Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Connecticut Shooting/The Westboro Baptist Church

This shooting is horrifying, and it should not have happened. Some of the pictures release post-shooting are heartbreaking and it's so sad that this had to happen so close to Christmas, let alone at all.

This shooting is just another add-on to the list of all the other shootings that have happened this year:
  • January 10, 2012: Three teenagers were shot dead in an ambush in Philadelphia, CBS reported at the time. The 30-year-old suspect opened fire on four teens in a car, killing three and injuring one. 
  • February 21, 2012: Jeong Soo Paek burst into a spa his family owned in Norcross, near Atlanta, Ga. He killed four relatives before turning the gun on himself, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported at the time. Police speculated that financial problems motivated the shooting.
  • February 27, 2012: A 17-year-old student, T.J. Lane, confessed to going into his Chardon, Ohio high school cafeteria and shooting students at random. Three students died and two were hospitalized, The New York Times reported. Lane said he stole the gun from a relative who had obtained it legally.
  • March 30, 2012: A gunman drove by and opened fire on a crowd of mourners outside a funeral home in Miami, Fla. Two people died and 12 more were injured, the Miami Herald reported. The mourners were gathered for the funeral of 21-year-old Marvin Andre, who also died in a shooting.
  • April 2, 2012: One L. Goh opened fire at Oikos University in Oakland, California. He killed seven people and injured at least three more. Goh was a former student at the school and was said to be angry that he was expelled for poor behavior, CNN reported.
  • April 6, 2012: Five African-American men were gunned down in separate incidents in Tulsa, Oklahoma, ABC reported. Police arrested Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, and said that the murders were motivated by racism. Three men died and two were seriously injured. 
  • May 29, 2012: Ian Stawicki went to a cafe in Seattle’s University district, shooting and killing four people, ABC reported at the time. He then fled to a parking lot and shot another woman before killing himself. He wasn’t thought to have known his victims.
  • July 20, 2012: James Holmes, 24, allegedly broke into a midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colo., killing 12 people and injuring roughly 60 more. Later, police revealed that Holmes, a doctoral student in neuroscience, spent $20,000 on ammunition and weapons. 
  • August 5, 2012: Seven people died after gunfire broke out at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The gunman, identified by police as Wade Michael Page, also died in the shooting. He was a white supremacist and the shootings were said to be racially motivated.
  • August 13, 2012: Three people including a police officer were killed in shootings near the campus of Texas A&M University. The alleged shooter, Thomas Caffell, was said to be obsessed with video games and having financial problems.
  • August 24, 2012: Jeffrey Johnson shot a former coworker and injured nine more people before being shot and killed by police. The shooting occurred near New York’s Empire State Building during rush hour.
And that's just this year. Honestly? This bullshit needs to stop.

Here is Morgan Freeman’s brilliant take on what happened yesterday:

You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here’s why.
It’s because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed
people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he’ll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.

CNN’s article says that if the body count “holds up”, this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer’s face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer’s identity? None that I’ve seen yet. Because they don’t sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.

You can help by forgetting you ever read this man’s name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news
.”

There's tons of mixed reactions to this shooting, but the ones that bother me quite a bit are the various pro-lifers who are using this as an opportunity to compare the lives of these children that were taken from the world, to all the cells removed from a womans uterus in abortions.  


Not only are those TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS, but it is NO comparison as to what is more important. Abortion comes with many different circumstances, health/emotional needs and financial needs, it happens for so many different reasons and it is NOT murder. There is NO EXCUSE, however, for going into a god damn school and taking the lives of ALREADY EXISTING children, as well as several adults.

Then there's the fucking CNN news, MSNBC, and FOX News, who fucked up big time and reported the wrong persons name as the shooter:


This is Ryan Lanza. His brother, Adam Lanza, I believe, is the shooter who not only took his own life, as well as those kids and adults, but he also took their mothers life as well. So, on top of dealing with his brothers psychotic rampage/death as well as his mothers death, his life is also ruined and possibly in danger because of these news sources fucking up. I'm sure he's received quite a few death threats by now, and who knows whether or not he'll be killed because of this. I just hope this shit gets cleared up so an innocent man's life isn't at risk because of shitty news sources.

Then you have these assholes:
Now, I understand that not all of the people in this screen shot are bad, or don't care and that maybe they do just want to watch Ellen. I mean, she's important to lots of people, but seriously? This is actually pretty important stuff, stuff I'm sure Ellen would want you to pay attention to. Justin bieber may be important to you, but he's no reason to ignore this.

And last, but not least, you have this piss poor excuse of a fucking human being:
Seriously? I cannot believe someone had the audacity to say something like this. "No words. If your guns are more important to you than kindergartners’ lives, I just have nothing to say at all."

He's almost as bad as...

The Westboro Baptist Church
I'm sure the story has gotten around enough by now for you to know that they'd decided to protest the funerals of all those children and adults and are saying the shooting was God punishing Connecticut for making gay marriage legal. So, not only are the parents/families of these people suffering so close to christmas time and in general, but these fucked up douchebags have decided to make everything worse for them. Honestly?
This is sickening. Things just keep piling up on the list of reasons why these people give God a bad name and in general are just bad people. You know what bothers me the most?
The kids in the church. There are little kids in that church who do not know any better and are just simply following the orders of the older kids and adults. I was watching this documentary on youtube that was cut up into various parts and it was this guy who stayed with one of the families in this church for, I guess, a few days and one day he asks a child who is holding a sign on the ground up if they know what said sign means, they glance at the sign, back to him and say 'nope'. They have no idea what the sign means, at all, they're just forced to go with it. I think that's bullshit. They are brainwashing these kids. In my honest opinion, I feel like they're more of a cult than anything. One of the older daughters of the main family in that church, as she got older, started to question their beliefs and was subsequently banned from the church and her family disowned her. 

So... When and if WCB “protests” these funerals, make sure that you get the time and date. If you are local to the area, maintain a safe distance from them. Be there with a tin collecting charitable donations for an organization that benefits children. Absolutely NO ONE wants to see these people here, but there is little you can really do to stop them once they get the green light. The best you can do is make sure that their hatred and bigotry can be used against them; and that means taking their publicity and using it to benefit a positive cause. make sure to fill the street with love and support and positivity.

Also, should they “protest” at these children’s funerals, DO NOT get violent. WBC makes most of their money from lawsuits. throwing a punch might feel good at the time, but you are really just lining their pockets. They make money off making people hate them, and they have TONS of it. If you do counter protest, keep watch on the on lookers and make sure to encourage people to respond peacefully.

But something that I find fascinating has occured among the wake of TWBC's decision, and that is, Anonymous has released private information about various members of this church

I don't know what people will do with the information, or what they'll try to do to the church, but I hope that whatever happens, it teaches them a lesson. They ruin lives, they make people feel like shit, and they're corrupting the young kids who have the misfortune of being born into such a horrible life and upbringing.


These are the victims. I hope that despite this awful tragedy the families can make it through this.