Anti-Muslim Terrorist Attack in... NZ?

My count is 4 shotguns and 2 rifles, but not certain. If that is wrong then the most likely accurate count is 3 shotguns and 3 rifles.
 
Why is it important which models of autmatic rifles and shotguns he used and what accessories they had? I'm not judging, just asking.
 
I literally just heard about this while searching Youtube for recent videos from Chistchurch. To find a freakin' terrorist mass murder not just in my hometown but my childhood neighbourhood is just a little surreal.
 
In New Zealand, Signs Point to a Gunman Steeped in Internet Trolling (NY Times)

A camera mounted to his head, the gunman who livestreamed part of his savage attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday began his video by casually making reference to a current internet meme.

He appeared to be steeped in the culture of the extreme-right internet. And in the terrible minutes of video that followed, he proved to be a nonchalant, unrepentant killer.
. . .

Based on the video, the manifesto and social media posts, a picture has begun to emerge of a man primarily driven by white nationalism and a desire to drive cultural, political and racial wedges between people across the globe. That, he hoped, would stoke discord and, eventually, more violence between races.
Click to expand...
The gunman appeared to pair the shooting with the typical trolling tactics of the internet’s most far-right instigators, playing to a community of like-minded supporters online who cheered him on in real time as they watched bodies pile up. And the manifesto states plainly what usually goes unstated by internet trolls: By design, its author wanted to get everyone upset and arguing with each other.

One of the goals of his bloodshed, he wrote, was to “agitate the political enemies of my people into action, to cause them to overextend their own hand and experience the eventual and inevitable backlash as a result.” He said he wanted to “incite violence, retaliation and further divide.”
. . .

His choice of language, and the specific memes he referred to, suggest a deep connection to the far-right online community. The link to the livestreamed video was first posted to the /pol/ forum of 8chan, a notorious far-right space, where the gunman was hailed as a hero after the shooting.
Click to expand...

I'm almost more shocked that there were people watching this live on the internet and actually cheering it on. And all the while he was referring to far-right internet memes and in-jokes.
 
lionking said:
I don’t agree with this. However the guns used were obtained, Australia has proven that you can eliminate mass shootings by making semi-automatics almost impossible to obtain. PM Howard stared down the gun enthusiasts and won. I hope your PM can do the same.

Spare me the “right to own whatever gun we want” arguments.
Click to expand...
I'd like to think that there wouldn't have been another mass shooting even without the gun ban due simply to the overall good character of Australians. In other words, that the Port Arthur perpetrator was a true terrible anomaly among those nice folks.
 
Last edited:
uke2se said:
Why is it important which models of autmatic rifles and shotguns he used and what accessories they had? I'm not judging, just asking.
Click to expand...

In California, it's so the concept of good gun/bad gun can be reinforced.

Elsewhere, I believe it's an attempt to wrap one's head around a fact in an incident that can't be explained or rationalized by logical thinking.
 
LTC8K6 said:
More and more though we have what is termed "hate speech", which some countries do not protect.

NZ has a very wide interpretation of free speech, though.

I expect re-examinations of free speech laws.
Click to expand...

We couldn't stop him getting very powerful weapons, but we surely can stop people from spreading ideas.

Keep hiring your head against that brick wall.
 
Carnivore said:
I literally just heard about this while searching Youtube for recent videos from Chistchurch. To find a freakin' terrorist mass murder not just in my hometown but my childhood neighbourhood is just a little surreal.
Click to expand...

Once that ugly reality becomes part of your world view it's a hard thing to deal with.

When someone I knew very well discovered their wife cheating en flagrante and murdered her and then committed suicide, my life changed forever.
 
uke2se said:
Why is it important which models of autmatic rifles and shotguns he used and what accessories they had? I'm not judging, just asking.
Click to expand...

Some firearms are optimized for mass homicide with large capacity magazines that can be quickly swapped. Blast thirty rounds into the crowd as fast as you can pull the trigger then pop in another magazine and repeat.
 
BStrong said:
In California, it's so the concept of good gun/bad gun can be reinforced.

Elsewhere, I believe it's an attempt to wrap one's head around a fact in an incident that can't be explained or rationalized by logical thinking.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I'll just accept that I can't understand the need for the discussion.

To me, it's like discussing why the gunman chose NIKEs over ADIDAS shoes. Doesn't seem relevant when 49 people are dead.
 
uke2se said:
Thank you. I'll just accept that I can't understand the need for the discussion.

To me, it's like discussing why the gunman chose NIKEs over ADIDAS shoes. Doesn't seem relevant when 49 people are dead.
Click to expand...

In the past, mass murder events like this lead to conversations around banning of guns. Often these gun bans are limited to certain types of weapons or features. The specific weapons that are well suited for mass killing are relevant.

I am hoping that there can be more conversation around the insidious nature of alt-right politics that breeds such toxicity that someone is willing to commit such a terrible act of violence on strangers.

Call Muslims invaders and barbarians long enough, people are bound to act. There is nothing surprising about this outcome based on the narratives being peddled by the far right.

Senators Fraser Anning's comment basically boils down to "I condemn this violence, but actually, this guy had a point". Shameful.
 
Last edited:
SuburbanTurkey said:
I agree. Max capacity would be 9 rounds of 12 gauge, if not less. That is strange to me that someone would choose that over a rifle. Reloading such a shotgun is not a fast process compared to that of a rifle.
Click to expand...

2 points.

Shotgun is usually used for confusion and wounding. Big noise, lots of shrapnel, brown pants.

Also a tube feed shotgun can be fed an extra round on the go, no need to load all 8, ready to top off if one has a few seconds.
 
Kestrel said:
Some firearms are optimized for mass homicide with large capacity magazines that can be quickly swapped. Blast thirty rounds into the crowd as fast as you can pull the trigger then pop in another magazine and repeat.
Click to expand...

In reality most mass shootings are perpetrated by semi-automatic firearms. If anything they are likely be more useful
than a fully automatic weapon because one is less likely to waste ammunition.
 
Last edited:
Ryokan said:
I just read this article on Australian troll pages run by people from the Balkans, published just before the attacks...

https://abc.net.au/news/2019-03-15/...ustralian-facebook-pages/10892680?pfmredir=sm

It's really frightening reading. Is our open, free and democratic society really so weak against this?
Click to expand...

That is the problem. At what point in fighting this stuff do we cease to be an open,free and democratic society?
The thing to remember is that someone can easily find good reasons to suppress radical left wing opinions as easily as you can find reasons to suppress radical right wing opnions.
 
sadhatter said:
2 points.

Shotgun is usually used for confusion and wounding. Big noise, lots of shrapnel, brown pants.

Also a tube feed shotgun can be fed an extra round on the go, no need to load all 8, ready to top off if one has a few seconds.
Click to expand...
His shotgun blasts were deadly. I doubt that any target was more than 20 feet away. Many were much closer.

Two shotguns were used in the video. Neither was ever reloaded. It's possible that he reloaded the shotguns before arriving at the second mosque, but it isn't on video. The filming ends while he is rapidly driving towards the second mosque.
 
41 dead at one mosque, only 7 at the other. Apparently the shooter fled when one of the intended victims at the Linwood mosque managed to snatch the shooter's gun. Well done that man. It's sobering to think this atrocity was almost even worse.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom