How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

[martybegan]

Has it occurred to you..that no one 'put them forward'? Not at first...this was their idea...yeah--everyone jumped on it....and the kids aren't 'messiahs"--but the level of hatred spewed upon them..by many posters here...is shameful.

They are at rallies holding signs calling NRA members murderers and people are just supposed to give them a pass?

They own the rhetoric, they own the response.

People on the right have given up fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.

Yeah....you put yourself out there and ya gotta expect blow back. Snot nose kids or not

So..you are OK with outright lies? By either side? What does that say about your cause..that lying and defaming children is alright? That your ideals cannot stand on their own in the face of attack?

is a sign saying "the NRA are murders" lying or not?

Does one sign justify everything in that article..you did read the article, right?

I read your excerpts and it's the usual bullshit generalization you then deny when I point out the "NRA is murder sign"

You are nothing but a cheap, dime store hack and an intellectual poseur. Try to have an original thought for once instead of regurgitating someone else's "ideas"

 

[mudwhistle]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

Yes one side bashes them unnecessarily
The other side looks at them like they are messiahs.
Normal people dont think twice about it.

intelligent normal people do

OK del
Have fun circle jerking with a bunch of kids LOL

i suspected for awhile that you might be an intelligent life form

i was wrong

Intelligent, meaning willing to give up inalienable rights so your government can swoop in and take away the rest of your rights whenever they choose to?

Wow, that's really damed smart!!

 

[SassyIrishLass]

Let's see if I've got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Of course it's a gun grab. It's not a ploy, it's a demand. I suggest you listen for once so you know what they are asking for and why.
Most states already have the ability to have armed security don't they? That's a moot point.

Why not do the obvious?
Put armed security in schools...problem solved.
Instead you want to trample on the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans with a solution that will fail to do a damn bit of good.

Like I said -- but maybe I said it somewhere else -- armed security might be helpful to a point, but it is not the magic solution on its own.
I believe that banning AR's in conjunction with a lot of other efforts to head off homicidal behavior before its too late and making it a much more careful and responsible process owning a gun WILL do a damned lot of good.

And then when the next shooter uses a 9MM Glock? What then, and they will? Be honest for once

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Dr Love brought up intelligence .

That's like Rosie O'Donnell bringing up physical beauty, isn't it?

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

Let's see if I've got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Odd..did they not have an armed cop in their school? How did that work out for them? Did he save any lives?
I think a bit more needs to be done, don't you? Armed guards....increased security...soon our schools will be indistinguishable from our jails.

We could try locking up dangerously crazy people. Just a thought.

I agree,,,now how do we find them? Do we look for anti-social people who rant about political matters heatedly..who have large collections of guns?

ROTFLMAO! Somehow--I just don't think so.

 

[martybegan]

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

I'm embarrassed that any of us are still bothering to engage these mouth breathers.

It's honestly not very funny anymore.

You just aren't able to counter most of our points without regressing to emotional appeals and accusations of "ist/ic/ism"


And again, my IQ vs. yours any day of the week "Dr"

only pathetic tool bags make statements like *my IQ vs. yours any day of the week*

you've already lost, snap-on

They are the ones bringing up intellect via the term mouth breathers, I'm just calling him out on it.

And del, if this level of discourse is beyond you maybe the My Little Pony message board is more your speed.

 

[Correll]

I got this far.



Putting them forth to make political attacks and then whining about them being politically attacked BACK, is the act of a disingenuous ass.

And there you have it..."I got this far"..refusing to even be informed...forming an opinion..without all the info..is the mark of a moron.
Has it occurred to you..that no one 'put them forward'? Not at first...this was their idea...yeah--everyone jumped on it....and the kids aren't 'messiahs"--but the level of hatred spewed upon them..by many posters here...is shameful.

I read far enough to get the point of the piece.


The kids in question are engaging is politics and are being engaged BACK.


They have played some serious hard ball.


This is about the Left missing the way they used to be able to say the most vile lies about the Right and the Right would just "be above it all" and let the vile lying left define a Conventional Wisdom that was full of shit.


SO they keep looking for spokesmen that they hope the Right will be afraid to speak out against.


FUCK THAT SHIT.


I don't care if you put the Mother Fucking Theresa up there, if she is making a political statement attacking me and mine, I will speak out against her.


And call her on her bullshit.

By lying? By buying into lies? How is that, "speaking out against"..that's just lying...it devalues any point you might make..and in fact, makes you opponents arguments stronger.

Are you saying that your points cannot stand on their own. honestly and on their merits?

This is the first paragraph of your op.


Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


THat's not a lie.

That's commenting on their crying because they lost a vote.


Completely valid and reasonable.


If you wanted to discuss any "lies" you should have opened with those "lies" instead of burying them under a ton of partisan filler.

Nope..it's not a lie..just a smear--you, of course, choose not to comment on all the lies laid out in the article..because you have no intellectual honesty.
Oddly,, I don't see a lot partisan stuff in that article..just an indictment of the loons that inhabit the cyber-world now. If you see yourself in this..oh well.
Just read the article..and then look at the threads here..you can match the lies to the threads..quite easily.

Pretty mild smear considering that crap the kids have been dishing out.


You might not see the partisan shit, the way a fish doesn't see water, but it was too much for me to put up with, this morning.

I also want to say that, Dinesh D'Souza is a brilliant academic and dismissing him as a provocateur is the act of a fool.

 

[OldLady]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

Anyone that claims the NRA is a terrorist organization is literally losing their shit.
These kids are showing us textbook examples of losing their shit.
One of them puked on stage for Christ sakes.

There are extreme views in every crowd. Despite what some people here are accusing the kids of, they are obviously NOT reading from the same page of the hymnal, since I heard one kid asking for a confiscation of all guns and another asking for the confiscation of NO weapons. All on the same stage.

The left is definitely going overboard with the NRA boogeyman shit, but the NRA is a very potent political force in this country and don't try to pretend it isn't. When a Fox Poll has such high numbers of people supporting various gun control efforts, including banning assault weapons, how do you argue that the NRA is only supporting the voice of the American people? It is a special interest group with a limited number of people's interests in mind and they should not be powerful enough to stop legislation that is strongly favored by the majority of Americans.

Policy made in the heat of the moment is not a good idea.


Let's take that poll a year from now. With a little less hysteria.

Nice try.

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Let's see if I've got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Odd..did they not have an armed cop in their school? How did that work out for them? Did he save any lives?
I think a bit more needs to be done, don't you? Armed guards....increased security...soon our schools will be indistinguishable from our jails.

Real armed security,not some loser who's afraid of his own shadow.

We have armed security at banks. Is money more important than our children?

How more 'real' can you get..than a sworn police officer...and no one knows..how they are going to react..when the bullets start flying.

Is your right to a gun more important than our children? I'll put it out there...that it is. That the right to have unlimited access to firearms is paid for by the blood of innocents---and I'm OK with that..in the larger picture. I don't like it..but I'm man enough to face it and to state it.

How about you?

Of course the 2nd takes precedence.
You make it clear that if you're going to be a guard in a school you'll be expected to act in defense of those students.

 

[martybegan]

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

I'm embarrassed that any of us are still bothering to engage these mouth breathers.

It's honestly not very funny anymore.

You just aren't able to counter most of our points without regressing to emotional appeals and accusations of "ist/ic/ism"


And again, my IQ vs. yours any day of the week "Dr"

only pathetic tool bags make statements like *my IQ vs. yours any day of the week*

you've already lost, snap-on

Dr Love brought up intelligence with his "mouth breather" slur.


Funny it was fine for someone on your side to do it, but you had to comment on the response...


Funny, strange. Not funny ha ha.

Thanks, i just responded to del-derp with the same concept. maybe he will fathom it with his "intellect"

lol

 

[healthmyths]

Let's see if I've got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Odd..did they not have an armed cop in their school? How did that work out for them? Did he save any lives?
I think a bit more needs to be done, don't you? Armed guards....increased security...soon our schools will be indistinguishable from our jails.

Real armed security,not some loser who's afraid of his own shadow.

We have armed security at banks. Is money more important than our children?

How more 'real' can you get..than a sworn police officer...and no one knows..how they are going to react..when the bullets start flying.

Is your right to a gun more important than our children? I'll put it out there...that it is. That the right to have unlimited access to firearms is paid for by the blood of innocents---and I'm OK with that..in the larger picture. I don't like it..but I'm man enough to face it and to state it.

How about you?

Hey do you believe the Washington Post (owned by the owner of Amazon...Bezos..) ?
Then read this article and understand how uninformed these young people are and why they are acting emotionally rather than logically.

 

[Correll]

Dr Love brought up intelligence with his "mouth breather" slur.
Funny it was fine for someone on your side to do it, but you had to comment on the response...
Funny, strange. Not funny ha ha.

Yes, people who repeat lies and conspiracy theories who when presented with facts, continue to cling to their bullshit are to be ridiculed.

"Mouth-breathers" was actually the nicest thing I could think to say about most of your ilk this morning.

And I am smart enough not to take Marty up on his IQ-off challenge.

So, you want to make fun of people's intelligence but don't like it when one of those people challenges your intelligence by comparison to themselves?

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Let's see if I've got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Of course it's a gun grab. It's not a ploy, it's a demand. I suggest you listen for once so you know what they are asking for and why.
Most states already have the ability to have armed security don't they? That's a moot point.

Why not do the obvious?
Put armed security in schools...problem solved.
Instead you want to trample on the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans with a solution that will fail to do a damn bit of good.

Like I said -- but maybe I said it somewhere else -- armed security might be helpful to a point, but it is not the magic solution on its own.
I believe that banning AR's in conjunction with a lot of other efforts to head off homicidal behavior before its too late and making it a much more careful and responsible process owning a gun WILL do a damned lot of good.

But you're okay with semi auto pistols?

 

[OldLady]

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Of course it's a gun grab. It's not a ploy, it's a demand. I suggest you listen for once so you know what they are asking for and why.
Most states already have the ability to have armed security don't they? That's a moot point.

Why not do the obvious?
Put armed security in schools...problem solved.
Instead you want to trample on the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans with a solution that will fail to do a damn bit of good.

Like I said -- but maybe I said it somewhere else -- armed security might be helpful to a point, but it is not the magic solution on its own.
I believe that banning AR's in conjunction with a lot of other efforts to head off homicidal behavior before its too late and making it a much more careful and responsible process owning a gun WILL do a damned lot of good.

And then when the next shooter uses a 9MM Glock? What then, and they will? Be honest for once

Harm reduction. Nothing is going to be 100% when humans are involved.

 

[mudwhistle]

How the Parkland teens became villains on the right-wing Internet

Shame on all who have engaged in this:
Less than a week after 17 people died in Parkland, Fla., right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza began taunting some of the teenage survivors of the massacre. “Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” he tweeted on Feb. 20, commenting on a photo showing Parkland survivors crying as state legislators voted down a bill to ban military-style weapons.


D’Souza wrote another tweet, “Adults, 1, kids 0.” Combined, the two tweets have more than 25,000 likes and 8,000 retweets.


[ A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains ]


Now, five weeks after the Parkland school shooting, D’Souza’s tweets seem almost quaint. As Emma González, David Hogg and the other Parkland teens fighting for gun control have become viral liberal heroes, the teens are villains on the right-wing Internet and fair game for the mockery and attacks that this group usually reserves for its adult enemies.


That infamy reached a wider audience this past weekend around the time of their March for Our Lives protest, when a doctored image that showed González ripping up a copy of the U.S. Constitution (she actually ripped up a gun target) went mildly viral on the Trump-supporting parts of the Internet, defended as “satire” by those who shared it.


"Here’s a look back at how the Parkland student activists became such a target:


Day 1: Conspiracy theorists


The first to target the Parkland students were the conspiracy theorists. When a mass shooting like Parkland happens, conspiracy theorists begin to search for signs of a false flag — proof that the shooting was actually staged and/or carried out for political reasons — pretty much right away. They’re following what online trolling expert Whitney Phillips calls a “tragedy script”: The establishment is trying to take away your guns, they’ll use mass shootings to do that, and here are the tricks they use to manipulate the public. Anything irregular becomes conspiracy fodder.


[ We studied thousands of anonymous posts about the Parkland attack — and found a conspiracy in the making ]


An anonymous 8chan user told the fringe chat board to look for “crisis actors” just 47 minutes after the shooting happened. And if closed chat rooms and fringey boards such as 8chan, 4chan and some subreddits on Reddit are where conspiracy theorists coordinate, then Twitter is where those conspiracy theories — and the harassment that comes with them — are performed for the public. Within hours, anonymous Twitter users were in the mentions of students tweeting from their classrooms during the shooting, accusing them of being part of the conspiracy:

One Twitter thread, made just after midnight on the night of the attack, claimed to contain “Bombshell” information about Parkland. @Magapill (an account once approvingly retweeted by President Trump) shared a video interview with a student that has become the basis of a debunked Parkland conspiracy theory. The thread was retweeted more than 3,000 times.

All this happened before the Parkland students calling for gun control began their ascent to viral iconography. When they emerged, the campaign to discredit and debunk the Parkland students expanded.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

Week 2: #MAGA Internet

“EXPOSED: School Shooting Survivor Turned Activist David Hogg’s Father in FBI, Appears To Have Been Coached On Anti-Trump Lines,” read a headline on Gateway Pundit. The article was one of a handful on far-right publications to emerge after the first weekend following the shooting.

[ Algorithms are one reason a conspiracy theory goes viral. Another reason might be you. ]

Hogg, along with González, had found their voices. In one CNN interview, the pair called for the National Rifle Association to “disband.” That interview was on the Monday after the attack. By Tuesday, an aide to Florida state Rep. Shawn Harrison (R-Tampa) was fired for telling a reporter that Hogg and González were “not students … but actors.” As evidence, the aide sent the reporter one of several YouTube videos promoting that conspiracy theory.

Even a former U.S. congressman, Jack Kingston, joined in on Twitter: “O really? ‘Students’ are planning a nationwide rally? Not left-wing gun control activists using 17yr kids in the wake of a horrible tragedy? #Soros #Resistance #Antifa #DNC”

The conspiracy spread quickly, and the algorithms noticed. Soon, a video claiming that Hogg was an actor was the No. 1 trending video on YouTube.

Week 3: Fights with social media companies

In early March, the conspiracy Internet — and some of its Trump supporters — turned the conspiracy theories surrounding the Parkland students into a crusade against what they saw as censorship on major Silicon Valley platforms.

After a conspiracy video trended on YouTube, the platform cracked down on videos and creators who were promoting the false belief that the Parkland students were hired actors or reading from scripts to promote gun control. Enter Alex Jones.

[ How Alex Jones turned the Parkland shooting into a week-long news cycle about himself ]

Jones’s main YouTube channel has more than 2 million subscribers, and he made several videos about Hogg, such as “David Hogg Can’t Remember His Lines In TV Interview,” in the weeks after the shooting.

After CNN reported that the channel was 2 strikes away from a YouTube ban for violating the platform’s community guidelines, Jones started talking about censorship. He claimed his channel was about to be deleted (it wasn’t); he fundraised to support a fight against his enemies. This blitz became a week-long news cycle that captured the attention of Infowars’ supporters and opponents alike.

March for Our Lives: The memes go mainstream

On the eve of the March for Our Lives, the NRA delivered a message to the Parkland students who organized it: “No one would know your names” if a gunman hadn’t killed 17 people at their school, said a host on NRATV.

The Parkland teens, as they took on such a polarizing issue, were always going to have opponents — including from more conservative Parkland students who also survived the massacre. But the deeply personal, conspiracy-minded attacks targeting Hogg, González and their fellow classmate activists have gone from the conspiracy fringes to a larger audience.

And after the viral image of González ripping up the Constitution, Rep. Steve King’s campaign Facebook page (R-Iowa) shared a mocking meme about her. The post refers to a patch of the Cuban flag on her jacket worn during the march:

“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

A day after the hoax targeting González went viral, the conservative blog Redstate published — and then updated — an article that falsely implied Hogg might not have been at school during the shooting at all.

“Something doesn’t add up” about Hogg’s whereabouts during the shooting, the original article claimed, focusing on a clip from an upcoming documentary where the student describes going home, grabbing his camera, and returning to interview students.

“It is not possible for him to have been in class and also have been at home, a three-mile bike ride away from campus,” the article concluded. “One of those stories is a lie. Hogg should explain himself, and quickly.”

But the entire premise of the Redstate article was inaccurate. After publication, Redstate published two “updates” at the top of the story, clarifying that the statements they cited as inconsistent were actually describing two separate events, several hours apart. Hogg was definitely on campus at the time of the shooting, and eventually went home and returned to school that evening to interview his gathered classmates just off campus.

The other side is losing their shit.
It is almost not worth engaging with them anymore, they've gone so far into lala land. They are doing their damnedest to bully these kids into submission; it's embarrassing.

Anyone that claims the NRA is a terrorist organization is literally losing their shit.
These kids are showing us textbook examples of losing their shit.
One of them puked on stage for Christ sakes.

There are extreme views in every crowd. Despite what some people here are accusing the kids of, they are obviously NOT reading from the same page of the hymnal, since I heard one kid asking for a confiscation of all guns and another asking for the confiscation of NO weapons. All on the same stage.

The left is definitely going overboard with the NRA boogeyman shit, but the NRA is a very potent political force in this country and don't try to pretend it isn't. When a Fox Poll has such high numbers of people supporting various gun control efforts, including banning assault weapons, how do you argue that the NRA is only supporting the voice of the American people? It is a special interest group with a limited number of people's interests in mind and they should not be powerful enough to stop legislation that is strongly favored by the majority of Americans.

A limited number?

You mean over 70 million gun owners?

Not to mention protecting the rights of the rest of us.

It really doesn't matter what these people say in public. It's pretty clear who is behind this and what their ultimate goal is.
Total confiscation....at a time in our history when that is the last thing we need.

 

[SassyIrishLass]

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Of course it's a gun grab. It's not a ploy, it's a demand. I suggest you listen for once so you know what they are asking for and why.
Most states already have the ability to have armed security don't they? That's a moot point.

Why not do the obvious?
Put armed security in schools...problem solved.
Instead you want to trample on the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans with a solution that will fail to do a damn bit of good.

Like I said -- but maybe I said it somewhere else -- armed security might be helpful to a point, but it is not the magic solution on its own.
I believe that banning AR's in conjunction with a lot of other efforts to head off homicidal behavior before its too late and making it a much more careful and responsible process owning a gun WILL do a damned lot of good.

And then when the next shooter uses a 9MM Glock? What then, and they will? Be honest for once

Harm reduction. Nothing is going to be 100% when humans are involved.

More like incremental bans you lying sack

 

[OldLady]

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Of course it's a gun grab. It's not a ploy, it's a demand. I suggest you listen for once so you know what they are asking for and why.
Most states already have the ability to have armed security don't they? That's a moot point.

Why not do the obvious?
Put armed security in schools...problem solved.
Instead you want to trample on the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans with a solution that will fail to do a damn bit of good.

Like I said -- but maybe I said it somewhere else -- armed security might be helpful to a point, but it is not the magic solution on its own.
I believe that banning AR's in conjunction with a lot of other efforts to head off homicidal behavior before its too late and making it a much more careful and responsible process owning a gun WILL do a damned lot of good.

But you're okay with semi auto pistols?

I read that 85% of guns in this country are semi auto. Do you want me to advocate taking them all?

 

[OldLady]

Of course it's a gun grab. It's not a ploy, it's a demand. I suggest you listen for once so you know what they are asking for and why.
Most states already have the ability to have armed security don't they? That's a moot point.

Why not do the obvious?
Put armed security in schools...problem solved.
Instead you want to trample on the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans with a solution that will fail to do a damn bit of good.

Like I said -- but maybe I said it somewhere else -- armed security might be helpful to a point, but it is not the magic solution on its own.
I believe that banning AR's in conjunction with a lot of other efforts to head off homicidal behavior before its too late and making it a much more careful and responsible process owning a gun WILL do a damned lot of good.

And then when the next shooter uses a 9MM Glock? What then, and they will? Be honest for once

Harm reduction. Nothing is going to be 100% when humans are involved.

More like incremental bans you lying sack

When you make shit up, it's hard to take you seriously.

 

[Correll]

Let's see if I've got this right. A complete hack initiates a post consisting of nothing but cut and paste rants and another complete hack talks about the "other side" losing their shit.

Neither has enough awareness to realize that their preoccupation with being mindless little leftist warriors is part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

I'm certainly not being mindless; I've been on gun threads for weeks now and that is where I am forming the opinion that the other side is losing their shit. They are. They are ranting about communism and Mao and overthrowing the government and bullying a bunch of very appropriate teenagers who got up on their hind legs and spoke truth in public. How fucking DARE they, huh, Dog?

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Odd..did they not have an armed cop in their school? How did that work out for them? Did he save any lives?
I think a bit more needs to be done, don't you? Armed guards....increased security...soon our schools will be indistinguishable from our jails.

We could try locking up dangerously crazy people. Just a thought.

I agree,,,now how do we find them? Do we look for anti-social people who rant about political matters heatedly..who have large collections of guns?

ROTFLMAO! Somehow--I just don't think so.

Plenty of warning signs in this case, as is generally the case.



Stoneman Douglas High School shooting - Wikipedia


he was transferred between schools six times in three years to deal with these problems. In 2014, he was transferred to a school for children with emotional or learning disabilities. There were reports that he made threats against other students.[59] Cruz returned to Stoneman Douglas High School two years later, only to be banished from the school in 2017 for disciplinary reasons.[50] An email from the school administration had circulated among teachers, warning that he had made threats against other students. This led the school to ban him from wearing a backpack on campus.[51][60][61]

Psychiatrists recommended sending Cruz to a residential treatment facility starting in 2013.[62] The Florida Department of Children and Familiesinvestigated Cruz in September 2016 for Snapchat posts in which he cut both his arms and said he planned to buy a gun. At this time, a school resource officer requested to have Cruz committed to a mental institution under the provisions of the Baker Act. Two guidance counselors agreed, but a mental institution did not.[63] State investigators reported he had depression, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In their assessment, they concluded he "was at low risk of harming himself or others".[64] He had previously received mental health treatment, but had not received treatment in the year leading up to the shooting

A former classmate said Cruz had anger management issues and often joked about guns and gun violence, including shooting up establishments.[10] The brother of a 2016 graduate described him as "super stressed out all the time and talked about guns a lot and tried to hide his face". A student who was enrolled at the school at the time of the shooting said, "I think everyone had in their minds if anybody was going to do it, it was going to be him."[70] A classmate who was assigned to work with him in sophomore year said, "He told me how he got kicked out of two private schools. He was held back twice. He had aspirations to join the military. He enjoyed hunting."[56] He also bragged about killing animals, a student's mother said. A neighbor said his mother would call the police over to the house to try to talk some sense into him


According to Sheriff Scott Israel, his office received 23 calls about Cruz during the previous decade, but this figure is in dispute. CNN obtained (via a public records request) a sheriff's office log showing that from 2008 to 2017, at least 45 calls were made in reference to Cruz, his brother, or the family home.[72][73] The calls included an anonymous tip on February 5, 2016, that Cruz had threatened to shoot up the school, and a tip on November 30, 2017 that Cruz might be a "school shooter in the making" and that he collected knives and guns. On September 23, 2016, a peer counselor notified the school resource officer of his suicide attempt and intent to buy a gun; the school indicated it would do a "threat assessment".[74][75][76]

In September 2016, a sheriff's deputy who was resource officer for the high school, along with two of the school's counselors, stated that Cruz should be committed for mental evaluation.[77][78]

On September 24, 2017, a person with the username "nikolas cruz" posted a comment to a YouTube video. It read, "Im[sic] going to be a professional school shooter". The video's uploader reported the comment to the FBI.[when?] According to agent Robert Lasky, the agency conducted database reviews but was unable to track down the individual who made the threatening comment


On January 5, 2018, the FBI's Public Access Line received a tip from a person who was close to Cruz. On February 16 (two days after the shooting), the agency released a statement that detailed this information. According to the statement, "The caller provided information about Cruz's gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting."

 

[mudwhistle]

If they really gave a shit about school shootings they'd be demanding armed security in our schools.

This is nothing more than a gun grab ploy.

Of course it's a gun grab. It's not a ploy, it's a demand. I suggest you listen for once so you know what they are asking for and why.
Most states already have the ability to have armed security don't they? That's a moot point.

Why not do the obvious?
Put armed security in schools...problem solved.
Instead you want to trample on the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans with a solution that will fail to do a damn bit of good.

Like I said -- but maybe I said it somewhere else -- armed security might be helpful to a point, but it is not the magic solution on its own.
I believe that banning AR's in conjunction with a lot of other efforts to head off homicidal behavior before its too late and making it a much more careful and responsible process owning a gun WILL do a damned lot of good.

But you're okay with semi auto pistols?

I read that 85% of guns in this country are semi auto. Do you want me to advocate taking them all?

No need..... Somebody already has.