-
<br><p> </p>
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="hydro11" data-cid="587281" data-time="1465775622">
<div>
<p>I find it strange because America had an assault weapons ban previously and it made absolutely no difference to gun violence.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>I think that was to do with sale of new weapons for a decade? So it wasn't a buyback or destruction scheme or anything. The guns were still out there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That's why legislation now is probably never going to work - even if you could get a buyback scheme up and running, it would beggar the nation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When you say "gun violence" I suppose it also depends if you're talking mass shootings - 18 during Obama's administration - or whether its just gun violence in general. The legislation passed by Clinton's administration was all the usual stuff - magazine capacity, chance of concealment (folding stocks) etc. But I don't think it affected certain rifles, revolvers, or magazines under a certain capacity.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Baron Silas Greenback" data-cid="587286" data-time="1465775934">
<div>
<p>On a related note. How much hubris do people have to have to say they know better than the attacker what his motivations were? </p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>sure. But no one is saying they know better than the attacker.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It's reasonable to question the validity of the motivation when press conferences at the time were filled with terrorist vernacular, before the gunman's identity was known (Black police chief in a green uniform press conference, then his subordinate from different branch addressed the terrorism question)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But is it not reasonable to suggest that the actual truth is very easy to distort. Distortion from an agenda filled media.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Don't fly off like you usually do, I'm suggesting that in the hierarchy of facts the "proclaimed" motivation and reasoning for the attacks lies well below other more identifiable facts, e.g. death toll, actions in the club, weapons used.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You are probably right but I'm wary that some massacre nut jobs are labelled as having no identifiable cause and others are terrorists. I CHOOSE (yes me) to rate them all as nut jobs <strong><u>first</u></strong> and terrorists or freedom fighters or lone wolves or heavy metal obsessed teens or socially awkward outcasts <strong><u>later</u></strong></p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="NTA" data-cid="587298" data-time="1465776829">
<div>
<p>I think that was to do with sale of new weapons for a decade? So it wasn't a buyback or destruction scheme or anything. The guns were still out there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That's why legislation now is probably never going to work - even if you could get a buyback scheme up and running, it would beggar the nation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When you say "gun violence" I suppose it also depends if you're talking mass shootings - 18 during Obama's administration - or whether its just gun violence in general. The legislation passed by Clinton's administration was all the usual stuff - magazine capacity, chance of concealment (folding stocks) etc. But I don't think it affected certain rifles, revolvers, or magazines under a certain capacity.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>That is correct but Obama's plan has been to put the ban back into place. I have not seen him suggesting a buy back.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Siam" data-cid="587302" data-time="1465777013">
<div>
<p>sure. But no one is saying they know better than the attacker.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It's reasonable to question the validity of the motivation when press conferences at the time were filled with terrorist vernacular, before the gunman's identity was known (Black police chief in a green uniform press conference, then his subordinate from different branch addressed the terrorism question)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But is it not reasonable to suggest that the actual truth is very easy to distort. Distortion from an agenda filled media.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Don't fly off like you usually do, I'm suggesting that in the hierarchy of facts the "proclaimed" motivation and reasoning for the attacks lies well below other more identifiable facts, e.g. death toll, actions in the club, weapons used.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You are probably right but I'm wary that some massacre nut jobs are labelled as having no identifiable cause and others are terrorists. I CHOOSE (yes me) to rate them all as nut jobs <strong><u>first</u></strong> and terrorists or freedom fighters or lone wolves or heavy metal obsessed teens or socially awkward outcasts <strong><u>later</u></strong></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>You first sentence is contradicted by the rest of your post.</p> -
<p>It's all talk and won't lead to anything. Chicago has some of the strictest gun controls in the US but the gun crime stats there are appalling. The fact is that there are so many guns in circulation that gun control doesn't do shit. I'd bet that this latest Nutter could easily have gotten his hands on illegal guns if he wanted. Unless there is a willingness to launch a massive crack down on gun ownership and literally search for and confiscate the hundreds of millions out there, talk about gun control will just be empty rhetoric. That obviously isn't going to happen.</p>
-
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Baron Silas Greenback" data-cid="587310" data-time="1465777481">
<div>
<p>You first sentence is contradicted by the rest of your post.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>Incorrect. Smarmy and incorrect - a nonsense post by you</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Rancid Schnitzel" data-cid="587311" data-time="1465777514">
<div>
<p>It's all talk and won't lead to anything. Chicago has some of the strictest gun controls in the US but the gun crime stats there are appalling. The fact is that there are so many guns in circulation that gun control doesn't do shit. I'd bet that this latest Nutter could easily have gotten his hands on illegal guns if he wanted. Unless there is a willingness to launch a massive crack down on gun ownership and literally search for and confiscate the hundreds of millions out there, talk about gun control will just be empty rhetoric. That obviously isn't going to happen.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>Jeez. No wonder some people think the only way to beat them is join them. Next time I visit the US I will hope they can sell me a Glock 9mm with a full clip at duty free on the way in</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Baron Silas Greenback" data-cid="587310" data-time="1465777481">
<div>
<p>You first sentence is contradicted by the rest of your post.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>How and where? </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Why did the mods delete my previous post that said - "Incorrect. A smarmy and incorrect post" ???</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="canefan" data-cid="587328" data-time="1465777981">
<div>
<p>Jeez. No wonder some people think the only way to beat them is join them. Next time I visit the US I will hope they can sell me a Glock 9mm with a full clip at duty free on the way in</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>I'm just being realistic and looking at the way things are not the way I'd like them to be. The gun shit in the US sickens me, but I'm not naïve enough to think that passing some weak as piss legislation is going to change anything.</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Rancid Schnitzel" data-cid="587331" data-time="1465778145">
<div>
<p>I'm just being realistic and looking at the way things are not the way I'd like them to be. The gun shit in the US sickens me, but I'm not naïve enough to think that passing some weak as piss legislation is going to change anything.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>I'm not trying to be sarcastic to your comment. That is the facts. The day the government actually tries to take back the auto weapons is the day all the nutjob owners hide them all. I guess at least you try to reduce the numbers which is better than doing nothing</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Baron Silas Greenback" data-cid="587310" data-time="1465777481">
<div>
<p>You first sentence is contradicted by the rest of your post.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>How and where?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>my third attempt at a reply after mods deleted others - why mods?</p> -
<p></p><p></p><blockquote class="ipsBlockquote">[b][url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ex-wife-of-suspected-orlando-shooter-he-beat-me/2016/06/12/8a1963b4-30b8-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?postshare=5531465748603597&tid=ss_tw]Ex-wife of suspected Orlando shooter: ‘He beat me’[/url][/b]<br><br>
By Adam Goldman, Joby Warrick and Max Bearak June 12 at 7:51 PM<br><br>
Sometime after 2 a.m. Sunday, Omar Mateen dialed Orlando’s 911 service to alert the dispatcher to the carnage unfolding at one of the city’s most popular gay bars. He spelled out his full name and location, and then he offered an explanation: He was a follower of the Islamic State.<br><br>
By 5 a.m., Mateen lay dead, killed in a gun battle with police in a violent finale to the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. But while the enormity of the crime was quickly apparent, authorities were just beginning to sort through the jumble of motives that may have led the 29-year-old immigrant’s son to open fire on scores of young men and women inside the Pulse nightclub.<br><br>
While Mateen claimed allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, no evidence had emerged by late Sunday pointing to actual ties to terrorist groups or a significant association with jihadist causes. And although family members said Mateen had expressed anger about homosexuality, the shooter had no record of previous hate crimes.<br><br>
He had twice come under investigation by the FBI — once for comments suggesting an affinity for Islamist groups, and a second time for vague connections to another Florida man who traveled to Syria to become a suicide bomber. Neither probe turned up evidence of wrongdoing, and Mateen had a blemish-free record when he applied for a Florida license to carry concealed weapons and again when he legally purchased two firearms, including an assault-style semiautomatic rifle, just a few days before the shootings.<br><br>
Indeed, as the first day of the investigation neared an end, U.S. officials struggled over how exactly to label the attack, which President Obama described on Sunday as both “an act of terror and an act of hate.â€<br>
“We have reached no definitive conclusions,†Obama said at a news conference, adding: “What is clear is that he was a person filled with hate.â€<br><br>
Also clear is the fact that, until the past week, Mateen appears have lived a relatively quiet life, as a security guard and father of a young son who kept a modest two-bedroom condominium in Fort Pierce, a town on east Florida’s central coast.<br><br>
Born in New York, he was the son of Afghan immigrants who moved his family to Florida when Mateen was a child. The older Mateen would eventually open a business and attempt to dabble in Afghan politics from afar, starting a YouTube channel in Florida in which he sometimes expressed favorable views about the Taliban.<br><br>
Mateen would spend his youth and young adulthood in Florida, attending a local high school and obtaining an associate’s degree in criminal justice from nearby Indian River State College in 2006, according to college spokeswoman Michelle Abaldo. He held jobs as a security guard and appeared to have a fondness for law enforcement, having once talked to friends about becoming a police officer. In a series of Myspace photos, Mateen is seen taking selfies wearing New York Police Department shirts.<br><br>
Florida public records confirm that Mateen had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and was a licensed security guard, first at a facility for juvenile delinquents and later for G4S, a security company.<br><br>
But there also were early signs of emotional trouble and a volatile temper, according to a woman who was briefly married to Mateen. The woman, who spoke on the condition on anonymity, citing fears for her safety, described Mateen as an abusive husband who beat her repeatedly while they were married.<br><br>
“He was not a stable person,†the ex-wife told The Washington Post. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.â€<br><br>
The ex-wife said she met Mateen through an online dating service and eventually agreed to move to Florida to be with him. The two married in March 2009 and moved into the Fort Pierce condo that Mateen’s family owned.<br><br>
“He seemed like a normal human being,†said the woman, who divorced Mateen in 2011.<br><br>
Acquaintances gave conflicting views about Mateen’s religiosity. The ex-wife said her former husband wasn’t very devout and preferred spending his free time working out at the gym. She said in the few months they were married he gave no signs of having fallen under the sway of radical Islam.<br><br>
“He was a very private person,†the woman said.<br><br>
Mateen later had a son with another woman who also appears to have left him and declined to comment when reached at her current home.<br><br>
But one friend said Mateen became steadily more religious after his divorce and went on a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.<br><br>
“He was quite religious,†said the friend, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Yet, he added, if Mateen had sympathies for the Islamic State or other terrorist groups, he never mentioned them.<br><br>
For several years, Mateen regularly attended the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce and was there as recently as two days ago, said Imam Shafiq Rahman on Sunday.<br><br>
The imam said Mateen’s father and young son would pray with him, and Mateen’s three sisters were active volunteers at the mosque, which had about 150 congregants.<br><br>
“He was the most quiet guy; he never talked to anyone,†Rahman said, gripping a loop of black and red prayer beads as he held forth in a dingy corridor adorned with images of the Arabic alphabet rendered by children who come here for religious instruction. “He would come and pray and leave. There was no indication at all that he would do something violent.†Mateen never sought any spiritual guidance from him, Rahman said.<br><br>
But Rahman’s 20-year-old son, a University of Florida senior who declined to provide his first name, recalled Mateen as an “aggressive person.â€<br><br>
“It was just his demeanor,†he said. “He used to work out a lot.â€<br><br>
Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, insisted in interviews Sunday that his son’s violent deeds had nothing to do with religion. He said Mateen had become enraged a few months earlier at the sight of a pair of gay men being affectionate with one another.<br><br>
“We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry,†the father told NBC News. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’ â€<br><br>
Seddique Mateen had himself become embroiled in controversy as the host of the “Durand Jirga Show†on a channel called Payam-e-Afghan, which broadcasts from California. In it, the elder Mateen speaks in the Dari language on a variety of political subjects. Dozens of videos are posted on a channel under Seddique Mateen’s name on YouTube. A phone number and post office box that are displayed on the show were traced back to the Mateen home in Florida. Mateen also owns a nonprofit organization under the name Durand Jirga, which is registered in Port St. Lucie, Fla.<br><br>
In one video, Mateen expresses gratitude toward the Afghan Taliban, while denouncing the Pakistani government.<br><br>
“Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in [the] Taliban movement and national Afghan Taliban are rising up,†he said. “Inshallah the Durand Line issue will be solved soon.â€<br><br>
It is unclear if his statements ever attracted the attention of the FBI.<br><br>
The Durand Line was drawn as a demarcation of British and Afghan spheres of influence in 1893. The historical line is a source of conflict for members of the Pashtun ethnic group, whose homeland straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.<br><br>
Just hours before the Orlando shooting, Seddique Mateen posted a video on a Facebook page called “Provisional Government of Afghanistan — Seddique Mateen.†In it, he seems to be pretending to be Afghanistan’s president, and he orders the arrest of an array of Afghan political figures.<br><br>
“I order national army, national police and intelligence department to immediately imprison Karzai, Ashraf Ghani, Zalmay Khalilzad, Atmar, and Sayyaf. They are against our countrymen, and against our homeland,†he says, while dressed in army fatigues.<br><br>
William Wan, Steve Friess and Brian E. Crowley in Fort Pierce, Fla., and Julie Tate, Jennifer Jenkins and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.</blockquote> -
<p>Cheers Tim</p>
<p>What a confused article.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>They start off with this</p>
<p>"<span style="color:rgb(40,40,40);font-family:helvetica, arial, sans-serif;font-size:12px;background-color:rgb(247,247,247);">no evidence had emerged by late Sunday pointing to actual ties to terrorist groups or a significant association with jihadist causes"</span></p>
<p> </p>
<p>And then proceed to give lots of accounts of his involvement with radical Islam? I wonder what the author of that article would accept as being evidence of actual ties to jihadist causes?</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="NTA" data-cid="587355" data-time="1465780007">
<div>
<p>"Actual" ties being recruitment into said groups? As opposed to just liking their shit on Youtube or something.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>I didnt know they forms and process to go through. seems like the media just setting arbitrary criteria. If he says jhe was in ISIS, and ISIS says he did it for them.. yuo think that would be enough. but no.. apparently you need forms. Yuo ahve to laugh.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Personally I find the last part the most interesting, the guy was a fruit loop. But as we know that isnt mutually exclusive with Islam and ISIS.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lets review</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Had numerous links with Radical Islam,</p>
<p>Said he was in ISIS</p>
<p>ISIS says he acted for them</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>But apparently people have now decided he doesn't have actual ties to radical groups. I can see what is being attempted though. Set the bar so ludicrously high that nobody in the US can be considered to have 'actual' ties to ISIS. Therefore radical Islam is never to blame. Genius</p> -
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Siam" data-cid="587302" data-time="1465777013">
<div>
<p>sure. But no one is saying they know better than the attacker.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It's reasonable to question the validity of the motivation when press conferences at the time were filled with terrorist vernacular, before the gunman's identity was known (Black police chief in a green uniform press conference, then his subordinate from different branch addressed the terrorism question)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But is it not reasonable to suggest that the actual truth is very easy to distort. Distortion from an agenda filled media.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Don't fly off like you usually do, I'm suggesting that in the hierarchy of facts the "proclaimed" motivation and reasoning for the attacks lies well below other more identifiable facts, e.g. death toll, actions in the club, weapons used.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>You are probably right but I'm wary that some massacre nut jobs are labelled as having no identifiable cause and others are terrorists. I CHOOSE (yes me) to rate them all as nut jobs <strong><u>first</u></strong> and terrorists or freedom fighters or lone wolves or heavy metal obsessed teens or socially awkward outcasts <strong><u>later</u></strong></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Baron Silas Greenback" data-cid="587310" data-time="1465777481">
<div>
<p>You first sentence is contradicted by the rest of your post.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<p>Where and how is the contradiction?</p> -
<p>I don't get why the media apparently get so damn squeamish whenever Islam is involved with these kinds of things. If this guy had been a fundamentalist Christian they'd be going through the garbage outside his parish and trying to conduct endless, in-depth examinations of his beliefs and motives. There were even calls to ban the Confederate Flag after that retarded kid went on the rampage last year. He was pictured with the flag. Blame the flame.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Yet in this case, despite clear evidence that he was strongly religious, pledged support for ISIS, and even has a dad who has expressed support for the Taliban, the religious component is downplayed and the focus is on gun control.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Just forget that bullshit dog whistling by Trump. Determining and stating the motives of this guy aren't Islam bashing any more than saying a abortion clinic bomber was motivated by his Christian religion is an attack on all Christians.</p> -
<br><br><blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Baron Silas Greenback" data-cid="587359" data-time="1465780281"><p>
Had numerous links with Radical Islam,<br>
Said he was in ISIS<br>
ISIS says he acted for them<br><br></p></blockquote>
<br>
ISIS say that a lot - it makes them look bigger than what they are -
Anyone that pledges their support for ISIS is with ISIS. That's why they take responsibility for the attack.
Guns?.........or is that the least of the problems?