Nicker on 16/3/2019 at 16:34
I delayed posting about this because I hoped that there might be some hidden perspective which would allow it to make some sense. Nothing so far, just immense sadness.
My condolences to the families and friends of the victims.
mopgoblin on 16/3/2019 at 21:51
That's the thing, it does make sense. This, or something very much like it, was guaranteed to happen sooner or later. A lot of people - Muslims, women, queer people and others - have been speaking up about the types of fascist groups that precipitated this attack for years, and no one listened. Those hate groups have been allowed to grow online, virtually unchallenged, while the police and the intelligence agencies have been busy fretting about Muslims, Maori, and small-scale left-wing activists. And it goes beyond a bunch of dangerous white men in the dark corners of the internet and on the streets of Christchurch (which has had a white supremacist problem for a long long time). A lot of the media here has been full of racist and otherwise bigoted subtext - or sometimes, just text - for far too long, and any attempt to challenge this has been met with a tide of "PC gone mad" and other apologist cliches. It's hard to say how much of the population that actually represents, but regardless they've been dominant in a lot of online spaces, emboldening the nazis one shitty post at a time. A large swathe of our culture, our media, and our people are complicit in allowing this to happen, because we created exactly the kind of society that encourages this kind of violence. It makes sense, in the worst possible way.
Shadowcat on 17/3/2019 at 01:23
I am so angry that the extent of the death toll here was facilitated by it apparently being legal for civilians to purchase assault rifles, despite there having been a review of that situation in the past two years, and a recommendation made at that time that such guns should not be legal for the general public to own -- a recommendation which was apparently rejected by whoever the decision makers were, despite the potential for this very outcome being the obvious argument in favour of a ban of a type of weapon which is designed to kill large numbers of people as efficiently as possible, and which has no reasonable use outside of military applications. NZ is not a country with significant culture of gun ownership; guns are not prevalent in society outside of hunting and farming. The vast majority of people want nothing to do with them, and I think most people are absolutely stunned that it was legal for these weapons to be purchased. I hope the people who rejected that ban are made to explain themselves. This lunatic was surely going to kill people regardless, but I feel like the staggering number of dead and injured is partly on the heads of the people on the committee who in effect voted in favour of enabling mass-murder on this scale to take place. I want that decision to be explained and defended.
Gray on 17/3/2019 at 02:01
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did not Australia ban guns a few years ago, after multiple shootings? New Zealand did not? In his statement, he said he went to NZ to train. So he had the intent already. Can we deduce from this that gun control laws actually work?
mopgoblin on 17/3/2019 at 02:04
We don't really have a very good idea how many guns there are here though - we might not have a US-style gun culture, and yeah, they're probably mostly basic shotguns, rifles and the like (IIRC you need specific endorsements as well as the standard licence to have pistols or semi-automatic weapons) but at the least there are likely to be more than a million guns. You'd probably be surprised how many people own one (also, I forget which city you're in, but at least here there are Gun City billboards around the place from time to time). So I feel like we kind of do have a gun culture of sorts, even if it's not as blithely irresponsible as the US one. And clearly whatever the specific requirements are for the more dangerous firearms, they didn't work and the semi-automatics, at the least, have to go. There's no justification for anyone to have weapons like that. From what I'm able to gather, the previous National government rejected a number of the select committee's recommendations, including "Investigate the creation of a category of restricted semi-automatic rifle and shotgun", it looks like we have Paula Bennett in particular to thank for that.
I do think that despite that, the core of the problem is cultural though - taking away the easy ways of killing large numbers of people is important, but stopping people from getting comfortable enough in their bigotry that they're willing to do that is even better.
Nameless Voice on 17/3/2019 at 02:14
Completely agree with mopgoblin, society as a whole has allowed this kind of thinking to become mainstream, especially over the past few years, by allowing these kinds of people to go largely unchallenged.
We see it where people turn a blind eye to those who proclaim themselves to be racists, bigots, fascists, etc., so long as they are not currently talking about politics, and we see it where people treat others supporting politicians, parties and movements which prescribe to those beliefs as just having a valid political opinion.
The more these kinds of beliefs are allowed to go unchallenged, the more people will see them as valid or reasonable, and prescribe being to them in turn.
The kind of people who are spreading this kind of hatred should not be allowed to go unchallenged out of some twisted belief in freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is not supposed to mean freedom from the consequences of speaking. If someone reveals themselves to have such despicable beliefs, then they need to be ostracised, disavowed, and deplatformed, rather than just ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away.
mopgoblin on 17/3/2019 at 02:15
Quote Posted by Gray
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did not Australia ban guns a few years ago, after multiple shootings? New Zealand did not? In his statement, he said he went to NZ to train. So he had the intent already. Can we deduce from this that gun control laws actually work?
There are also some claims he was radicalised here, apparently he seemed to have connections to some of the (various) nazi groups in Christchurch so that's not implausible. But yes, gun control laws do work, I understand Australia has seen a substantial drop in gun violence since they changed their laws (I expect they won't have banned guns entirely but rather limited them to sensible kinds and appropriate contexts, though I don't know the details). That said, our laws are pretty sensible in terms of a lot of respects (like storage requirements; from what I recall you have to lock up the gun and the ammo separately while not in use, as well as removing the bolt or similar component) and you can't carry a firearm for self-defence. The availability of semi-automatic weapons is an outlier - if the last government had had the sense (or, more to the point, the courage) to ban them when they had the chance then this guy probably could have only killed five people or so, not fifty, and he might not have tried at all.
Gray on 17/3/2019 at 02:29
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
by allowing these kinds of people to go largely unchallenged
That is exactly what some anti-terrorist expert said on BBC yesterday, and I agree with him. He said you can't stop the amount of racist bullshit available online, all the crazy conspiracy theories and utter nonsense. If you ban it, it'll spread underground. The best way to deal with it is to disprove it and argue against it. Many of the items listed in the shooters manifesto are old racist tropes and paranoid delusions, easily disproven, but we need to get the facts out there to be seen.
It's like the moonlanding conspiracy theory, the nutters went on for years about how it was faked, but every single argument was logically and calmly disproven, ending with the biggest proof of all: we left stuff there that you can see from here with a telescope. We can probably do the same with this other nonsense, if someone more clever than me has the good rational arguments.
Nameless Voice on 17/3/2019 at 02:45
I'd say that the worst of them are much too far gone to be reasoned with, but if at least they were flooded with reasoned arguments to disprove and ridicule their crazy beliefs - just like with moon-landing conspirators or flat-earthers - then others would be less likely to believe them and follow them down that path.
Gray on 17/3/2019 at 03:07
Yes. Exactly that.