http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/06/orlando-shooting-is-us-gun-lobby.html
Yet another tragic mass shooting in America--this time in an Orlando gay night club with the heaviest recorded death toll in a mass shooting in American history. The culprit: Omar Mateen, a young AR-15 high-powered assault-rifle-wielding American-born Muslim reportedly self-radicalized remotely by ISIS via the Internet.
Could the Orlando night club tragedy have been prevented if America had fewer Muslims, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggests? Would the results have been less tragic with smaller death toll if America had stricter gun-control laws, as President Obama argues? To answer these questions, let's consider the following excerpt from a recent New York Time column written by Nicholas Kristof:
"Over the last two decades, Canada has had eight mass shootings. Just so far this month, the United States has already had 20........Could it be, as Donald Trump suggests, that the peril comes from admitting Muslims? On the contrary, Canadians are safe despite having been far more hospitable to Muslim refugees: Canada has admitted more than 27,000 Syrian refugees since November, some 10 times the number the United States has.......More broadly, Canada’s population is 3.2 percent Muslim, while the United States is about 1 percent Muslim — yet Canada doesn’t have massacres like the one we just experienced at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., or the one in December in San Bernardino, Calif. So perhaps the problem isn’t so much Muslims out of control but guns out of control."
Source: New York Times
Although the Orlando shooting is the deadliest to date, it is one in top 5 mass shootings in America. The other three were carried out by non-Muslim shooters. One thing common among these mass shootings is that each of these involved the use of the AR-15 automatic assault rifle that was designed for use by the US military in Vietnam war to kill a large number of people quickly.
A third of the world's 15 deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the United States. Orlando shooting with 49 dead ranks third in the world on this list. The world's deadliest mass shooting was carried out by a Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik who is not a Muslim. To the contrary, Breivik was motivated by hatred of Muslims and Islam.
Source: New York Times
It appears that the Norwegian white supremacist terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto against the "Islamization of Western Europe" was heavily influenced by the kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric that is typical of the Nazi-loving Hindu Nationalists like late Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906-1973), and his present-day Sangh Parivar followers and sympathizers in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who currently rule India. This Hindutva rhetoric which infected Breivik has been spreading like a virus on the Internet, particularly on many of the well-known Islamophobic hate sites that have sprouted up in Europe and America in recent years. In fact, much of the Breivik manifesto is cut-and-pastes of anti-Muslim blog posts and columns that validated his worldview.
After the Oregon mass shooting in October 2015, President Barack H. Obama finally asked the questions that many American Muslim victims of Islamophobia have been asking for a long time: How many Americans have been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade? And how many Americans have died in gun violence.
Here's the exact quote from Obama's speech after mass shooting in rural Oregon:
“I would ask news organizations – because I won’t put these facts forward – have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you. “We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?”
The President's question got the media attention. CNN, among others, compiled the data and put the following graph on its website:
Sources: CDC and US Security Officials Via CNN
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 316,545 people deaths by firearms on U.S. soil from 2004 to 2013. This figure is 1000 times higher than the total deaths of 313 Americans by terrorism at home and abroad in the same period.
Aided by the gun lobby and its conservative supporters, anti-terrorism and Islamophobia have emerged as major new US industries in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 911. Anti-terror industry is worth trillions of dollars. Islamophobia industry, estimated at $200 million, reinforces and promotes the fear of Islam and Muslims for its own gains. With their entrenched vested interests, the growth of these industries has served to distract attention from the 1000X bigger problem of gun violence. The National Rife Association, also know as the gun lobby, has taken full advantage of the situation by buying out the majority of US Congress which opposes even most modest gun safety regulations.
In addition to distracting Americans' attention from growing gun violence, increased spending on Islamophobia is having a significant impact on Americans' perception of Muslim Americans. Results differ by political party, with the majority of Republicans holding negative views of both Arab-Americans and Muslims. Democrats gave Arab-Americans a 30 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 33 percent unfavorable rating, while Republicans gave Arab-Americans a 54 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 63 percent unfavorable rating, according to public opinion survey conducted by Zogby Analytics.
I'm glad to see President Obama finally highlighting the issue of gun violence as the biggest public safety issue in America, far bigger than the issue of terrorism. I hope the President will continue to use his bully pulpit to highlight the problem of gun violence and persuade Americans to not vote for those to US Congress who oppose gun control legislation. I also hope that other individuals, organizations and the mass media will support Mr. Obama's campaign to bring about a sea change in American thinking about gun rights.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Anders Breivik Inspired by Hindutva Rhetoric
Trump's Dog-Whistle Politics of Islamophobia & Racism
Silicon Valley Stands Against Islamophobia
US Gun Violence
Money is Free Speech in America
King's Hypocrisy
FBI Entrapping Young Muslims
Saudi Prince Funding Hate in America
http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/06/orlando-shooting-is-us-gun-lobby.html
Yet another tragic mass shooting in America--this time in an Orlando gay night club with the heaviest recorded death toll in a mass shooting in American history. The culprit: Omar Mateen, a young AR-15 high-powered assault-rifle-wielding American-born Muslim reportedly self-radicalized remotely by ISIS via the Internet.
Could the Orlando night club tragedy have been prevented if America had fewer Muslims, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggests? Would the results have been less tragic with smaller death toll if America had stricter gun-control laws, as President Obama argues? To answer these questions, let's consider the following excerpt from a recent New York Time column written by Nicholas Kristof:
"Over the last two decades, Canada has had eight mass shootings. Just so far this month, the United States has already had 20........Could it be, as Donald Trump suggests, that the peril comes from admitting Muslims? On the contrary, Canadians are safe despite having been far more hospitable to Muslim refugees: Canada has admitted more than 27,000 Syrian refugees since November, some 10 times the number the United States has.......More broadly, Canada’s population is 3.2 percent Muslim, while the United States is about 1 percent Muslim — yet Canada doesn’t have massacres like the one we just experienced at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., or the one in December in San Bernardino, Calif. So perhaps the problem isn’t so much Muslims out of control but guns out of control."
Source: New York Times
Although the Orlando shooting is the deadliest to date, it is one in top 5 mass shootings in America. The other three were carried out by non-Muslim shooters. One thing common among these mass shootings is that each of these involved the use of the AR-15 automatic assault rifle that was designed for use by the US military in Vietnam war to kill a large number of people quickly.
A third of the world's 15 deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the United States. Orlando shooting with 49 dead ranks third in the world on this list. The world's deadliest mass shooting was carried out by a Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik who is not a Muslim. To the contrary, Breivik was motivated by hatred of Muslims and Islam.
Source: New York Times
It appears that the Norwegian white supremacist terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto against the "Islamization of Western Europe" was heavily influenced by the kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric that is typical of the Nazi-loving Hindu Nationalists like late Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906-1973), and his present-day Sangh Parivar followers and sympathizers in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who currently rule India. This Hindutva rhetoric which infected Breivik has been spreading like a virus on the Internet, particularly on many of the well-known Islamophobic hate sites that have sprouted up in Europe and America in recent years. In fact, much of the Breivik manifesto is cut-and-pastes of anti-Muslim blog posts and columns that validated his worldview.
After the Oregon mass shooting in October 2015, President Barack H. Obama finally asked the questions that many American Muslim victims of Islamophobia have been asking for a long time: How many Americans have been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade? And how many Americans have died in gun violence.
Here's the exact quote from Obama's speech after mass shooting in rural Oregon:
“I would ask news organizations – because I won’t put these facts forward – have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you. “We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?”
The President's question got the media attention. CNN, among others, compiled the data and put the following graph on its website:
Sources: CDC and US Security Officials Via CNN
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 316,545 people deaths by firearms on U.S. soil from 2004 to 2013. This figure is 1000 times higher than the total deaths of 313 Americans by terrorism at home and abroad in the same period.
Aided by the gun lobby and its conservative supporters, anti-terrorism and Islamophobia have emerged as major new US industries in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 911. Anti-terror industry is worth trillions of dollars. Islamophobia industry, estimated at $200 million, reinforces and promotes the fear of Islam and Muslims for its own gains. With their entrenched vested interests, the growth of these industries has served to distract attention from the 1000X bigger problem of gun violence. The National Rife Association, also know as the gun lobby, has taken full advantage of the situation by buying out the majority of US Congress which opposes even most modest gun safety regulations.
In addition to distracting Americans' attention from growing gun violence, increased spending on Islamophobia is having a significant impact on Americans' perception of Muslim Americans. Results differ by political party, with the majority of Republicans holding negative views of both Arab-Americans and Muslims. Democrats gave Arab-Americans a 30 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 33 percent unfavorable rating, while Republicans gave Arab-Americans a 54 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 63 percent unfavorable rating, according to public opinion survey conducted by Zogby Analytics.
I'm glad to see President Obama finally highlighting the issue of gun violence as the biggest public safety issue in America, far bigger than the issue of terrorism. I hope the President will continue to use his bully pulpit to highlight the problem of gun violence and persuade Americans to not vote for those to US Congress who oppose gun control legislation. I also hope that other individuals, organizations and the mass media will support Mr. Obama's campaign to bring about a sea change in American thinking about gun rights.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Anders Breivik Inspired by Hindutva Rhetoric
Trump's Dog-Whistle Politics of Islamophobia & Racism
Silicon Valley Stands Against Islamophobia
US Gun Violence
Money is Free Speech in America
King's Hypocrisy
FBI Entrapping Young Muslims
Saudi Prince Funding Hate in America
http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/06/orlando-shooting-is-us-gun-lobby.html
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