ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY MY ONLY POST ABOUT THE ORLANDO SHOOTING
You know about Orlando. It is sad and tragic.
As usual, I’ve been waiting for enough info to filter in before posting any thoughts about it. And as usual, most of what I’ve seen is the same old talking points being recycled with the general objective of making sure the blame lies squarely with political enemies.
If you think I’m going to jump in the middle of that, you are insane.
But blogging duty calls, so here’s a few things you can exploit or ignore at yr leisure:
1. On a purely political level, it’s interesting that the shooting takes previously separate arguments about gun control, terrorism, Islam, LGBT rights and political correctness and mashes them all together into an even more incoherent mess than usual.
That said, it doesn’t seem to be changing the conversation much, with the exception that you now have people actually arguing over whether it counts as a terrorist attack or an anti-LGBT attack (as if it couldn’t conceivably be both). But again, most of that seems less about facts of the shooting and more about making sure The Right People get blamed for it.
2. While terrorist attacks in the US remain rare statistically, terrorist attacks in the US involving guns are happening more often, according to FiveThirtyEight.
This is worth emphasizing because in the early days of post-9/11 America, experts rejected the idea of terrorists using guns for terror attacks because it was too small-scale. Under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda wanted to make Epic Statements like 9/11.
With bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda having been effectively replaced by ISIS, that strategy has changed. The official ISIS line is: no attack is too small.
Gun attacks also come with the added value of exploiting a touchy and divisive subject: gun control. If one of the objectives of terrorism is to divide us as a nation, the gun control issue is a great way to do it. Combine that with other wedge issues (Islamaphobia, gay marriage and The Great Transgender Bathroom Panic of 2016) and you’ll have us at each other’s throats in no time. The very reactions we’re seeing to Orlando prove that.
So we’re likely to see more of this kind of thing, because it’s not like assault rifles are hard to get.
3. On the other hand, not all mass shootings are terrorism-related. In fact, most aren’t. Mass shootings have become more common in the US even if you exclude the terrorism-related ones.
We don’t know why this is, and one reason we don’t, according to Vocativ, is because the CDC doesn’t collect data on mass shootings to study the details and see if there’s any causes or correlations we can learn.
The reason why the CDC doesn’t do this is because, basically, Congress won’t let them. You can make a good guess as to why. This seems counterproductive to me. I mean, look, if you’re going to argue that the problem isn’t guns but people, you should at least be trying to figure out why people do this sort of thing and if there’s anything to be done about it before they do it. It’s the same old dodge - like when we say the problem is not guns but mentally ill people, and then do nothing to address mental health.
4. In any case, I’ve seen no real evidence that the Orlando shooting is going to lead to any meaningful changes in the debate that will shift the status quo. It might. But I would be surprised.
Same as it ever was,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1578782.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
As usual, I’ve been waiting for enough info to filter in before posting any thoughts about it. And as usual, most of what I’ve seen is the same old talking points being recycled with the general objective of making sure the blame lies squarely with political enemies.
If you think I’m going to jump in the middle of that, you are insane.
But blogging duty calls, so here’s a few things you can exploit or ignore at yr leisure:
1. On a purely political level, it’s interesting that the shooting takes previously separate arguments about gun control, terrorism, Islam, LGBT rights and political correctness and mashes them all together into an even more incoherent mess than usual.
That said, it doesn’t seem to be changing the conversation much, with the exception that you now have people actually arguing over whether it counts as a terrorist attack or an anti-LGBT attack (as if it couldn’t conceivably be both). But again, most of that seems less about facts of the shooting and more about making sure The Right People get blamed for it.
2. While terrorist attacks in the US remain rare statistically, terrorist attacks in the US involving guns are happening more often, according to FiveThirtyEight.
This is worth emphasizing because in the early days of post-9/11 America, experts rejected the idea of terrorists using guns for terror attacks because it was too small-scale. Under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda wanted to make Epic Statements like 9/11.
With bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda having been effectively replaced by ISIS, that strategy has changed. The official ISIS line is: no attack is too small.
Gun attacks also come with the added value of exploiting a touchy and divisive subject: gun control. If one of the objectives of terrorism is to divide us as a nation, the gun control issue is a great way to do it. Combine that with other wedge issues (Islamaphobia, gay marriage and The Great Transgender Bathroom Panic of 2016) and you’ll have us at each other’s throats in no time. The very reactions we’re seeing to Orlando prove that.
So we’re likely to see more of this kind of thing, because it’s not like assault rifles are hard to get.
3. On the other hand, not all mass shootings are terrorism-related. In fact, most aren’t. Mass shootings have become more common in the US even if you exclude the terrorism-related ones.
We don’t know why this is, and one reason we don’t, according to Vocativ, is because the CDC doesn’t collect data on mass shootings to study the details and see if there’s any causes or correlations we can learn.
The reason why the CDC doesn’t do this is because, basically, Congress won’t let them. You can make a good guess as to why. This seems counterproductive to me. I mean, look, if you’re going to argue that the problem isn’t guns but people, you should at least be trying to figure out why people do this sort of thing and if there’s anything to be done about it before they do it. It’s the same old dodge - like when we say the problem is not guns but mentally ill people, and then do nothing to address mental health.
4. In any case, I’ve seen no real evidence that the Orlando shooting is going to lead to any meaningful changes in the debate that will shift the status quo. It might. But I would be surprised.
Same as it ever was,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1578782.html. Please comment there using OpenID.