General Mass Shooting Thread (originally Las Vegas Strip)

[TradeTheBeal!]

Arm all journalists.

Shoot to kill.

Stand your ground.

 

#antifa

[AsburySkinsFan]

9 hours ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

Yeah, looks like this guy was just a ****ing nut. Politicizing this event and making it into something it wasn't could do more harm than good. Trump's rhetoric is dangerous. We'll be lucky if something like this doesn't happen because of his words. This particular event doesn't appear to be it though.

But THAT’s the problem with what Trump is saying! You guys are acting like Trump’s “the media is the enemy of the people” comments were somehow going to trigger sane people into taking up arms against the media!

Wake up already! Trump’s madness was ALWAYS going to be the trigger for some nutcase, but then Trump can sit back washing his hands of culpabiblity and say, “Not my fault, that guy was nuts!”

Well no **** Sherlock!

[Cooked Crack]

 

[Long n Left]

6 hours ago, visionary said:

 

We talk about mental illness, and how strong the link is to these kind of events, but reading something like this makes me realize that this country has a collective mental derangement. 

[Dan T.]

1 hour ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

The people who put out that paper today are my heroes. 

[Spaceman Spiff]

2 hours ago, AsburySkinsFan said:

But THAT’s the problem with what Trump is saying! You guys are acting like Trump’s “the media is the enemy of the people” comments were somehow going to trigger sane people into taking up arms against the media!

Wake up already! Trump’s madness was ALWAYS going to be the trigger for some nutcase, but then Trump can sit back washing his hands of culpabiblity and say, “Not my fault, that guy was nuts!”

Well no **** Sherlock!

 

I...ugh.   I can't believe I'm saying this but I don't disagree with Trump here.  I've hated the media (again, the major mainstream outlets, Fox, CNN, MSNBC) for a long, long time.  Somewhere along the line they started caring more about clicks, page hits, BEING FIRST, ratings, hammering home agendas and infotainment over accuracy, and who, what, where, when and why.  Walter Cronkite, as left leaning as he was in his personal beliefs, truly kept it fair and balanced.  That's how he got the moniker "The Most Trusted Man In America."  I don't trust any of them today.

 

I wouldn't say the mainstream, large corporate networks are necessarily the "enemy of the people" but the people lose when the mainstream media prioritizes all the stuff I listed above over being accurate, the people certainly lose.  The media, understandably, doesn't like it when someone calls them out.  They certainly don't like it when it's someone calling them out that they revile.  I think Trump just doesn't like the media because they don't like him.  Anyone who doesn't like him is automatically the worst thing ever and his foaming at the mouth base agrees without thinking.  It's dangerous.  I don't think he has any thoughts on media issues and how journalism at the major outlets isn't good.

 

I don't think yesterday's shooting had anything to do with Trump/Milo as it appears this guy had a grudge against the paper going back for years.  But as I said before, Trump/Milo certainly don't help matters. 

 

[AsburySkinsFan]

Joe Freaking Walsh.......

Edited June 29, 2018 by AsburySkinsFan

[AsburySkinsFan]

2 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

I...ugh.   I can't believe I'm saying this but I don't disagree with Trump here.  I've hated the media (again, the major mainstream outlets, Fox, CNN, MSNBC) for a long, long time.  Somewhere along the line they started caring more about clicks, page hits, BEING FIRST, ratings, hammering home agendas and infotainment over accuracy, and who, what, where, when and why.  Walter Cronkite, as left leaning as he was in his personal beliefs, truly kept it fair and balanced.  That's how he got the moniker "The Most Trusted Man In America."  I don't trust any of them today.

 

I wouldn't say the mainstream, large corporate networks are necessarily the "enemy of the people" but the people lose when the mainstream media prioritizes all the stuff I listed above over being accurate, the people certainly lose.  The media, understandably, doesn't like it when someone calls them out.  They certainly don't like it when it's someone calling them out that they revile.  I think Trump just doesn't like the media because they don't like him.  Anyone who doesn't like him is automatically the worst thing ever and his foaming at the mouth base agrees without thinking.  It's dangerous.  I don't think he has any thoughts on media issues and how journalism at the major outlets isn't good.

 

I don't think yesterday's shooting had anything to do with Trump/Milo as it appears this guy had a grudge against the paper going back for years.  But as I said before, Trump/Milo certainly don't help matters. 

 

EVERYONE has an issue with the current state of the media in this country....NOT everyone calls them "the enemy of the people". For Christ's sake those two things are NOT the same! You have Trump AND Milo BOTH putting targets on the media's back and then a guy who is obviously deranged decides to act on his long boiling grudge within DAYS of Trump's and Milo's VERY public statements. 

Yeah, you may cleanse Milo and Trump of their guilt but I won't.

You don't get to say **** like that and then plead innocence when someone guns down the very people you called the enemy of the American people. 

 

I had a professor who once said that sooner or later we needed to hold accountable those who preach a certain theology when others take the extremes in that theology and put them into practice. That's EXACTLY what's going on here. Are you going to tell me that this guy heard Trump's and Milo's statements and thought, "Nah bruh, that ain't right." Or was it just more fuel for his long festering fire?

Which do you feel is more plausible?

[AsburySkinsFan]

——-

Oh and no exaggeration here....

Hannity is Prothero...

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

14 minutes ago, AsburySkinsFan said:

EVERYONE has an issue with the current state of the media in this country....NOT everyone calls them "the enemy of the people". For Christ's sake those two things are NOT the same! You have Trump AND Milo BOTH putting targets on the media's back and then a guy who is obviously deranged decides to act on his long boiling grudge within DAYS of Trump's and Milo's VERY public statements. 

Yeah, you may cleanse Milo and Trump of their guilt but I won't.

You don't get to say **** like that and then plead innocence when someone guns down the very people you called the enemy of the American people. 

 

I had a professor who once said that sooner or later we needed to hold accountable those who preach a certain theology when others take the extremes in that theology and put them into practice. That's EXACTLY what's going on here. Are you going to tell me that this guy heard Trump's and Milo's statements and thought, "Nah bruh, that ain't right." Or was it just more fuel for his long festering fire?

Which do you feel is more plausible?

 

Well, considering you'd blame Trump for a rainy day and anything else terrible in the world...

 

I didn't call the people at the paper the enemy of the American people, I said it was the mainstream media that I have an issue with.  Local papers aren't an issue.  Then again, you're riled up as usual about all things anti Trump and clearly didn't read who I said I had an issue with.

 

I'm more interested to know if this guy knows who Milo is and pays attention to what Trump is saying.  You seem to automatically assume that because you want that to be the case because it'd make you right.  And if you were right, I'd say congratulations.  But if you're a lawyer and your case is built around the fact that this guy shot up a newspaper he had issues with for years while not having any pro-Trump/pro Milo positions on his publicly accessible social media accounts but somehow he's goosestepping to their agendas because of comments made a few days earlier...well, I think you'd lose.

 

Is it plausible that this guy never heard Milo and Trump at all?  Again, assuming so fits with your narrative.  I genuinely don't know what to think.  Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.  Either way, 5 people are dead and that's a tragedy.  

[Fresh8686]

If we want to parse things, we can at least agree that these people like Trump are creating or contributing to a climate that validates and approves of violence towards the media. People sell shirts about hanging the media, Trump validates videos of him body-slamming the CNN logo and harangues the media over and over again. Dictators in other countries are using his fake news playbook and sanctioning the murder/assasination of reporters in their country (Duterte for example).

This climate has escalated and intensified in the past two years. I think people are underestimating the acceptance violence towards the media gets from certain groups of people, now that their President is leading the charge.

Do people on here feel the same way towards the media as Spiff?

For me I respect people like Ari Melber and what I've seen of Shepard Smith because you can see them in real time putting in effort to remain balanced and hold to some journalistic principle. Then there are investigative journalists who do a damn good job and vet their sources and assertions like David Fahrenthold. I also appreciate people who challenge this administration like Katy Tur and Jim Acosta, while disliking the talking head yell-fests on CNN. I guess my point is, the media isn't a monolith and I wonder if the people who have so much vitriol for the media are being somewhat influenced by the culture they're a part of that has this monolithic disdain for them.
 

Edited June 29, 2018 by Fresh8686

[tshile]

14 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

I'm more interested to know if this guy knows who Milo is and pays attention to what Trump is saying.

 

The stories i'm seeing say something to the effect of:

This guy plead guilty to stalking a female

The paper wrote a story about it, and he didn't like the story

He sued for defamation but lost

 

It is entirely possible, and to some degree seems likely, that this is just a nutjob going after a group of people he thinks has wronged him. 

And not a nutjob taking marching orders from trump's henchmen.

 

That's what I'd put my money on at this point. It doesn't deminish what trump's henchmen have said.

[thebluefood]

Not even a little shocked. This is par for the course from reactionaries of all stripes. 

 

This place has been ripe for a full-on fascist uprising for a long time. Hell, the Nazis took lessons from us on "race science" and genocide to create the Third Reich and had considerable support on this side of the Atlantic up until the U.S. entered the war. 

 

Fascism and fascist ideology is malleable and hazy on purpose (Umberto Eco discusses it in Ur-Fascism) - that way its harder to pin down and discredit. They have and will continue to hide behind dog whistles. innuendo, and a veneer of respectability.  But there are almost always the same general targets - all of which pose a direct and existential threat to fascism: 

 

-Ethnic minorities (who pose a threat to the ethnic majority's social and political dominance);

-Political and social opponents, especially from the Left (who pose a threat to the fascist's bend toward nationalism, imperialism, and rabid "Social Darwinist" capitalism - despite their use of vaguely Leftist rhetoric and iconography);

-Labor Unionists (see above), and;

-Journalists, writers, poets, intellectuals, and artists (who expose the inherent lies and brutality of fascist ideology and praxis and disrupt their ability to distribute propaganda)

 

We've been spared a lot of violence journalists have had to endure in places like Occupied Palestine and Syria. But the hatred of journalists has always been a prevalent part of our cultural landscape and no President since Nixon has tapped into it the way this one has. Hopefully I'm wrong about this but I've got a feeling we can expect more of this kind of thing or at least threats of it. If so, we've got to be ready to defend ourselves by any means necessary.

[Spaceman Spiff]

14 minutes ago, tshile said:

 

The stories i'm seeing say something to the effect of:

This guy plead guilty to stalking a female

The paper wrote a story about it, and he didn't like the story

He sued for defamation but lost

 

It is entirely possible, and to some degree seems likely, that this is just a nutjob going after a group of people he thinks has wronged him. 

And not a nutjob taking marching orders from trump's henchmen.

 

That's what I'd put my money on at this point. It doesn't deminish what trump's henchmen have said.

 

Yup, agreed.  

[Spaceman Spiff]

31 minutes ago, Fresh8686 said:

If we want to parse things, we can at least agree that these people like Trump are creating or contributing to a climate that validates and approves of violence towards the media. People sell shirts about hanging the media, Trump validates videos of him body-slamming the CNN logo and harangues the media over and over again. Dictators in other countries are using his fake news playbook and sanctioning the murder/assasination of reporters in their country (Duterte for example).

This climate has escalated and intensified in the past two years. I think people are underestimating the acceptance violence towards the media gets from certain groups of people, now that their President is leading the charge.

Do people on here feel the same way towards the media as Spiff?

For me I respect people like Ari Melber and what I've seen of Shepard Smith because you can see them in real time putting in effort to remain balanced and hold to some journalistic principle. Then there are investigative journalists who do a damn good job and vet their sources and assertions like David Fahrenthold. I also appreciate people who challenge this administration like Katy Tur and Jim Acosta, while disliking the talking head yell-fests on CNN. I guess my point is, the media isn't a monolith and I wonder if the people who have so much vitriol for the media are being somewhat influenced by the culture they're a part of that has this monolithic disdain for them.
 

 

Well, if I can be clear here, I'm not buying or selling shirts for hanging the media, I don't cheer when Trump harangues the media over and over.  I don't accept violence towards the media.

 

My official stance is that I work hard each day, like a lot of people.  We've all got things to deal with outside of work too and at the end of the day, I'm tired.  I'd like to be able to flip on the news or read something online and get caught up but it's hard when you don't trust the outlets.  After work is done, I don't need to be on an Indiana Jones style fact finding mission to figure out what the truth is.  I certainly don't want to listen to the talking head yell-fests on any of the networks.  Hannity can **** all the way off.  My dad watches Fox all the time, it's infuriating.  People confuse that with journalism and news. 

 

I do like Shepard Smith.  The rest of the names I'll check out.  

[TD_washingtonredskins]

1 hour ago, Long n Left said:

We talk about mental illness, and how strong the link is to these kind of events, but reading something like this makes me realize that this country has a collective mental derangement. 

 

This probably isn't the time or the place for my comments, but this entire society has become so self-absorbed and entitled. It manifests itself dozens of ways, but this mentality is baffling to me: "I don't agree with X so I've been tempted to shoot them?" WTF is that? 

[Larry]

1 hour ago, tshile said:

 

The stories i'm seeing say something to the effect of:

This guy plead guilty to stalking a female

The paper wrote a story about it, and he didn't like the story

He sued for defamation but lost

 

It is entirely possible, and to some degree seems likely, that this is just a nutjob going after a group of people he thinks has wronged him. 

And not a nutjob taking marching orders from trump's henchmen.

 

That's what I'd put my money on at this point. It doesn't deminish what trump's henchmen have said.

 

I don't think I've seen anybody claiming that this guy killed those people solely because of Trump.  

 

OTOH, I think it is equally partisan to try to claim that Trump (and the 30 years of GOP propaganda that preceded him) had no effect on him at all.  

 

I mean, even if it were documented that the guy had no internet, no TV, no radio, and no print information, for the last 30 years, he was still immersed in it, if he associated with society at all.  

 

But I absolutely agree that I don't see anything that suggests that Trump was the primary reason.  

 

 

33 minutes ago, TD_washingtonredskins said:

 

This probably isn't the time or the place for my comments, but this entire society has become so self-absorbed and entitled. It manifests itself dozens of ways, but this mentality is baffling to me: "I don't agree with X so I've been tempted to shoot them?" WTF is that? 

 

Well, now, I will confess that I, myself, when I've been sitting in a line of traffic, and I see car after car going past me in the lane that's "left turn only", ahead, and then shoving their way into the line that I'm waiting in, that I absolutely do imagine myself getting dressed up like Clint Eastwood, walking up to their car, shooting out one tire, and telling them "next time, get in the back of the line, and wait your turn like everybody else".  

 

[TD_washingtonredskins]

11 minutes ago, Larry said:

 

Well, now, I will confess that I, myself, when I've been sitting in a line of traffic, and I see car after car going past me in the lane that's "left turn only", ahead, and then shoving their way into the line that I'm waiting in, that I absolutely do imagine myself getting dressed up like Clint Eastwood, walking up to their car, shooting out one tire, and telling them "next time, get in the back of the line, and wait your turn like everybody else".  

 

No I get it, but the actual acting on it feels new. 

 

To me, it feels like there's a new level of entitlement that never existed. The people who 30 years ago might have committed suicide are so self-indulgent in 2018 that they essentially take a bunch of strangers down with them. It just feels like this mass shooting phenomenon is partially related to other symptoms in society. Everyone has to play travel sports. Everyone has to update social media daily on how great their spouse/kids/job/life is. Everyone has to lash out and turn a small inconvenience or annoyance into something viral. 

 

I don't know, I'll stop my old man rant.  

[AsburySkinsFan]

1 hour ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

Well, considering you'd blame Trump for a rainy day and anything else terrible in the world...

This right here is where I stopped reading.

[Spaceman Spiff]

2 minutes ago, AsburySkinsFan said:

This right here is where I stopped reading.

 

We both know that's not true.  Now if you wanna stop with the hyperbole and continue the conversation, I'm happy to do so.

[Dan T.]

This was the onset of the long-running feud Jarrod Ramos had with the paper.  On July 25, 2011 he pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal harassment.  Five days later, the Capital-Gazette published the piece below. 

 

 

 

Jarrod Mayo Wants to Be Your Friend

by Eric Hartley

 

If you're on Facebook, you've probably gotten a friend request or message from an old high school classmate you didn't quite remember.

For one woman, that experience turned into a yearlong nightmare.

Out of the blue, Jarrod Ramos wrote and thanked her for being the only person ever to say hello or be nice to him in school. She didn't remember him, so he sent pictures. She Googled him, found a yearbook picture and realized they apparently did go to Arundel High together.

He was having some problems, so she wrote back and tried to help, suggesting a counseling center.

"I just thought I was being friendly," she said.

That sparked months of emails in which Ramos alternately asked for help, called her vulgar names and told her to kill herself. He emailed her company and tried to get her fired. She stopped writing back and told him to stop, but he continued. When she blocked him from seeing her Facebook page, he found things she wrote on other people's pages and taunted her with it, attaching screenshots of the postings to some of his emails.

She called police, and for months he stopped. But then he started again, nastier than ever. All this without having seen her in person since high school. They never met until they came to court a couple of months ago.

Last week, Ramos, a 31-year-old federal employee, pleaded guilty in District Court to a misdemeanor harassment charge.

Judge Jonas Legum, who called his behavior 'rather bizarre,' suspended a 90-day jail sentence and placed him on probation, ordering him to continue in therapy and not contact the victim or her family in any way.
 

His messages rambled, calling her 'a bipolar drunkard leading a double life' and saying 'Expletive you, leave me alone' though she hadn't written him in months. He told her she was afraid to let a man get close to her and discussed her family, friends, job and Rotary Club involvement–all information gleaned from the Internet.

In January, the victim went to court to get a peace order and file charges. Finally, he stopped for good. Ramos, a tall, thin man with long hair he wears in a ponytail, did not speak at the hearing and did not return a call for comment left with his attorney.

"I read about this all the time, where Facebook conversations, email conversations, start out fine and then take a turn where they become nastier over the course of time," said Ramos' lawyer, Christopher Drewniak, "And this is apparently one of those situations."

 

He has a degree in computer engineering and has worked for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for six years, Drewniak said. He had no previous criminal record. .

The victim, who asked that her name not be printed, said she lived in fear for her safety for months.

 

The case is extreme. But it provides a frightening look at the false intimacy the Internet can offer and the venom that can hide behind a computer screen.

 

 

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21998213/annapolis-capital-gazette-shooting-jarod-ramos/

Edited June 29, 2018 by Dan T.

[Fresh8686]

19 minutes ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

Well, if I can be clear here, I'm not buying or selling shirts for hanging the media, I don't cheer when Trump harangues the media over and over.  I don't accept violence towards the media.

 

My official stance is that I work hard each day, like a lot of people.  We've all got things to deal with outside of work too and at the end of the day, I'm tired.  I'd like to be able to flip on the news or read something online and get caught up but it's hard when you don't trust the outlets.  After work is done, I don't need to be on an Indiana Jones style fact finding mission to figure out what the truth is.  I certainly don't want to listen to the talking head yell-fests on any of the networks.  Hannity can **** all the way off.  My dad watches Fox all the time, it's infuriating.  People confuse that with journalism and news. 

 

I do like Shepard Smith.  The rest of the names I'll check out.  

Sorry man, it wasn't my intention to say you were one of those types. I should have clarified that a little more and I definitely get what you mean about coming home and not wanting to hear the yell-fests and scare-tactics they use to hook an audience.

[AsburySkinsFan]

1 minute ago, Spaceman Spiff said:

 

We both know that's not true.  Now if you wanna stop with the hyperbole and continue the conversation, I'm happy to do so.

You and I are interested on conversation the other side isn’t, make no mistake...they...aren’t interested in conversation.

 

You guys keep waiting to catch Trump with a smoking gun in his hand...I’m sure Chamberlain would be proud of that approach. Everyone keeps talking about the dog whistles but when the wolves actually show up ya’ll can’t figure out why.

 

We’ve already seem from thus guy’s tweets that he felt maligned like Trump, but you keep reserving judgment until you see the tweet or note that says, “I did this for Trump.” Well guess what, the world doesn’t work that way.

[Gibbit]

Why do you even think this guy liked Trump though? He could've been way out in left field for all you know

 

Just a psychopath working for the federal government

Edited June 29, 2018 by Gibbit

[visionary]

2 hours ago, Gibbit said:

Why do you even think this guy liked Trump though? He could've been way out in left field for all you know

 

Just a psychopath working for the federal government

He did tweet seemingly in support of trump at least once, but I guess we’ll have to see if there was any outside influence on his recent actions or what his other social media posting were like.  Most likely something happened recently in his own life to cause him to take this step though.  Not that attacks and disparaging personal attacks on the media help things of course.

Edited June 29, 2018 by visionary