So I was debating with someone on the recent shooting and here is what they said:
"As a resident of Florida, I have jurisdiction to say this;
Let a tragedy be a tragedy. Stop trying to make a tragedy become a political argument or a springboard for an agenda. I am getting tired of this whole thing. #StonemanDouglas was a horrible thing.
What is even more horrible is that- instead of mourning the #StonemanDouglas tragedy, students are trying to challenge a constitutional right to protection and self-defense. They are taking the side of maniacs that know it would be easier to commit crimes without armed civilians
#StonemanDouglas survivors, listen to what I have to say. Stop disrespecting the loss of your classmates by turning their deaths into your platform. Mourn your loss, celebrate the miracle that you’re alive, and try to move on. Your deceased classmates would have wanted that.
You’re right, it’s not more important. It’s equally important. The right to self defense is as important as the lives of the innocent people who would have been saved if the second amendment wasn’t being attacked by heartless people to begin with. Let a tragedy be a tragedy."
So yeah, how do you view this statment? IMO, the guy I was debating with proved himself to be an extremely delusional and ignorant individual.
The fact that this clown thinks that student survivors’ activism for gun control is literally more horrible than the mass murder of their classmates by a teenager with a legally purchased AR-15 tells you all you need to know about their priorities.
I understand the sentiment in general, but in the face of a recurring type of tragedy where no significant changes resulted following the period of letting a tragedy be a tragedy then those words are very hollow.
I remember hearing the bumper sticker version of this argument from my equally dense high school civics teacher back in the day just after Columbine - if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Because we all know that is the case for rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). They’re illegal to possess and look at how rampant criminals are able to get a hold of them. Along with regular fragmentation grenades. And anti-aircraft missiles. And depleted uranium rounds. And fully automatic weapons. It’s almost as if the government was serious enough, it could effectively manage a prohibition against certain types of firearms.
It’s a morally and intellectually vacuous statement. Of fucking course you should talk about how to prevent tragedies. “Now’s not the time” isn’t a statement of values, but a political strategy to get you to shut up.
Pretty egotistical of him to think he knows what the shooting victims would have wanted more so than, say, their friends who watched them get murdered before their very eyes.
It’s a tragedy when the same bad shit keeps happening over and over again, and powerful interests stand in the way of preventing that bad shit from happening in the future.
And it’s either stupidity or brainwashing, or both, when ordinary people refer to that bad shit as a ‘tragedy’ as if nothing could have been done about it.
Oh yeah: Florida’s a pretty big state. My in-laws live in central Florida, on the I-4 corridor. That’s still a hell of a long way from Broward County. Why this clown thinks being a Floridian gives him any special understanding or ‘jurisdiction’ is beyond me.
My only issue is I’d get a little nervous if national groups already involved in this issue start immediately swooping in to grab the kids and use them as their new spokespeople.
Its one thing if the kids want to do something about this themselves. Its another when outside groups start putting words in their mouths.
And which words are theirs and which, ‘are put in their mouths’, determined exactly? Just got a feeling, maybe?
Telling a young adult, they aren’t thinking for themselves, just parroting others, because YOU don’t like what they are saying is taking agency from survivors of a terrible trauma, who have a need and a right to express their truth. And to have it taken, as their truth. If ever there was something that, ‘Now is not the time for…’, this HAS to be it. How incredibly disrespectful!
Tell us exactly, what indicators would are needed, to show they are sincere, and not pawns? Based on what, besides a disagreement with their view, makes them seem like they are simply being used? It’s an easy accusation to make. But a titch slimy, as with zero evidence, it casts serious disrespect, based on just a feeling!
Unless you there is some certain way (there isn’t!) to determine if they are speaking their truth or parroting, this sentiment is simply a way to discredit them. Because you don’t like their view.
It’s not even veiled. Literally everyone can clearly see that for the partisan politics it is.
It’s a disingenuous argument. He says nothing about the response of Trump or any other pro-gun politicians or the NRA. Evidently it’s A-OK for them “to make a tragedy become a political argument or a springboard for a political agenda.” He certainly thinks it’s fine for him to use the tragedy to expound on his views about gun ownership. But the kids who lived through this horrific event should be silent because some of them are promoting gun control? What a ridiculous and intellectually dishonest position for this guy to hold.
And when he claims to know what the murdered students would have wanted, he enters the territory of sheer lunacy.
Out of curiosity: what do you think the odds are that the guy in question opined about a Muslim ban within minutes of hearing about an attack by furriners?