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Some rambling on modern attitudes found generally leftward which I strongly dislike. First, an anecdote:
There was recently a shooting at a gay bar. I share an online space with some friends and some acquaintances for general purpose discussion - no specific focus other than a general lean toward our mutual shared interests, which are unrelated to the shooting or what follows.
One person posted an article about the shooting and then something roughly equivalent to "thoughts and prayers" for the victims, and a follow up note that Bigotry Is Bad. No problem, I'm on board. A second person posted that, as a sexual minority, they are now afraid to go out. They have updated based on this attack to think the world is not safe enough to enjoy. I interjected with something along the lines of "hold on, attacks like this are less likely to get you than car accidents or [insert whatever mundane thing] - yes they're flashy and scary, but you really shouldn't update based on them - they're statistically insignificant AND if you want to view them as terrorism then you living in fear is letting them win - you shouldn't do that"
The response I got was a gentle dogpile (they did start with "I know you're just trying to help, but..." and such), saying that I shouldn't be trying to tell marginalized people how to feel about things and I should let them have space to process their trauma and etc etc, much insistence on "letting the victims speak" (by which they mean indirect victims - people that share a class with the victims, not the firsthand victims) and being a good ally by listening. I pushed back for a bit saying that I'm not making any claims about the general safety of LGBTetc folks (though they are still safe enough to not feel so afraid of the world around them if they live somewhere like the US, this was left unsaid) and that I'm only saying if you previously had the courage to face the world, the shooting shouldn't have changed that and we explicitly had a person saying exactly that they were now afraid based on this event...
But eventually I got the sense they just didn't want to hear me. I gave an apology in the vein of "when people are afraid is exactly the BEST time to reassure them, but clearly I am failing to do that, so I'll back off" and they spent a few seconds talking about how important and good it is to let LGBT voices speak first (of which there were several available in the space, many of which were in the dopile). After those seconds, we have had 24+ hours of silence. Not a word on the topic from any involved or even any spectators, though they all continued talking about unrelated things in other channels of the space.
So. What happened here? I feel like insistence on sitting down and letting marginalized voices be heard is frequently insincere, as it happens even when nobody marginalized (or indeed, anybody at all) has anything to say. It is a "shut up" button, to be deployed whenever somebody says something you don't like that's adjacent to [minority issue]. Even if that isn't how they feel about it, that is functionally what is going on.
Superweapons are bad.
I would echo @MathiasTRex's advice in never engaging in these kinds of discussion online. But I would also say that I think you misread the situation. People were upset after a mass shooting (hate crime?). They were venting and perhaps trying to solicit some sympathy/attention. Wading in with the "well, actually" doesn't really help anybody even if you are, indisputably, 100% correct. This is the kind of situation where more social intelligence and less rational intelligence helps.
I only offer this advice because I myself walk blindly into these snares all the time, and have to try really hard to bite my tongue and not impose Rational Logic™ on people's feelings
Surely it does help (if it's heeded at all) to the extent that the person's statement isn't totally untrue? If they're going to actually be worried, or act differently in the future, about lgbtq mass shootings, understanding it's not a meaningful risk could reduce that. Which benefits them because they don't take unnecessary action, waste time, avoid useful activity for no reason. I'd personally be annoyed if, e.g., the comments on reddit posts about murders where people said "OMG THIS IS SO SCARY" didn't have replies saying "well, ackshually, P(car crash|LGBT) = 1000 * P(mass shooting|LGBT), so there's nothing to worry about", because that's valuable information. And more generally, 'being scared after a reported violent event', and being upset/fear generally, is an ... adaptation that helps people avoid harm in the future, that's why that particular set of mechanisms evolved. Using that to be afraid in cases of actual harm is just better! "Feeling" does not mean "whenever something might upset someone, that means it shouldn't happen" - it refers to a bunch of contingent adaptations / tendencies with many different roles, and 'feelings' and 'rational logic' are deeply intertwined (i.e., the ability to infer that 'lgbt mass shooting' means 'i might die' is as 'logical' as anything else). That this particular response breaks a social norm isn't because "Rational Logic^{tm}" and feelings don't mix, it's just that ... the response breaks a specific social norm, and OP cares more about other consequences of the response than that social norm.
I think the middle path here is to wait to see if OP's friend is actually serious about not going out anymore or was just expressing their feelings in the moment.
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