Contributors

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Another Shooting by a White Supremacist Terrorist

Several news outlets are reporting that the Parkland Florida school shooter, Nikolas (spelling Amerika with a 'K') Cruz, was a member of the "Republic of Florida" white supremacist group:
The [Anti-Defamation League] said ROF leader Jordan Jereb told them Cruz was associated with his group. Jereb, who is based in Tallahassee, said Cruz was brought into the group by another member and had participated in one or more ROF training exercises in the Tallahassee area, the ADL said. Law enforcement officials have not confirmed the link.

ROF has mostly young members in north and south Florida and describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and seeks to create a “white ethnostate” in Florida.
Three former schoolmates of Cruz told ABC News that Cruz was part of the group. They claimed he marched with the group frequently and was often seen with Jereb, who also confirmed to ABC News that Cruz was, at least at one point, part of that group. 
If this kid had even the most tenuous connection to any form of Islamic or liberal group, you can be certain that Donald Trump and the Republican echo chamber would be screaming bloody murder about the scourge of Middle East immigrant terrorists and the evils of Mohammedanism.

But since Cruz was a MAGA hat-wearing white supremacist gun nut Trump and the right are only talking about mental illness.

The one thing that all these mass shooters have in common is an infatuation with guns.
The one thing that all these mass shooters have in common -- from Columbine, to Sandy Hook, to Las Vegas, to Parkland -- is an infatuation with guns. Like Cruz, lots of people are depressed and have other mild forms of mental illness. But most don't pose a danger to anyone, except perhaps themselves.

The real danger to society at large is not run-of-the-mill depression or even schizophrenia -- it's this infatuation with guns. It is so common that it needs a name: let's call it Gun Infatuation Syndrome. Gun infatuation is a form of mental illness, like drug addiction, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

People suffering from GIS make guns a basic part of their daily lives. GIS progresses as its sufferers come to devalue human life: since the only purpose of guns is to kill, killing is normalized in their minds. Their positive view of guns metastasizes into a positive view of killing and killers -- Cruz and other mass shooters idolize past mass shooters.

Conservatives are all about profiling people: they were livid when New York gave up the racist Stop and Frisk program, claiming that there would be blood in the streets. But the murder rate dropped precipitously during after stop-and-frisk ended, prompting honest conservatives to admit they were completely wrong about the policy.

Some conservatives want to profile American Muslims and ban all Muslim immigrants because some Muslims are terrorists. Even though the fact is more Americans die at the hands of right-wing racists like Dylann Roof and Nikolas Cruz than Muslims.

The simple fact is: the people most likely to commit mass shootings are those with lots of guns. People who have no compunctions about shooting other people. People who have a chip on their shoulder and feel that they have the right to use lethal force against those they think have wronged them. Narcissistic people obsessed with vengeance.

With a vengeful narcissist in the Oval Office actively promulgating this mindset, is it any wonder that we've already had 18 shootings at schools just six weeks into 2018?

People are blaming the FBI for not doing anything about Cruz after they received warnings about him. But there are literally millions of gun nuts out there like Cruz who post exactly the same crap on the internet that he did.

And whenever the FBI does go after these gun nuts they scream bloody murder about the Deep State and their Second Amendment rights.

So, sure, let's profile the people who are most likely to commit shootings -- people who have lots of guns and are suffering from Gun Infatuation Syndrome. Let's take their guns away and get them into treatment.

Before they shoot up your kid's school.

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