Why is the media giving free publicity to hateful messages and the scum murderer’s family? It’s wrong and will encourage others who want their post mortem fame. I thought the media showed some restraint about publicity for the murderer more recently in a prior mass shooting case.
I’m a little afraid to read the editorials in The Tennessean tomorrow.
^^ Heck - I’m a little afraid to read the comments in my Facebook feed. Time to put some more “friends” on ignore…
scout59 I thought facebook would after 2-3 years be like myspace (just a footnote in history) I was wrong. that said I can proudly say I have no facebook account!
If you put your friends on ignore, do they know if they are ignored?
@Iglooo - no, they don’t know they’re on ignore. And @zobroward - Facebook does do some things really well. My family is scattered across the country, and this ways I can see pictures of my niece in Alaska and my mother in the Carolinas. Plus, I’ve reconnected with some old high school friends who I’ve really missed.
That being said… I’m surprised sometimes by the comments of people I thought I knew. This morning I saw some really hateful things about the LGBT community posted by an old acquaintance, and she’s married to a minister. Yikes.
@Iglooo - no; but they can still post stuff on your wall so they don’t completely disappear from your account
^ Nope. You can unfollow ( I think that’s what it’s called) but still be seen as friend.
I’ve only needed to do it twice - once for someone who posts minute to minute updates on her life and another who post crap.
Ugh, I really wish the media hadn’t reported what his wife said in the link provided in #258 regarding him being mentally ill. 99.9% of the mentally ill don’t do stuff like this and it places such a stigma on those with mental illness.
@teriwtt Perhaps if we hadn’t been defunding mental health for the last 35 years. …
On Fbk you can put someone on restricted, unfollow them, or block them. All have different limited as to what they can do, see or or not see.
I also wondered how the gunman could have killed so many people without being rushed and tackled or people running and escaping. He had a machine gun designed to kill humans not hunt for food. No doubt about that point.
Secondly, multiple witnesses have said they thought the sounds of gunshots were part of the music. It was loud. So, try not to think about how easily he accomplished his murders.
I have to say one other thing.
Please do not blame the FBI or the authorities. We have freedoms in this country, we already have too many people in jail, no one can be arrested or detained forever because they hate this group and that group. We are allowed to hate and be stupid and be as religious as we want and it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the FBI or police to somehow prevent stuff like this. Places like malls, schools, sports events, nightclubs are difficult to defend. You have to accept that.
One last thought, the idea that certain groups can be watched 24/7 is not a workable plan. Do have any idea how much resource that would require even if it was the right thing to do? I am going to check the victim list now to see if anyone I know or any of my students is on it. I am then going to email my classes and say I have no idea what but I have to say something. Orlando/Central FL. is just an amazing place to live and raise kids. Affordable housing, low taxes, broad based economy with lots of opportunities and people of all strips are openly welcomed. I have more civic pride and pride as an American than I have ever had.
@LasMa - yes, that’s true, but the instituting of mental health parity has also made mental health coverage, and therefore accessibility, available to many people who didn’t have it before. But yes, particularly in our horrendous state of Illinois where we’ve been without a budget for 11 months now, mental health services and advocacy are some of the first on the list to be axed.
I was wrong yesterday when I wondered out loud why the police did not begin their assault earlier. My intent wasn’t criticism; I just wanted to believe that there was a moment when more people could have been saved.
I swear I’m not trying to divert the thread, but I was just talking on fb to my cousin in Ohio. She wears a hijab and just got verbally harrassed and spit on by a man in the street because of the shooting. She burst into tears (she’s already going through some other stuff) and sat on the curb crying. She told me a group of girls scared the man away and calmed her down. She wasn’t crying when we talked on Messenger, but she’s scared to go out and I can’t seem to convince her it was a one off incident. We already have 100 victims after last night, let’s please not create more. Let’s not forgo decency for the sake of ‘not being PC’.
@teriwtt Precisely. My friend just said something to the effect of the shooter being ‘mentally insane’. I explained to him that evil and mental illness are two very distinct things.
I really feel sorry for Muslim women being so visibly saddled w the identity of their religion, while their men are not.
^If they have beards and ‘funny clothes’, then they get the axe. Stereotyping is real. Also, it’s easier to pick on women. None of that is an excuse to harrassment, however.
Agree with you, @GoNoles85 , about the FBI. At the times they examined him, he was not “operational” (a horrible new word I learned yesterday). It is not illegal to hold hateful ideas – just ask David Duke – and the shooter was not planning or prepping for criminal acts when the FBI was looking at him. In our country, people cannot be indefinitely surveilled and even if they could, the FBI doesn’t have anywhere near the manpower to continually watch everyone who has hateful ideas.
The shooter only became operational recently, perhaps triggered by the display of gay affection he saw per his father. It was about that time that he bought one of the guns, and he bought the other one a week ago. I’m hard pressed to know how he could have been stopped, since unfortunately it is perfectly legal for someone who’s been looked at by the FBI to buy a weapon of war. What exactly would have enabled the FBI or local law enforcement to arrest him even then? He had done nothing illegal. In fact, as far as we know at this point, he did nothing illegal until he started shooting.
At any given time the FBI is looking at hundreds or thousands of people who have expressed hateful ideas, or shown an interest in hate groups of all stripes. Do we want to live in a country where people can be arrested or locked up because of their ideas? Do we want to pay the taxes which would give authorities the manpower to 24/7 track every individual who’s suspicious? How about paying for a robust mental health system? That too costs money which we have been told for 35 years is wasteful government spending.
And then there’s the much larger problem, of which an individual shooter is just a manifestation. We will never get our arms around this until we start looking at root causes. What can be done to reduce the appeal of this virulent ideology? Unfortunately, this country seems very far from being willing to even think about that.
GMT - there was a Sikh guy in WI who was attacked because people mistook his turban for Muslim gear.
Here’s a concept - everyone just leave everyone else the heck alone. Insert a stronger word than heck if you like.