• Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
    140·
    2 days ago

    It’s one of those situations where literally everyone involved is an awful person.

    I do find it rather concerning though that the guy went from wandering around in the street to opening fire in about 1 second. Most murderers have the common decency to at least give everyone some warning signs they can ignore.

    • coyootje@lemmy.worldEnglish
      294·
      2 days ago

      I feel like that all the time when I’m visiting the USA as a tourist. Lots of people walking around armed, sometimes visibly, who could just pull their weapon out and start firing. Any sort of public fight (like 2 people yelling at each other in a restaurant) had me on edge because things could go south quickly.

      • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
        395·
        2 days ago

        The USA is a terrorist state. The real reason republicans didn’t address all the school shootings that the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres were the gateway to was that they benefited personally. People tend to allow for more conservative governance when they find themselves living in a constant state of fear. You’ll also notice they never refer to these terror events as terror events because they need “terrorism” to be something originates from outside the country and is enacted by someone who doesn’t look like you. But really, terrorism is any politically motivated act in which a person commits violence in the hopes of inflicting fear in their victims.

        On April 16, 2007 a lone gunman killed 32 people and himself, and injured 17 more. He had approximately 40k victims. Probably more. I have watched in the last 18 years as the terror I grew up with has become normal to people. When it happened to me, it was stunning, shocking, and unfathomable. Now it happens so often that it doesn’t even usually make the news. The message our spiritual and emotional leaders gave us to carry in that time was that we didn’t deserve this, that no one deserves this. I still believe this to be true. However, living in fear of being shot in a spree killing has become normalized to the point of it being background noise as a result of US politicians refusing to address domestic terrorism on account of it not fitting with the narrative of the War on Terror, an aggressive war of expansion that sought not to address the sources of terror, but instead to expand US imperial influence abroad in the quest for more control over the world’s mineral resources.

        The genocide in Gaza, and now Trump bringing that domestic against Latin Americans, should all be understood as a function of failing to address the roots of terrorism and instead using terrorism to justify bloodshed to acquire land and mineral rights

        • coyootje@lemmy.worldEnglish
          73·
          2 days ago

          We’ve gone to multiple places but is say the worst areas are the big cities. We visited Chicago and if you strayed a bit towards the outer edges of the downtown area it got sketchy kinda quickly. Downtown itself wasn’t too bad but at night I still felt a bit exposed walking around there with all the dark allies.

          • zarkanian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            16 hours ago

            The plural of “alley” is “alleys”, not “allies” (that’s the plural for “ally”!) Those two mess me up, too. Damn you, English, with your sound-alike words and weird pluralizing rules.

          • [R3D4CT3D]@midwest.socialEnglish
            101·
            2 days ago

            do not listen to this person. it got “sketchy” outside of downtown chicago? pffft! someone needs to get out more often.

            • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
              4·
              2 days ago

              people unfamiliar with how to move and operate in america are absolutely not ready for our suburbs and exurbs where the real danger is…

              i think their experience of “chicago got scary for me” is legitimate, but it has more to do with not knowing who the threats are than the existence of said threats. chicago is in a massive struggle between the police and people who would like to not be killed by the police. out in the country side… lowkey the police won

              • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                2 days ago

                Yeah, the comment sounds a lot like an American tourist being afraid to step a single foot off of their beach resort in Cancun. In these instances, the fear comes more from the lack of experience, and not knowing some of the biggest pitfalls that locals avoid to stay safe. Things that the locals won’t even think about, because avoiding it is just so engrained as habit.

                • coyootje@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  11 hours ago

                  I’d say the bigger issue for me was the fact that everyone can have a weapon with them and could literally kill you in seconds if they want to. As someone from a country (and continent) where this isn’t considered normal (the worst someone can carry is a knife and even that’s illegal) that’s just a real culture shock. Also, last time, our first day there consisted of being on public transport between the airport and our hotel where there was some crazy person shouting and trying to start fights with other passengers. We then got to our hotel, put our stuff away, heard noises outside and when we walked out we found out there had been a shootout at a restaurant around the block just minutes earlier.

                  So yeah, call it whatever you want but I wouldn’t call it safe.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.mlEnglish
    121·
    2 days ago

    The blurb and the screenshot both leave out that the victim went on to say: “death to the Arabs”.

  • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.socialEnglish
    46·
    2 days ago

    Kind of crazy that Kevin left out the Israelis calling for the genocide of Arabs in favor of “assuming they were Arab” honestly