Do you find it odd that there has not been one question asked about the shooting at the Sikh temple, yet there were at least a half dozen questions asked about the shooting at the batman movie?

I am finding lots of things odd these days, one of which is the “non-vigil” being held at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, with media everywhere to talk to every person they can. Apparently, they weren’t viewing a major hollywood production and were therefore not newsworthy.

There is absolutely no way to discuss the situation without bringing up our real homegrown religious terrorists. We don’t like to admit that we have religious extremists within America, and if any reporter had the courage to say it out loud, they would be shouted down as an example of the liberal media and be inundated with death threats.

Seriously, we don’t talk about the abortion doctors who have been killed, or the clinics that get bombed.

I was going to ask a question, but I couldn’t come up with a question about societal factors (guns, mental health, etc) that hadn’t already been asked, and wasn’t rhetorical and mostly just a rant.

We have been discussing it on another forum.

Someone mentioned it briefly in another question on Fluther and I responded but didn’t get an answer to a question about what was meant by a statement that struck me as odd.

I can’t process it yet. What does a white supremacist have against Sikhs? Does he even know anything about them?

@Adirondackwannabe He figured (as have many, many others since 9/11) that they must all be terrorists, and what better way to fight “terrorists” than with an act of terrorism?

I think the entire thing has been odd, @Adirondackwannabe. The first thing that I found really strange was law enforcement calling it an act of domestic terrorism before they had even released his name. I think that was really irresponsible and dangerous to say the least. Of course, now they’ve backed off that definition. But that just struck me as really odd. They questioned a man who was seen at the scene after the fact because he had a tattoo depicting something about 9/11. That is strange to me. The only thing I know for sure is that we don’t know anything for sure yet.

So there are 21 million Sikh terrorists in the US? I’m guessing they were mostly good, responsible citizens just doing their best to fit in while practising their faith.

Sikh doesn’t sound American. No one is familiar with it, so no one cares. Mmmmmhmmm, ‘Murica.

@Blackberry Dude, I like you, but that was disrespectful. It is a major part of Eastern culture.

Perhaps because we just did the mass-murder dinner-and-a-show? There’s other flavors of entertainment to be sampled now.
@Adirondackwannabe Aw, you know he was being sarcastic.

@Blackberry Thanks for responding.

@Adirondackwannabe That was my entire point. Ask a few of your neighbors what the average follower believes.

Oh crap, you’re right. I stand corrected. Fuck what a shitty world.

@Adirondackwannabe I was being sarcastic, but my point was that since this isn’t a religion popular in the west, some people don’t know about it, and that causes them to not care as much. The shooting here touched a lot of people because it affected Americans, living the western lifestyle we’re all familiar with.

@Blackberry I get your point. Crap.

I think part of the reason the coverage here has been minimal is that every time something like this happens, reference is made to the one massacre that occurred here and how it precipitated a dramatic change in the gun laws. They may not be perfect and I think Australia’s turn is coming but there has not been a spate of them over the years as has been there. America’s apparent refusal to change anything regarding gun regulation makes the media and some people here shake their heads and wonder what is it going to take before some sort of change is enacted. I wonder this myself. And to me it matters not if it was a temple or a school or a movie theater, innocence is innocence.

The shooter was a white supremacist. They never needed much prodding to hate.

What is left to ask? Action is required and there is little hope for that. I believe that until we connect these types of crimes to someone in power seeking national dominance, most Americans will let it roll as an isolated incident, yet another one. I also think that we have a cultural conditioning that says we take care of our own, that says get the media out of my backyard, that says if people live in peace then leave them in peace, especially in their grief, that says if giving up our rights would change anything measurably then let’s discuss.

The American culture is such that repealing the second amendment to our constitution would be like playing a game of Jenga with our constitution. Sooner or later all the Bill of Rights would be gone and there would be no United States of America. So I object to messing with our second amendment and I also object to the untrained having guns. I don’t object to requiring that gun owners pass stringent training, maintain that training and carry licenses that says they mastered such training. If they don’t have the money for the training then the trainers are charging too much. But if you can afford a gun then you can afford to learn to use and maintain it responsibly.

So the second amendment is about responsibility and the gun nuts out there who think just having a gun is sufficient are not responsible and should have their rights curtailed, because that’s what we do with people who act irresponsibly.

So was Page irresponsible? We don’t know. Was Holmes? We don’t know. Were they deranged? We don’t know. We don’t know and there is only so much questioning before you run up against “We don’t know.”

This well written and insightful viewpoint is a must read. The studies cited in the column are also relevant.

I’d like to think it’s because it came just after the theater shooting, and that it’s just all too much to process. :(

@DaphneT But isn’t what you just put up there sort of like saying that if all car factories stop making RED cars then fewer people will die in RED cars? Sure, but will the net highway deaths be influenced by that decision if the people who love RED cars just bought white one’s instead? If you think all drivers are tested enough in order to have the privilege to drive then why to so many end up dead? All the training and liability insurance in the world won’t stop anything bad from happening.

I think there are people who want to go down in history being known for having tried to “do something about it” than really achieving positive results.

@woodcutter, is that really to the point? @chyna asked why there weren’t any questions asked. For most people, asking the same questions repeatedly does not solve the problem. Proposing the same solutions doesn’t solve the problem either. Until we know motivations, we don’t know what problem we are trying to solve.

Now it’s been several days, and Page has been identified as a white supremacist, and the media is all about using the information they are being fed by the Fed. Now, has the Fed identified a ‘Red car ‘or a ‘White car’ or ‘lack of training’ or the involvement of ‘liability insurance’? None of the above; they’ve only concluded that ‘car’ was involved and ‘training’ was involved. So the ‘car’ is Page, he was skilled with guns, the ‘training’, and the possible overarching of that is his involvement with white supremacists, the ‘liability insurance’. We still don’t know his motivation.

Without the motivation, how does anything change the fact that the Sikh Temple shooting would just be a re-hash of the Aurora Theater shooting? Do we have enough gun control laws? Do we have the right gun control laws? Should we have any gun control laws? Does everyone have access to the gun control laws? Really, these discussions simply disintegrate into people wanting “to go down in history being known for having tried to “do something about it” than really achieving positive results.”

@DaphneT Welcome to fluther:)