Why do conservatives Think that the Las Vegas shooting was a cover up?
Like why can't they just accept that the shooter was insane and he wanted to murder people just for destructive purposes?
Posted Nov 30, 2017, 4:18 PM UTC
318
A cover up for what? I don't think I have heard anyone saying this.
7
r/conspiracy and other like-minded venues have put forth numerous theories, the prevailing one being that Stephen Paddock was a Naval Intelligence Officer who was illegally selling weapons to ISIS members from Indonesia in the United States, and it went south. It's a bit murky; some say it was a sting (eg, they were going to arrest the ISIS members) others go further down the rabbit hole and claim ISIS is funded by the US, others even further claim that the shooting was fully planned by the US government.
Either way, the story goes, that these ISIS guys killed Paddock and shot up the concert, then fled, leaving Paddock the fall guy. The story continues to explain that the US government would rush to cover this up so they wouldn't be caught literally selling weapons to ISIS (whether by intent, for a sting, or other purposes).
Again, this is "the story", not my idea.
2
Go look on r/the_donald. People are saying its a cover up by the government
1
Again, a cover up of what? The commenter above you stated some tin foil hat theories.
no sane people are saying anything like this, are they?
1
A cover up for Saudi Terrorism, gun control, you name it. I'd like to believe that there are some otherwise sane people that are brainwashed into saying this stuff. Mostly because they want to be right and are susceptible to the words of people they've been indoctrinated into believing that they never lie.
1
There's a lot of people who really, really don't want the US to re-examine its gun laws. They feel that any attack on gun laws is an attack on them personally, because they identify as a gun-owner above all. Likewise, the NRA and other conservative news sources have feed them the idea that the liberals want to steal their guns away, and that they will stop at nothing to do so.
The takeaway here is that a combination of "Taking my guns away would be a personal insult and hurt my pride" and "I hate the liberals because they are the rivals to the conservatives" has lead to "The liberals are lying to try and steal my guns away." As such, it's much easier to go "No, a lone madman didn't kill a bunch of people, proving that guns need to be strongly regulated. It was just a cover-up by the liberals to try and trick people into thinking that guns need to be regulated, which is the first step towards STEALING OUR GUNS."
The main thing here is that you can't reason a person out of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.
1
I definitely feel that last part. I don't think I've ever heard someone actually say they want to take people's guns. Just regulate the process through which guns are acquired and used.
1
They don't think at all. They just lie to maximize the value of their identity - narcissism to the max.
-2†
I guess that makes sense. I don't usually like to be absolute when comparing political stances, but I find it very disrespectful to the victims of the shooting to use them as pawns in their own sick conspiracy.
3
Because it's easier to believe it's fake than them to be wrong about gun laws
-4
I think conspiracy is less about politics and more about fear.
Random happenings are scary to most people. Randomness is scary to most people.
Conspiracy theories remove that aspect from any given event. "It wasn't random, it was [...]". That turns fear into anger for the conspiracy theorist. And most weak-minded people would rather be angry than afraid.
It's true that politics leverages conspiracy theories (see: Birther, Benghazi, Pizza Gate, New Reich on the Right, etc), but the belief in the theories is -- I think -- more about fear than politics. I used to be deep into the conspiracy theory world. I was a depressed, lonely alcoholic looking to blame my problems on "them, out in the world". It worked for awhile. I grew out of it.
2
But every hardcore conspiracy theorist seems to be conservative. I get it's not inherently a political issue and I get that librals can also believe in conspiracy theories but I feel like it definitely leans to the right for whatever reason
1
I think that might just be a case of confirmation bias. In my experience with conspiracy theorists (again, I spent a lot of time there), they're not really "liberal or conservative", they're mostly anti-government in general. That's not really a trait of either major party, however I admit that the latest iteration of conservatism tends to be similarly anti-government.
1
for whatever reason
We call that bias, your entire comment history reeks of it. Also take a break, you aren't as clever or smart or funny as you think you are. A sea of low effort, add-nothing comments. You are non-stop over there, how many comments a day do you make and then subsequently delete because they fall flat? Find a hobby or something, much more rewarding I promise.
1
Ironic
0
They don't, at the very least, not all of them. Doesn't matter what you end the sentence with, barring some self-referential "identify as conservatives" thing.
Generalizing people is wrong, and I'm 100% certain there are exceptions to basically every possible thing you can end any of these with.
I can promise you there are conservatives that do think the LV Shooter was just nuts and wanted to murder for no reason. I can do that because I'm related to at least 4 of them.
Ok I guess I should clarify. I mostly meant T_D
Thinking that all conservatives are like those in T_D is like thinking all Democrats are like those in r/politics. Thank god that's not the case.
The internet -- especially reddit -- is a skewed, tiny minority of the actual country's population. Don't let this website fool you into thinking it's representative of the american people at large. It's not. At all.
Case in point: Go ask ten people on the street about net neutrality. I bet one might know what that is.