Charleston church shootings - why is everyone only talking about race?

[HootsMon]

Obviously there was a racial motivation to this outrage - the shooter has confessed as much - and god knows I have no idea what is must be like to be black in parts of the US. I'm sure they get the shitty end of the baton on many occasions.

But AIBU for being really angry that on news and social media, people seem only to be talking about the race issue - tying it in with recent police beatings, etc.- instead of the real issue, which is IMO - GUNS!

You get racist dicks in every country - America is one of the few countries that you can give one a gun for his 21st birthday.

I agree wholeheartedly, math. It is very much about race.

Guns are a bit of a dangerous topic for any politician to touch here. This is particularly true for any Democrat. There are people who are fanatically pro-gun and seem to think that every Democrat in power wants to take their guns away. They think this even if said Democrat has never said anything about guns.

We're not all fanatically pro-gun. I have never owned a gun and have no plans to.

"You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”

I think it's time America examined male insecurity and male entitlement too, the sort of underdeveloped personality traits and fundamental misogyny (i.e. failure to see women as equal and fully human in their own right) from which arise phrases like 'our women'.

In a venn diagram, the perception that guns are needed and the idea that women are property would intersect.

The 'rape our women' ideation goes as far back as the Civil War and post-reconstruction South and is a popular White Supremacist 'talking point'.

American men, in general, are no more insecure or entitled as men in any other country. Nor are they any more 'underdeveloped' or misogynistic than men in any other first world country.

Don't confuse them with their portrayals on film and TV. Any more than I would assume that all British men are bumbling child-men a la Hugh Grant.

The 'rape our women' thing is laughable. As if white men never rape/d black women (slave-owners, especially) or, indeed, white women and every shade in between.

Why go into a church and indiscriminately slaughter men, women and children, if the issue is rape?

The "rape our women" thing also carries a nasty assumption that a white woman can't or shouldn't consent to sex with a black man. It's just odious in so many ways.

The idea that blacks are somehow "taking over" is and always has been ludicrous as well as racist. 8% of our members of Congress are black. Our President is just as white as he is black. Every other president in US history has been white. About 12% of the population identifies as black.

I sort of agree OP. The trouble with making this about race is that it ennobles this evil fucker's actions. Ascribing a political motivation gives him credit as a rational person and makes it everybody's guilt. Rather than saying he was a sick evil nihilistic bastard. I think mental illness has loads to do with that. He is a random madman. His political views deserve no platform. This is a crime not a political action. I felt about the same about 9/11. Making it political made it somehow excusable or understandable. And detracted from the immorality and downright evil.

There are other countries where gun ownership is very high - Switzerland for example. They don't seem to have these massacres very often. (And in France, you can buy shotgun cartridges in the hypermarket.)

I would also point out that a car can be used to murder and hurt a lot of people very quickly; a larger vehicle even more so.

It really isn't guns that kill people; it's people who kill people.

I don't want to come across as some kind of gun lobbyist. I don't own any guns, and have no desire to. I just think people need to realise that the situation isn't as simple as "ban all guns".

(And of course it's to do with race. The perpetrator clearly stated that.)

The gun was the means to carry out the crime but the motivation was racial intolerance. Why is it so strange that the motivation for the crime would be prominent in its reporting? It seems very strange that this is even a question.

Sanityclause, I've heard that 'cars are killers too' argument before, but there is one very simple difference between a car and a gun.

A cars primary purpose is not to kill.

People have cars because they need to get to work, or get their kids to school, not because they want the ability to kill.

My thoughts with the families involved. I did See an interview last night where someone from the gun lobby pretty much said people should take guns into the church. How awful if thats how things have come to and its not going to help. This was a church. A place of worship guns shouldnt be there! The availabilty of guns in america is too easy. Very cross a certain paper is running a story on the killers sister. Really think this story should be removed dm if you are reading this.

As much as we don't like to imagine it many people are capable of terrible actions against our fellow humans given the right circumstances. Blaming it on some unspecified 'mental illness' avoids the real problems. Look at the civil wars in places such as Somalia and Yugoslavia. Ordinary people carrying out horrific rapes and murders of people who were previously their neighbours.

It may emerge that this man has delusions/ hallucinations or it may not. However, he is unlikely to be someone fermenting hate on his own. There are Neo Nazi style groups in the U.S and elsewhere that discuss race wars etc. to me this man is a terrorist in much the same way as people like Anders Brevik and Timothy McVeigh. I am guessing Fox weren't so quick to explain the Boston marathon bombers as mentally ill.

I agree that guns are a major problem in allowing such actions to happen easily. However, to ignore race as a motive in this murder is a mistake.

I feel very uncomfortable with blaming it on mental illness. If he gets diagnosed at some point, fine.

I just find the almost knee-jerk reaction that because someone has done something horrendous, an act incomprehensible to many, that they must be mentally ill. This adds to the stigmatism of mental illness.

Just because someone is a cunt, doesn't make them mentally ill.

Balabosta it is all about race. That's all. I think most whites in organisations like the nra keep guns in case they need to kill the mythical black hordes who are after them.

even in church black Americans are not safe from white Americans.

The emphasis is changing slightly now; apparently the gunman had planned originally to shoot students at the nearby university.

But I do agree that the problem is guns, and America's intransigent attitude towards private ownership of them.

Should also say that when people blame mental illness for an act, it is almost given as an excuse. 'oh, he couldn't help it, he is mentally ill'. People with mental illness do commit crimes, but one doesn't automatically follow the other.

I agree. It's about race.

Unless we want to define all violence as springing from mental illness.

yabfu

AcrossthePond, this is a genuine question, why does your DH have a gun? I've never met anyone who has one and I'm honestly curious as to why someone would own one.

Obama talked about the gun issue, but he knows that with a Republican majority in congress there is literally nothing that can be done.

If it was impossible to achieve progress on the gun issue after the death of 20 kids and 6 teachers in a predominantly white area, then it is vanishingly unlikely that the deaths of 9 black people in the South will be the trigger for new legislation. That's the reality of the matter.

I like this article in the guardian.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/19/charleston-shootings-guns-race-america-shackled-to-its-past

President Obama is also talking about guns too. Although I think, as usual, that Jon Stewart speaks a huge amount of sense.

But AIBU for being really angry that on news and social media, people seem only to be talking about the race issue - tying it in with recent police beatings, etc.- instead of the real issue, which is IMO - GUNS!

Yes of course, 7/7 was about bombs, just bombs, as were all bombings in 1970s/1980s, just bombs, if they had been banned then... Oh and the Yorkshire ripper, if we had banned knives and hammers he wouldn't have killed would he?

OP people are talking about race because that is what it is about. Some one thought he had a right to life and other people didn't because of skin colour. It is irrelevant whether he used a gun, a bomb or a knife. He wanted to kill people and that is what he did.

YANBU.

As ever, this is a complex problem, not amenable to simplistic solutions.

Racial tension, social discrimination, prejudice AND poor gun control make for a very volatile mix.

The gun lobby in the US is ridiculously powerful, sadly backed by rather a large proportion of the population.

Brining mental illness in to the argument is just deliberate and disingenuous attempt at blaming this latest atrocity in Charleston on a 'lone mad man', rather than looking at it as part of a wider malaise - just what you'd expect from FOX

Guns are partly about race. Fear of the 'other'

Google Jon Stewart The Daily Show, Charleston