun to mow down imaginary enemies of an imaginary white race is made to seem reasonable, just as john wayne fantasies about heroic individual vigilante action in a moment of crisis is able to make spraying bullets around an urban space seem like a great idea because all that matters in a situation of crisis is you. no action operates in isolation--every action sits in a continuum. there's a Problem in the united states with there being way too many guns that are way too easily available. the line is, apparently, wrapped in the 2nd amendment, is that it is some kind of right to have at hand the instrument that facilitates crossing the line from fantasy to killing as easily as possible---if you construe being strapped as a self-defense thing and walkabout that way. target shooting is obviously different. hunting even, is different. i like gun clubs, places hobbyists can go and do the things they enjoy and leave the weapons there when they shift back into real life. but in real life, there are WAY too many guns.

 

It's hate. Blind, ignorant hate. And the US doesn't have a corner on that market. You saw it in Ireland. In Jerusalem. In Tel Aviv. In Mumbai. In Spain. In Auschwitz. Sometimes a gun, sometimes a backpack full of explosives, sometimes a jetliner. Remove one form of convenience and it will be replaced by another. Hate turns to rage. Hate kills. Only until we can remove the hate will it ever stop.

 

hate is the reverse of fear and fear is a great mobilizing tool. ask the folk who run the show that is conservativeland.

 

i'm entirely aware of the distinction between conservative ideology and conservatives as people. when i talk about conservativeland, i refer in particular to the ideological space. when the right turned to using this sort of identity politics as the center of their political game, they made a dangerous move. a consequence of that move--and the shift into territory similar to that occupied by the front national in france or any number of other far right parties---they legitimated the same kind of logic to the right of that. i would have thought that distinction obvious. without it, the argument would run toward some paranoid notion that any conservative might pick up a gun and start shooting Enemies. that's not what i am saying. i am saying that the central storylines that conservativeland has been trafficking in legitimate forms of racism because they are, structurally, forms of racism---redbaiting uses the same structure as does making some nitwit claim that the united states is somehow a christian nation at war with islam.

 

hate has no political preference, neither does ignorance

 

it does when it's used as a central element in a political mobilization.​

nice try.​

 

I'm not trying anything.

 

o for fucks sake. i made the arguments i set out to make on this. there's little question about the populist conservative reliance on identity as a center of their mobilization. yes i am aware that there are fiscal conservatives who find the populist types to be dangerous and repellent---i know a lot of these people. but that changes nothing about the usage of this style of narrative as a political tool and nothing--at all---about the dangerous game the right decided to run when they went that way.

another direction for making a similar argument would be to talk about the right crawling into bed with the nra and the consequences of the nra's internal shift *way* into neo-fascist land. consider, for example, the spike in gun sales that greeted obama's election. you don't think that came from nowhere, do you? it was obviously from the nra appealing to the militia set via a black helicopter type of logic to spook them into helping the bottom line of their gun manufacturer buddies.

it's an ugly and dangerous game. that's one of the reasons i'd like to see the right held to account for it.