Utah State University has just announced that Anita Sarkeesian has canceled a talk she was scheduled to give at the school tomorrow after receiving a threat of a “Montreal Massacre-style attack” by someone promising ““the deadliest school shooting in American history” if the cultural critic was allowed to speak.
Here’s the official announcement:
Anita Sarkeesian has canceled her scheduled speech for tomorrow following a discussion with Utah State University police regarding an email threat that was sent to Utah State University. During the discussion, Sarkeesian asked if weapons will be permitted at the speaking venue. Sarkeesian was informed that, in accordance with the State of Utah law regarding the carrying of firearms, if a person has a valid concealed firearm permit and is carrying a weapon, they are permitted to have it at the venue.
Emphasis added. That’s right: the school received threats from someone promising to shoot people at a public event, but because of Utah’s gun laws, authorities would not be able to prohibit audience members from BRINGING GUNS to the talk.
Before learning that this was the case, Sarkeesian — after consulting with authorities — had planned to go ahead with the talk. As a spokesman for the school told the Standard Examiner, a northern Utah newspaper:
“They determined the threat seems to be consistent with ones (Sarkeesian) has received at other places around the nation. … The threat we received is not out of the norm for (this woman).”
The email threat came from someone who claimed that “feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge, for my sake and the sake of all the others they’ve wronged.”
The email, sent to several campus officials and posted online by the Standard Examiner, warned:
If you do not cancel [Sarkeesian’s] talk, a Montreal Massacre style attack will be carried out against the attendees, as well as students and staff at the nearby women’s center. I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs. This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history and I’m giving you a chance to stop it.
The email writer claimed that even if authorities manage to stop him from an attack at the event,
There are plenty of feminists on campus who won;t be able to defend themselves. One way or another, I’m going to make sure they die. …
Anita Sarkeesian is everything wrong with the feminist woman, and she is going to die screaming like the craven little whore that she is if you let her come to USU. I will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America.
All this because she made some videos discussing sexism in fucking video games.
Here’s a screenshot of the full email, from the Standard Examiner site:
I’m speechless. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
NOTE: This is a NO TROLLS, NO MRAS, NO GAMERGATERS, NO VICTIM BLAMER thread. I will delete comments and ban people who do not respect the rules.
UPDATE: Sarkeesian has provied more details on Twitter; there were multiple threats, including one that specifically referred to GamerGate
Forced to cancel my talk at USU after receiving death threats because police wouldn't take steps to prevent concealed firearms at the event.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
Requested pat downs or metal detectors after mass shooting threat but because of Utah's open carry laws police wouldn’t do firearm searches.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
Multiple specific threats made stating intent to kill me & feminists at USU. For the record one threat did claim affiliation with #gamergate
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
At this point supporting #gamergate is implicitly supporting the harassment of women in the gaming industry.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
I’m safe. I will continue my work. I will continue speaking out. The whole game industry must stand up against the harassment of women.
— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) October 15, 2014
Premeditated shooters typically go in with the assumption that they will be killed by the end of the spree. “Crime of passion” shooters aren’t thinking, period. The threat of someone else in the same venue having a gun is not a deterrent to any class of mass killer.
And then you end up dead anyway, when they preemptively shoot you because they feel “threatened”.
Guns are never going to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Some people will have them, some won’t. Of the people who choose to carry, some will be more willing to use them than others. Others will become nervous and jumpy at the thought of being surrounded by guns. Arming as many people as possible seems like a recipe for increasing the odds of gun deaths. In the heat of the moment, when bullets start popping all over the place and panic sets in, it becomes really difficult to tell the perps apart from the good guys.
So in other words, terrorism works.
3rding the comments about the use of descriptors like “insane” or “crazy” or “deranged”.
These people aren’t mentally ill. Hatred and dehumanization of “the enemy” is pretty banal. Distorting your enemy’s views in order to make it easier to hate and dehumanize them is also pretty banal. See: pretty much every war the U.S. has engaged in this century. See: the fact that there have been multiple such wars when the century is so young.
I think if they were to move the talk to a private venue where a private business owner would have the authority to tell people what they can and cannot bring into their place of business perhaps this would still be on. The problem is, a public university is considered public property and is subject to whatever the local fire arm ordinances are, whether you like them or not. Is it asinine? Yes. Is it much more complicated than, “Theyre just stupid gun toting rednecks with no sense?” Also yes.
He threatened pipe bombs. One would presume he’d detonate the pipe bomb(s) first then enter the area and mow down injured and confused survivors. High explosives, if he’d managed to craft or lay hands on such, would concuss people close enough to the blast for that, strong detonations can either knock you into things or knock you silly. They can and often will blow out an eardrum on that side of your head, messing up your sense of equilibrium. Presumably there would be smoke, possibly fire.
( hi to all my fans in the NSA and FBI, no, I’m not planning, just being logical)
( I’m going to get to second base with a TSA screener on Sunday, I think)
Short answer: people might be too discombobulated to return fire.
Or at least to fight back effectively. Handguns are inaccurate in anything less than expert hands, even under the best circumstances and over relatively short distances.
HCK
yes, I didn’t clarify, but I do know the difference between state and federal, what I’m thinking is that just because something is legal does not necessarily mean that it’s allowed in all spaces. I seriously doubt the law forces businesses and campuses to have certain policies. That’s what I meant and that’s outside of the state versus federal question.
Part II…
My husband and I just went a Cabela’s the other day, and for those that don’t know it’s a big sporting goods store that has exhibits and taxidermy and such, it’s the quintessential hunting, fishing camping sport cave. When you walk in the doors there is a booth dead center and on the booth is a huge red sign that says FIREARMS CHECK IN. You check in your firearms. I don’t see any open carry assholes protesting that like they did whole foods. I would love to see them do that, and all the sporting and hunting people tell them off.
My favorite part about the open carry activists protesting Whole Foods is that John Mackey is an outspoken libertarian. But the business owner’s right to discriminate apparently only extends to religious, sexual, or ethnic minorities.
@ktrantingredhead
Not in Utah. In Utah even private businesses can’t prevent you from carrying.
CJ | October 15, 2014 at 1:47 pm
I’m not a violent man. I don’t like violence for any reason. Still, I can’t help but think that if Utah gun laws allow the carrying of concealed weapons on college campuses isn’t there a distinct possibility that this jackass would pull out his gun only to have a bunch of people pull out theirs and turn him into something resembling hamburger? You’d expect him to realize that too, but we’re clearly not looking at a towering intellect here.
The problem is that a large number of those people will not have perfect aim, nor perfect knowledge of the situation. I’m sitting there with my gun in my holster, and I hear gunshots from behind me. I whip around and see someone three rows back holding a gun and shooting towards the back rows. What I don’t see is the fact that the original shooter just ducked behind the chairs–so I pull out my gun and shoot the perceived aggressor. Meanwhile, another guy is also opening fire, on the right person, but whoops–those back seats were pretty crowded. Innocent bystanders are now getting shot from two sides.
I think this actually is part of the reason that cityfolk are more inclined than countryfolk to be pro-control. Crowded spaces make for bad places for shootouts.
Another troll red flag is referring to Sarkeesian and Quinn by their first names. Do you know these women personally? No? Then use their family names just like you would for a man.
(Dude, you really suck at this pretending to be a feminist thing.)
Back to the gun topic, I understand that parts of the US really love their guns and all, but why can’t private businesses and institutions make their own rules about what they’ll allow on their premises? The US loves property rights too, so you’d think there would be a way to leverage that to allow stores, universities and so on to keep guns out of any spaces that they manage.
Bah, finally got post gakked by the blockquote monster. Obviously, first paragraph in my last post was CJ’s, to which I was replying.
And also get the cover of hiding behind any of the many flavors of a “they must be out of their mind” trope to mitigate any possible legal repercussions.
cassandrakitty: I can’t speak about the idea that private stores and such have no ability to regulate their shoppers’ desire to fondle their pistols while making their purchases. But the principle for public universities is different. It’s a double-edged sword–a publicly funded university is generally bound by the same rules that any other government agency is. This can be good in the case of preventing discrimination, for instance, but it is a downside when the state passes a law like this one without making a specific exemption for the schools.
But why are people allowed to take guns into any government-owned space? Does this mean you’re allowed to take a rifle to the DMV and fondle it meaningfully if you feel like the person helping you isn’t being helpful enough?
I think this is one of these issues where no matter how long a Brit/European has lived here this is never going to make sense to us. I do know that it can’t just be about publicly owned institutions not being able to keep guns out, though, because I’ve seen those photos of smug white people shopping at Walmart with their rifles displayed as extra accessories right along with shoes and belt.
This idea assumes that the bad and good guys always carry their color-coded hats, and the good guys are faster on the draw.
I hope that I won’t be labled a gun fanatic, but I own and carry a handgun. I also have competition rifles and shoot them at gun ranges or in competition as often as I can. I enjoy it and it’s oddly relaxing. I also have a retired working dog, who’s essentially a highly trained attack dog curled up with his cats right now. I have personal reasons for wanting this kind of protection and it came in handy when one of my neighbors was terrorizing the building with a hunting knife. I had the little animals secured, my gun was trained on the door and my dog was at attention, waiting for a command to attack. I don’t fuck around when it comes to my safety, especially in my neighborhood.
Im also military trained and have years of competitive sharpshooting experience. In a crisis situation, such as a terrorist shooting up an auditorium, even I would be damn careful to draw and fire. There’s too much noise, too much confusion, too many people that could potentially cross the path of a bullet meant to hit the actual shooter, possibly mistaking another friendly for the attacker, etc. And the list really does go on and on. There’s all this chest beating bullshit that’s said in response to a threat like this, but it’s always by people who have no fucking clue what kind of pandemonium and chaos they’d be dealing with.
A simple ban of handguns at the event would just move the shooter to kill elsewhere. If the shooter wants to kill people, he (I’m assuming that the would be shooter is male, given the circumstances,) would simply target women elsewhere. I don’t know that there is a way to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Prosecution as a domestic terrorist might be a deterrent to some but a lot of those who think that shooting up an auditorium full of people to be rational or justified would probably enjoy the martyrdom and attention.
It’s sad, disturbing and vile on every level. I hope they get this asshole out of the general population and this doesnt inspire copycats.
This is terrorism. There are simply no other words. I am upset that more people are not calling this what it clearly is.
I await with bated breath the news stories proclaiming that the FBI called his bluff and that he’ll be going to jail for a very long time.
If there were multiple threats with this level of detail, then multiply that by however many threats there were.
RE: the courts having power over universities, you’d be surprised.
Apparently Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled, and was allowed to rule, that Iowa State University had to let an accused rapist (whose charges were eventually dropped – he is now suing the accuser) back on to the basketball team because his accuser’s testimony was allegedly inconsistent.
This happened despite the fact that their reasons for booting him came from what the university determined to be student-athlete code of conduct violations = not contingent on whether or not he actually raped the accuser, though that was certainly part of it.
The coach never put him back on the court (because why would he), despite a surprisingly small contingent of fans wanting him back, so he transferred to some other school after that season.
I don’t actually understand how that all worked, but my point is that apparently the public part of public universities means that they can be subject to a lot of weird bullshit.
There’s been an ongoing thing between open carry activists and pro gun control groups, with open carry people showing up in stores and restaurants armed with guns, and the gun control groups trying to put pressure on businesses to not allow guns on the premises. Starbucks was one of the businesses involved. Initially their stance was that they would defer to state laws: if a state allows open carry, then they would allow it in their stores, but then last year (I believe), they issued a statement asking customers not to bring guns into their stores. At one point, even the NRA issued a statement saying that the open carry people were making “gun rights” people look scary and dangerous by showing up armed to restaurants where people were just trying to eat, but then of course, the NRA walked the statement back the next day and said that it was an error, and that “of course, it’s good to bring your guns to restaurants and department stores and anywhere else, gosh darnit! It’s a really good thing!” (not their exact words, but you get the idea)
I’m hoping these threats are traceable back to an individual, and that he goes to jail.
It’s not just that some of these people might be inclined to violence by themselves, it is that the mutual online reinforcement and escalation will PROBABLY lead to violence sooner or later.
FWIW, just because you can carry a semi-auto rifle to your local Wal-mart in Texas, it’s considered really tacky to walk around like that. This ain’t Somalia, y’all.