Quote:Lots of different hot button issues coming together here.


I don't own guns and for the most part I feel pretty immune to gun violence so I dont really feel like I have a dog in the fight. And while I dont want a ban on guns, it seems crazy that this guy had been interviewed by the FBI on multiple occasions, had co-workers alert gov't officials about his radical islamic commentary, and had met w/ known terrorists yet still was able to purchase weapons. So much for background checks. You've got to change the rules on these semi-auto assault weapons like AR15s. At a minimum you have to at least put a time requirement on the number of years one has been a responsible gun owner and law abiding citizen before they can purchase a weapon like that.


As far as Islam, I dont understand why we cant have an honest conversation about it in this country. Admitting the fact that an extremely violent form of Islam is coming out of the Middle East, shouldnt be met with cries of bigotry. I remember a few years ago the Pew Research Center, which is about the least biased polling you can get, published a report on sharia in the Muslim world. It had some shocking numbers like 99% of people in Afghanistan think sharia should be the law of the land. In Egypt it was 75%. And of those 75%, like 90% thought leaving Islam is worthy of the death penalty and that women who commit adultery should be stoned to death. Crazy numbers that didnt sound believable. I didnt believe them. And then we had the ousting of Mubarak and a chance for a real democratic change. It was supposed to be Obama's crowning Middle East example of how to naturally bring about a free society as opposed to Bush's costly nation building in Iraq. Well sadly it didnt come to fruition. Nearly 50% voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, a known terrorist organization officially labelled as such by numerous countries around the world, and even more shockingly an additional 25% voted for the more extremely religious Al-Nour party. Thats nearly 75% of the country voting for the anti-thesis of the values and ideals we have here in the West. That's not "a few bad actors" as Obama likes to say. Thats a fundamentally different view of the world, the values, and the norms of what we believe in by a significant percent of that population. But you dont see those percentages in muslim societies in other parts of the world. Read that Pew report and you see completely different numbers in eastern europe like Bosnia. You see completely different numbers in ex-soviet satellite countries like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Just like other religions, Islam isnt the same across the board. It varies based on the culture in where it is being practiced. And for whatever reason, the version coming out of the Middle East is completely different than our own values. But we dont have that conversation. We're too afraid to say their culture is different. And doesnt represent our values. And is breeding a violent extremism. And it doesnt appear to be going away anytime soon. We'll be dealing with this for a long time.