zlacker

>>david9+(OP)
Looking at recent events through a historical lens: the 1960s saw the assassinations of MLK, RFK, JFK, and Malcolm X during a wave of progressive change. Today’s assassination attempts and targeted violence seem to follow a similar pattern during periods of significant social and political shifts.

As RFK said after MLK’s death, we must choose between “violence and non-violence, between lawlessness and love.” His call for unity and rejecting hatred feels as urgent now as it was then.

Violence is never the answer. But understanding these tragic patterns might help us navigate our current moment with hopefully more empathy.

>>tmsh+s41
This is dangerous false equivalency. Charlie Kirk was not advocating for the rights of the downtrodden. He was a right wing provocateur, and he’s on the record saying that “some gun deaths are ok” in service of the 2nd amendment, and in making light of the nearly deadly political attack on the Pelosi family.

Political violence, especially deadly violence is not ok. But comparing Charlie Kirk to MLK is also not ok.

>>pm90+Q51
"Some gun deaths are okay" is saying the quiet part out loud, but it's not wrong. When you let a large group of people have access to something dangerous then some number of them will die and kill using the dangerous thing, whether the thing is cars or paracetamol or wingsuits or guns.

I say this as an Australian. We have a far more restrictive system of gun control than the US and yet we still see tens of gun deaths a year, because some gun deaths are okay even if we set the number a lot lower than the US does.

>>strken+O71
By my understanding he said that though unfortunate, gun deaths are sometimes a price to pay for the right to bear arms. Noting that less than half that gun killings in the US are committed by people that legally owned that gun.

And I have the sensation that all the ones we drive a car nowadays are engaging in a similar type of risk acceptance, we know there's too many people dead every year in car accidents, but we still believe that overall having access to cars outweighs the risks, without meaning that car accidents are acceptable and trying to improve the safety of the cars and roads meanwhile.

Kirk thought in a similar way that gun control and possession were definitely good for the US population and that gun deaths were still a price to pay for it.

BTW, gun possession is also legal in all EU countries. It just not considered a right, but a privilege. And this is accepted by most parties in EU, both left and right.