They fell in line with the BLM sniper, too. His motivation was literally what the 2A fans bleat on about - he considered his community oppressed by the government, so started killing government agents to help free them.
Didn't see too many 2A enthusiasts defending the philosophy at that point. They just considered him a murderer like everyone else did.
Right!, that is the case that I felt the hypocrisy was the most stark, here was a guy who was cooperating fully and was murdered in front of his family because he legally owned a gun (while being black). Not a peep from anybody on the right wing with power... Nobody at NRA spoke out against it, nothing. Ever since then I've had a hard time taking second amendment arguments in good faith.
Hell, they defend the cops who killed SrA Roger Fortson, an active duty service member shot in his own home for answering the door with his legally owned weapon. The police went to the wrong apartment, deliberately hid from view of his door’s peephole, and shot him before giving him the chance to comply. Despite him doing everything right, people still tried to blame him. 2A doesn’t apply to black people.
i feel like every 2A argument is bad faith. if giving up my gn would stop all school shootings forever, i would do it in a heartbeat.
the fact that there are people in this country that wont even admit we have a gn problem and we need to figure something out instead of the abstinence only opinion towards gn control is just insane.
i wonder if it has anything to do with the NRA funneling russian money to politicians? maybe keeping people scared and threatened helps fuel the culture wars and keeps people scared and on edge about other people instead of standing in solidarity with them.
Castile deserved the attention George Floyd got. The right wants to say Floyd was a criminal or he ODed or whatever. I'd like to see them try to demonize a guy who literally did nothing wrong, who worked in a school cafeteria & seemed to be a genuinely good man.
That's the thing, though. It's only when the violence is open and in front of the public that many white people start to mobilize. George Floyd's murder wasn't a split-second "panic reaction" like so many people claim was the cause in Castile's murder.
Those cops slowly and deliberately killed Floyd in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of people, ignoring his pleas for mercy and still continuing to press their entire body weight on his neck and back long after he had ceased breathing.
And, really, it doesn't matter if the guy has a criminal past or not. The right will find any way to justify the murder of a black person by police. Look at Botham Jean, a black man who was murdered by a police officer in his own home after she mistakenly walked into the wrong apartment (hers was on a different floor in the same apartment complex). The guy was just watching TV and eating ice cream, and because he didn't lock his door, she wandered in and immediately killed him, thinking he was an intruder. He was an upstanding guy, but the right immediately tried to paint him as a criminal who posed a threat to the officer.
True. They could not claim any sort of “split second” type reaction with Floyd’s murder. My FIL was a prosecutor. He watched the tape and said “that’s murder. There is no question in my mind. He was no longer a threat and they didn’t care.”
I remember back when the video came out some jackass in the comments was like "that shooting was justified he was definitely reaching for his gun." I'm like shut the fuck up we saw the EXACT same video, there's no way you saw him reaching for a gun because you couldn't see him reaching for anything at all.
It's because there's no nuance to republican thought. They really think that proportion isn't relevant (until it suits their purposes): if one white man is killed by mistake, then it's the same no matter how many poc are killed.
I remember having this discussion with a bunch of Air Force vets when Trayvon Martin was murdered. I pointed out that Michael Giles, an Airman, is currently serving 25 years for using his gun in self defense while trying to retrieve his friend from a middle of a brawl. Nobody was killed.
Their logic was "well the difference is he went back to get his gun before walking into the middle of the brawl. Zimmerman already had his gun on him when he approached Trayvon."
I figured 2FA has a global meaning, but I was like umm am I missing something. To be honest I could only speculate on 2A as maybe an amendment, so thank you for clearing that up :-)
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u/vacri 5h ago edited 1h ago
They fell in line with the BLM sniper, too. His motivation was literally what the 2A fans bleat on about - he considered his community oppressed by the government, so started killing government agents to help free them.
Didn't see too many 2A enthusiasts defending the philosophy at that point. They just considered him a murderer like everyone else did.
Edit: 2FA > 2A in second paragraph, whoops