Shop owner shot, killed over rainbow flag outside clothing store near Lake Arrowhead
Shop owner shot, killed over rainbow flag outside clothing store near Lake Arrowhead
Stochastic terrorism.
If you just call it terrorism more people will understand you. I understand you’re trying to draw a distinction and I’m here to tell you as someone who grew up in a rural town of 1200 people…just call it terrorism. These people aren’t backtracking on language because they thought of an exception. It’s part of why they hate us.
Only the left has to use language accurately. The right does not care about language.
Good points. And anyway, once the trigger was pulled it became normal terrorism.
All the regressive media bullshit that poisons these peoples' minds is the stochastic terrorism.
Yeah they’re no different from people calling a fatwa on a journalist.
Kill-billies.
It absolutely is. We need laws, and police forces which aren't overrun by these same criminals, to handle these terrorists.
I blame the gop for radicalizing the shooter.
I threw one of those blue lives matter flags in the trash. It blew in from my neighbors house fuck hate the traitorous fucks.
I smuggled home a confederate flag I found in a drawer at my grandmother's house. Disposed of it with a bag of cat shit.
Bruh, you just stole G-Ma's emergency TP reserve left over from the early days of covid. Nothing else attracts shit like the stars and bars.
There's a guy in my rural northern NY town with TWO confederate flags in the back of his big ass truck 🙄
I find it important to make clear it was a hate crime, but Lauri Carleton was NOT killed "over a rainbow flag outside her clothing store".
No one gets killed because of a rainbow flag. You get killed because an asshole who wants to rather die than adapt to the world changing wants to spread fear with his last action and needs desperately to find a "reason". Let's not pretend he had a reason any other than being a coward.
My heart goes out to her family, friends and the community impacted.
That headline is doing the murderer's work by literally propagating his anti-LGBT terrorism. Shame on that periodical.
Why has calling murderers cowards become such a thing? I blame someone who acts out of fear less than someone who acts out of hate or greed. Fear is a normal emotion and often reasonable. I don't think this person acted out of fear though.
A lot of them are terrified of LGBTQ people and mask it as outrage. They honestly believe the shit they get told and it terrifies them what the world is becoming.
The reality is that terrorists like this guy are armed and carrying all the time, but the second amendment is for all Americans including liberals, lefties, moderates and everyone in between.
Im not advocating for violence, in fact having a concealed carry permit nearly always means the exact opposite. Someone being aggressive? You walk away and let them win. Someone tailgating you? Let them pass.
Carrying is about situations like this, between a shop owner with a rainbow flag and someone out looking for an excuse to murder someone over rage bait.
the problem I have with this is that you're basically saying more people should have guns. a significant part of the issue is that there already are too many guns around and accessible and that is statistically going to result in more alterations resulting in shooting. you can talk about how much respect guns should be given all you want. but if more people have guns then there will be more gun violence.
You're not wrong and I mainly don't disagree with you.
But look at it from another perspective.
Those millions of guns in households are largely in the hands of conservatives since gun ownership skews heavily towards white people, males, and those living in rural areas which we already know also skews conservative, within which is a subset that fantasize about having a reason to murder their neighbors over dumb shit like colorful flags or opinions.
Liberals are much more diverse of a population than conservatives which means that when it comes to liberals, women or poc the odds of them having a fighting chance are not great in a life or death situation they didnt create, vs who is most likely to be the aggressors, conservative white men.
My take on it is that the cat is already out of the bag. In a perfect world I would prefer not having easy to operate life-ending tools spread freely throughout the country, but that's not the reality we live in. The best shot we have is to even the playing field so to speak even with the downsides it presents. The current status quo is letting terrorists gun us down with impunity and that doesn't sit well with me.
It's a balance between individual rights and societal safety. You have a right to defend yourself from threats to your life and safety by using deadly force. To say otherwise removes the ability for a good chunk of the population to adequately defend themselves. I'm related to plenty of people who cannot defend their life against the average male aggressor without a gun, and you are too. At a certain point size and strength are insurmountable.
But yes, encouraging people to responsibility engage with firearms for self defense use means that there will be more guns floating around, which means more accidents, suicides, and murders. Just as with any other choice for the rules of society, it's a trade-off. How much do we value keeping the right to adequate self-defense as a universal right? How much do we value preventing accidental injury and death?
The classic comparison is cars, simply because the annual death numbers are similar, and pretty much no other reason. But even so, we can draw parallels. Cars have mandatory features that reduce the likelihood of injury without impacting the usefulness or general experience of using a car. So too do guns, with nearly all guns having to meet industry requirements for safety, like being able to handle an overpressure event, and being drop-safe.
Cars have a licensing procedure (though it's essentially a joke here in the US) and a licensing procedure would be fine for guns, so long as it can't be used to restrict access (racist approvals and denials would become a problem in a hurry). My ideal licensing program would be a free handling skills course where failure would require some sort gross negligence, and even then you'd still get racist denials.
And really, this is the fundamental problem with guns: I (and many others) view them as a necessary tool to accessing a highly valuable right. The chances you'll need a gun are very low, but the cost of not having it can be very high. You don't have full control over whether someone else will attempt to take your life, and I don't want to say to a large chunk of the population "we're going to take away your ability to defend yourself in order to save other people who would still have that option either way."
And I want to be clear, I completely agree with the other person. If you're going to bring guns into your life, you had better learn medical skills, social skills, and you had better train with your firearm in somewhat realistic conditions. You should carry pepper spray, you should practice learning how to actually effectively calm people down, you need to learn how to safely store your guns and ammo, etc. Etc.
I get the desire ban guns in order to save lives, but you'd also be endangering others. Compare that with the car analogy, and banning cars would have a similar trade-off. Some people would live thanks to not getting in a car accident, others would die thanks to not having the same level of mobility (which has about a billion knock-on effects for quality of life).
Carrying doesn't do crap for self defense. The moment a crazy asshole pulls their gun at you and shoots you won't even be able to comprehend the situation quick enough and get your own piece out of the holster.
The crazy asshole always wins as they shoot first (they are usually cowards on top, so you might just get shot in the back).
More guns just leads to more crazy assholes with guns, I feel much safer in European countries.
In the situation you outline, yeah you'd have no real chance at protecting yourself. And those situations do happen in cases like the Las Vegas hotel shooting or any of the various school shootings we're seeing all over these days.
In many other cases even the most craven assholes need to work themselves up to shoot another human being.
That means arguments, harassment and threats.
These are helpful advance warning signs that tell you that you're entering dangerous waters and de-escalation tactics take priority. Many of our lady friends can already tell from a mile away if someone is dangerous even before they start flapping their mouthholes as a matter of everyday survival.
If all of that fails and I hope to god that it doesn't, that's when having a concealed weapon gives you a fighting chance at defending your right to live. Especially for women, guns are the great equalizer.
More guns just leads to more crazy assholes with guns
You're right, this is true.
Unfortunately the cost of encountering a rather persistent strapped terrorist is extremely high even if the chance of it happening to you is low.
We need more people who think like you
There's more than you realize.
You likely don't hear much about it because liberal gun owners don't fetishize guns or base their personality around them like the chuds on the other side of the fence do. Guns are tools, not an identity.
It's odd, I don't think I've ever heard of a lefty or a gay person outright killing someone over a Dixie or Trump flag. I keep reading about far-righties killing people over the scary rainbow flag though
Closest I've come is punching a skinhead for his jacket patches.
lol the only one in 26 years holy shit. feels like every other day with far right weirdos going on shooting sprees
President Donald Trump commended the U.S. Marshals for shooting Reinoehl, describing it as "retribution", and claiming to have personally "sent in" the U.S. Marshals to "get" Reinoehl during the first presidential debate with Joe Biden.
That's really the icing on top isn't it
That's especially disturbing considering that it seems more like a political hit job on a left-wing activist. Dude killed somebody allegedly in self-defense, then he was gunned down - why was a fugitive task for necessary when the dude was just chilling at home?
He was executed my a shady task force, probably without ever firing his gun, and then the president boasted about revenge. https://archive.ph/OFvJi
Damn, reading the wiki link is disturbing when you read the shooter's info. Dude's house was shot at. Not surprised he was on edge
You can just print that shit now.
Imagine if these crazy fucks didn't already have guns and they just discovered printable ones, I think that would have been a worse outcome.
Please elaborate as to how that would be worse. At least half these nutters wouldn't be able to figure out how to use a printer, let alone a 3d printer.
Why does everyone thing 3D printing is magic? You're not going to be 3D printing weapons that can kill scores of poeple. Any firearm printed on an FDM printer is lucky to fire once without injuring the dipshit wielder.
Yeah, it'd be so terrible having crazy fucks blowing their own hands off /s
How much of a pussy do you have to be to go shoot somebody over a rainbow flag. What a fucking fairy. People are so sensitive these days and don't know how to act. We can blame the internet all we want, but at the end of the day, people need to learn to have some social skills. How to talk disagreements out and let people have an opinion, even if it may be wrong or stupid in their eyes. It absolutely infuriates me that people gotta die over stupid shit.
In like 2021 when the truckers were protesting g the vaccine at the border I made a man snap in public over what was legitimately a luke-warm shot at the protest.
I said something like "these dipshits are acting like they didn't get their mandated MMR shots already." And a guy next to me, not in the conversation, dramatically stood up, and loudly announced "You know what?! All you fuckin idiots think the situation is simple, but it's a lot more fucking complex that the corporate media is making it out to be!" He stormed out. Didn't pay his tab.
The whole bar just sat there in awe. Like "damn I guess some of us really got hit with that isolation crazy"
Truly, a year alone for some was just too much.
You say that like any of those people actually quarantined.
Talk about an easily triggered snowflake. Ahh they have a flag presented! I need my gun to protect my fragility!
Just another example of far-right extremist violence.
Did you have a stroke while writing this? Hope you're ok
Brown shirts aren’t inherently bigoted, but they can be a reference to the colloquial name for the SA, the brownshirts, called that because their uniforms included brown shirts and also to differentiate them from other fascist militias of the era that wore different colored shirts. The SA used similar styles of military imagery, threats of violence, and acts of violence to modern right wing militias.
Ever notice how there's no such thing as a liberal hate crime?
"We are all domestic terrorists".
How much more do we have to put up with before we do something about this? Sadly I'm guessing it's a lot more.
If I am ever killed over my rainbow stuff, I'm haunting the son of a bitch who killed me as a rainbow.
I'd tend to trust someone haunted by a rainbow personally, I don't think it's the best plan
Leprechauns are starting to make sense.
I would love to have my personal rainbow, could you haunt me a little as well? Maybe Tuesdays?
They want you dead. It's time to return this sentiment.
Normalizing political violence will inevitably, and possibly literally, blow up in your face.
We are not going to sit here and watch people get killed for no reason just for nothing to happen to the terrorists in return. As terrorists, they deserve to be treated as terrorists. A hundred years ago killing Nazis after the liberation of Germany was the right thing to do, but now it's supposed to be wrong?
If we acted the same way it would reinforce their agenda. My comment blew up.
Update/Edit: if you think killing people is the answer to solving the world's problems then you are a fucking premtitive shitty human being and are a part of the problem.
No action will also reinforce their agenda
Yeah hence why when the Nazis invaded Europe we never invaded them back, because that would have just reinforced the Nazi agenda.
No it wouldn't, you are helping their agenda by discouraging the left from taking up arms.
History has shown time and time again that pacifism cannot defeat conservatism. Conservatives see pacifism as an invitation to attack.
They do no rely on our actions to advance their agenda of hate. Conservatives will advance their agenda of hate with or without our input. They can only be stopped by force.
I dunno. I've thought, for quite some time, that we'll lose because the only way to combat the far-right is to stoop to their levels and we, naturally, are to ethical to do so. I'm increasingly on the side of see-a-nazi-punch-a-nazi, although I'm horrified by violence and probably wouldn't have the courage to do so.
It seems unlikely that this would have any political effect, let alone a negative one. Perpetual gun violence is an unremarkable feature of life in the United States.
All the downvotes you're getting on this one... YIKES I don't think this is a very good community.
There are times violence is necessary, with Nazi Germany being the classic example.
That said, most of the time, even for many times where violence might be "right" it's still a strategic error. It's much harder to build than destroy and any "successful" deployment of violence requires physical and institutional/relational rebuilding.
Violence can make it harder to attract supporters to your cause. It gives your opponents the feeling of moral justification in also exercising violence. In a full on conflict, it reduces the ability of key supporters (the young, elderly, disabled, many women) from contributing to the struggle compared with non violent action
Militant trans sentiment is growing.
Everyone talking about the victim, etc what happened to the murderer? Is they in prisión now?
According to the article they were shot and killed by law enforcement
Murica
Good. Hopefully, they suffered before being thrown back into the hole they crawled out of
Shot them back.
If you can't be bothered to read TFA, please don't enter the discussion.
Trying to make memes is a waste of time. Spend an hour trying to make something funny in photoshop, 4 upvotes. Literally just read the second line of an article and put it in the comments, 50 upvotes. Not that I care about internet points, but if I did I would never waste my time actually trying to make something insightful!
Is this the start of them hunting down libs? Party of law and order people.
War is here? We have 350 million plus people. I don't see how you can call the occasional incident "war". If it was violence targeted at non-conservatives even once every few days I could see your point maybe. But as violent and awful as America is, I think the vast majority of our violence is not political in nature.
California has entered the chat with a bit more money at over double the economic productivity of Texas (#2) and New York (#3)
California is where the money is at, New York/ New England just has a higher proportion of rich people living there.
Funny how these murder-babies are never from the north east
New York State isn't in the North East? I seem to remember a really bad day at a grocery store in Buffalo, a deli getting blasted in NYC, a subway getting shot to shit in NYC, and recently some psycho on a scooter running around popping people at random.
Tragic and unacceptable.
Why are you associating that with this?
I'm hoping they never release the killers identity to the public. Spreading around that hateful persons likeness and beliefs all over media and articles only empowers others to do the same thing. Leave them as a nameless pictureless murderer with no agenda or beliefs, just some bigoted murderer.
Others are empowered and emboldened to do the same thing regardless of whether this person's name makes it out. The right knows that they have a near monopoly on political violence so their agenda is to feed poison to the unstable so that they'll commit violence to make people fear to be themselves and supportive of others. I've heard about a shit-ton of abortion clinic bombings and murders, can't think of a single "crisis pregnancy center" issue.
Hell, when the Supreme Court got concerned about protesters they were absolutely fine with there being special guidelines for them. But for a person seeking an abortion? Nope, you'll get to have unstable "Christian" shitheads yelling in your face while they take pictures of you and your car to distribute to their network of terrorists.
I see what you're getting at, but the point of keeping this person anonymous is to lessen their ability to be used by people as a symbol or turn them into a martyr. It's far easier for bigots to say "remember Joe Johnson, we fight for him or whatever" and spin it their way than it is to say "remember that guy who shot the guy who hung up a flag? He's our man!"
Not tying a name to the criminal prevents them from being immortalized because they're not "Joe the defender" or whatever, they're "a murderer". There will still be bigots out there for sure, but leaving this person nameless gives them one less thing to latch on to.
You're absolutely not wrong. Sadly though, there's a world in which are both right and we're living in it. More than a few times school shooters have been copycats who likened themselves to the colombine shooters, or who literally wanted to be in the media and have people talking about them.
The amount of time and effort put into remembering the perpetrators of these heinous crimes is so much greater than the memories of those they killed. That's the part I'd like to change. I know it'll never happen, gotta get those views for the ad money, but I can hope.
Kill-billies kill. It's all they know, it's all they can do.
Yeah open warfare in the streets is not, in fact, the solution to this problem.
When criminals have guns and are willing to use them being able to defend yourself is your final option. Making it known that your group isn’t a soft target makes them second guess trying it.
Damn my hometown...
This shit is why I just stay at home.
I didn't have anything to do with it.
The bio of the victim from her store's website:
What a waste. A tragedy for that whole family for literally nothing. No reason at all other than small minded assholes.
Yeah, it's the second civil war starting. Expect to see more terrible garbage like this on your feeds as we reach 2024 and beyond.
there aren't enough psychopaths to have a civil war over lgbt flags
The first civil war never REALLY ended, just went a bit cold.
I'm curious, do you actually think there is going to be another civil war?