Collective Punishment Rears its Ugly Head
News outlets are announcing that the suspects in the Boston bombing are Muslims from Chechnya. As if on cue there are now calls going out to kill all Muslims and/or Chechens. In fact many people are bringing up the Chechnya's violent history and using Besland school crisis as evidence that Chechens are evil people. People are also pointing out the usual fear mongering about Muslims.
While these accusations concern me in general, they really concern them when they're being made by members of the gun rights community. If any group of people understood the problems inherent in collective punishment I would think it would be a group that becomes the subject of collective punishment whenever a shooting occurs. Apparently not. I don't even have enough fingers to count the number of instances I've seen where a member of the gun rights community has either made mention of slaughtering the Muslims, Chechens, or everybody living in the Middle East.
I don't even have words to properly express my disgust. For fuck's sake people, we should understand that two individuals from a country that has 1,268,989 people doesn't even make for a correlation, let along a case. The only people who are responsible for the bombing in Boston are the people who detonated the bombs.