Mass Shooting at LGBT Nightclub in Orlando

[MacMadame]

And in this case, the shooter was already on an FBI watch-list for terrorism.

No, he wasn't. He was investigated and while the investigation was ongoing, he was on the watch list. But he was cleared and not on a list for more than a year.

To Whom It May Concern:

I hope that when people are in pain another time, you can understand that maybe then is not the time to push, push, push on this issue.

Empathy is what I'd like to ask for.

Thank you.

How about this?

https://www.ksl.com/index.php?sid=4...aks-at-vigil-for-orlando-my-heart-has-changed

 

[nlloyd]

I think it has hit the LGBT community here and all over the world really hard, more so than other mass shootings in the U.S. because any LGBT person can identify with a gay club or bar being a safe space where we can be ourselves. To have that violated by something so awful is deeply traumatising in a way that many outside our community don't get.

That is my sense also. Gay clubs or bars are a sanctuary for many LGBTQ people, and I think they are also symbolic of a broader phenomenon. LGBTQ people spend so much of our time and energy finding or creating spaces where we can be ourselves. We may move to different countries, move from rural areas to urban ones, live in particular neighborhoods, and/or come out to particular people/communities in order to create those spaces. We then trust the spaces we have found or created, because it is very tiring to entertain a constant suspicion of them, and because we need spaces where we can be ourselves. When someone violates those spaces so unexpectedly - when we find that the space is not actually trustworthy - it is deeply shocking. For example, I take for granted that in my current context, I can be out about my partner most of the time, and that I can refer to her using terms of endearment in public places. Now, I feel I need to re-evaluate that. I need to consider that my trust may be misplaced and that if I continue with these practices, some sort of unexpected aggression towards me may ensue.

 

[Cachoo]

I guess I'm more thinking from a tolerance and mental health perspective. There will always be angry people, and intolerant people, but when it's easy for them to get a gun...well that a recipe for disaster. Setting the gun issue aside, there has to be something that can be done to reduce the reason that people want to shoot up a school, nightclub, workplace etc. Not always (I still find the "reasoning" for the Port Arthur Massacre hard to grasp - but then I would never think of arming myself anyway), but sometimes. So in addition to fighting for gun control, better mental health services (every country can do this better), promoting tolerance...again really easy things to say, but actually all countries struggle with this. In this case, the man had issues with his sexuality it seems (and maybe his faith), in some other case, workplace disputes, and I think everywhere in the world could do better working on these things.

Angelskates, when you argue for better mental health services, conflict resolution etc....I think you are talking about something we can all agree on. When we argue with gun owners about the proliferation of guns they will point out that guns are not the problem but that it is a failure on our part for keeping guns out of the wrong hands. And with 300 million people and 300 million guns now in the US I'm surprised the number of deaths by gun in a year isn't 100,000. I want gun control now though I believe it won't have any effect in my lifetime. My hope is that we engage the hearts and minds of the young and the proverbial "Bubba" types start to disappear. They cling to the past, they understand "code" when Trump says "Make America Great Again" and they measure their freedom by the way we interpret the second amendment. If I have anything to say about it they are going to need to sacrifice for the good of everyone. But I believe the fight to get to that point will be bloody one day. I think the founding fathers would find their interpretation of the second amendment wacko.

 

[MacMadame]

This made me cry:

http://www.foreverymom.com/orlando-shooting-pulse-jetblue-passengers/

 

[Vash01]

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/exclusive-song-pays-tribute-to-pulse-victims-706503747547

Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed two men who wrote a song 'Pulse' after the Orlando tragedy, and played the song with a video. It's really good. I hope it will go viral.

 

[nikjil]

Just wanted to put my two cents in about gun issues. My father was a hunter and is a target shooter, so I've been around guns all my life. I have also worked in both the state and federal courts for almost twenty years, so I see a lot of gun cases.

While you certainly can kill/harm people with things other than guns, it is much harder to do so, and the vast majority of murder cases I see involve guns. I'd say the murder/assault cases run about fifty-fifty between legal guns and illegal guns. For me, the problem with easy access to legal guns is that people buy them, keep them loaded in houses/cars/on their persons, and then unfortunately, the guns are right there when they lose their tempers. I have far too many murder cases that have arisen out of stupidity, people killing each other over parking spaces, noise complaints, not moving a bike out of the way of a car, etc. That one moment of temper combined with an easy way to kill ruins the lives of both families.

My caseload does not include the large number of cases where children get their hands on loaded guns that their parents haven't secured and hurt either themselves or someone else. Prosecutors are very reluctant to charge parents in those cases because they see it as compounding a tragedy.

As I said, my father had his friends hunted for years. All were responsible hunters, really understood guns, wore blaze orange everything, only shot if they knew they could kill the deer and no one else was around. They also never hunted on state game lands, only on private lands owned by friends. There was a reason for this, they were terrified of weekend hunters, usually from the cities, who had minimal experience with guns and basically got together with buddies during hunting season, drank like crazy, then went out and shot at anything that moved. I lived in a big hunting area and there are always stories about this.

One thing I had not realized about the NRA is that they have means to essentially force people to join them. Over the years, they have entered into partnerships with many gun clubs/ranges and now if you want to join one, you must also join the NRA. My father's gun range is one those places, he has been able to trick his way around the requirement for years but now probably won't be able to do this. Since he absolutely refuses to join the NRA, he may have to give up his membership. It makes me wonder how many people have joined the NRA because it's the only way to get access to a local gun range/

I personally see no reason that any civilian needs an assault weapon, body armor, or any other military/police gear. I'm not a fan of the Second Amendment, but think it is here to stay. However, I see nothing in the language of the Second Amendment that says you cannot restrict ownership by type of weapons, control the amount of ammo people own, or restrict who can sell guns. I'd love to see guns treated the way my commonwealth, Pennsylvania, treats liquor, only sold in state-controlled stores, no more private sales, gun stores, Walmart, gun shows, etc. I see no reason that it should be easier to buy a gun than to get Sudafed.

 

[BlueRidge]

I was talking with my sister this morning. She referenced the fact that I was personally very deeply distressed by the Sandy Hook shooting and said, "People are affected by different things." She said Orlando has deeply distressed her more than other shootings. Because it wasn't just random, it was gays who were targeted. And LGBT folks have lived with this our whole lives and its like saying, "you think you are safe these days with all this acceptance, same sex marriage and all. Think again."

L.G.B.T. People Are More Likely to Be Targets of Hate Crimes Than Any Other Minority Group (NY Times)

Even before the shooting rampage at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were already the most likely targets of hate crimes in America, according to an analysis of data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

 

[jeffisjeff]

I was talking with my sister this morning. She referenced the fact that I was personally very deeply distressed by the Sandy Hook shooting and said, "People are affected by different things."

Reactions to events like this one are highly personal. I still cannot think about Sandy Hook. I couldn't watch any of the news coverage without breaking down. But I had a 7 year old at the time. My reaction to Orlando has a unique component: We have close family friends who will be moving to Orlando this summer. They are Muslim and have two school-aged kids. I worry about backlash, particularly with the kids. Starting a new school is hard enough under the best of circumstances.

 

[Moto Guzzi]

One thing I had not realized about the NRA is that they have means to essentially force people to join them. Over the years, they have entered into partnerships with many gun clubs/ranges and now if you want to join one, you must also join the NRA. My father's gun range is one those places, he has been able to trick his way around the requirement for years but now probably won't be able to do this. Since he absolutely refuses to join the NRA, he may have to give up his membership. It makes me wonder how many people have joined the NRA because it's the only way to get access to a local gun range/

My oldest brother was a safety instructor for the NRA. He belonged to a gun club that required NRA membership, and he taught safety classes there. He had a collection of rifles and handguns that he used at the gun club or for hunting on our family farm. All were kept in a locked gun safe in a locked room. We have a few rifles on our family farm, including my great, great grandfather's civil war rifle, and they are kept in a locked gun safe.

He would invite some of his friends from the gun club to our farm during hunting season. My uncle joined them a few times but was asked not to come again because they considered him too careless about gun safety. My brother died at age 54 while waiting for a heart transplant. Since then, nobody except one nephew who has completed safety training is allowed to hunt on our farm. That doesn't stop people from trying, though. Our land is posted with no hunting signs but we've caught people hunting who try to claim my dad gave them permission. He did not and died in October 2014 before he supposedly gave these permissions.

I don't own a gun and have never desired to own one. In my college speech class, we had to give a speech to try to convince people of something. Mine was on the need for stronger gun control laws. I spoke about background checks, waiting periods, safety training, bans on assault weapons--all the things that make common sense when it came to guns--but got a lot of flack because people in my small home town thought those were infringements of their rights.

That was some years ago, but attitudes have not changed. A former neighbor lost her 7-year-old son when he was at a friend's house and the friend showed him his father's handgun that was not locked up. It was unloaded but the bullets were with it. Jared told his friend that he knew how to load it and showed him. When he tried to unload it, the gun went off and shot him in the forehead, killing him instantly. My former neighbor and her husband won their lawsuit against the friend's parents but it didn't change their feelings that gun laws should be limited.

 

[twinsissv]

http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/exclusive-song-pays-tribute-to-pulse-victims-706503747547

Lawrence O'Donnell interviewed two men who wrote a song 'Pulse' after the Orlando tragedy, and played the song with a video. It's really good. I hope it will go viral.

And it was beautiful..."feel my pulse"...

 

[CantALoop]

Do you know what is ridiculous? These things continue to happen (ie mass shootings) and every time they happen those in the US continue to ask "Why did this happen?" The rest of us in the world sit there and look at the US (because if gets so much media coverage outside your country) and continue to go "WTF? It is the guns that are the problem". It is such a no-brainer and other countries have managed to do something about the issue.

Although it's not as grave an issue as gun control, it's funny that someone from Australia, a Western nation that still can't pass gay marriage despite overwhelming popular support, somehow finds it totally unfathomable that a law with public support would have difficulty passing through socially conservative voting blocs and rich lobbyists.

 

[Simone411]

This is just the way I feel. Under no means should a civilian or citizen have an assault automatic weapon of any type. Only the military should have those type of weapons. Period. That should have been added to the second amendment from the get go ... from the beginning.

 

[Skittl1321]

This is just the way I feel. Under no means should a civilian or citizen have an assault automatic weapon of any type. Only the military should have those type of weapons. Period. That should have been added to the second amendment from the get go ... from the beginning.

How would the founding father's even know what an assault rifle was? Of course it wasn't there in the beginning!

But the intention was for people (or states depending on your interpretation) to be able to protect themselves from the federal government. Having just gone through a revolution, there was a bit of mistrust of government and the military.

The government at the time had a military with muskets. The founding fathers wanted people to be able to equip themselves with the same muskets. That's the argument people use when they think that individuals should have the right to any weaponry. But clearly the "shall not infringe" has been interpreted in various ways before that allow bans. Perhaps the 2nd amendment can stay intact but only allow personal ownership of muskets.

 

[Sparks]

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Why do people not understand the first part of the amendment?

 

[skatesindreams]

President Obama and VP Biden are visiting the memorial in front of the Dr. Phillips Center in Orlando right now; after visiting privately with survivors. families, and first responders.

 

[Susan1]

How many of these were terrorists, Muslims, on any "lists"? The only thing they have in common is GUN use. (hope the long address works. If not, go to motherjones.com

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...UlHkwkV-6uy_yeJh3X46o/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0

 

[MacMadame]

Some more reaction to the shooting:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...11e69519013b248da655&utm_content=inf_4_2697_2

 

[Skittl1321]

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Why do people not understand the first part of the amendment?

It's heavily debated what the intention of that means. Many will argue that "the right of the people shall not be infringed" (so that they can become a militia if needed).

They'll also say laws to require permits are "infringements"...

The thing wasn't well written. Though I suppose if the constitution was they wouldn't have needed 10 amendments right away

 

[skatesindreams]

Article of special interest:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/16/opinions/sutter-orlando-shooting-tree/index.html

 

[twinsissv]

President Obama and VP Biden are visiting the memorial in front of the Dr. Phillips Center in Orlando right now; after visiting privately with survivors. families, and first responders.

...too many times...too many times...far too many times!

 

[becca]

So sorry for the victims and families don't get the anti gun control attitudes.

 

[Simone411]

How would the founding father's even know what an assault rifle was? Of course it wasn't there in the beginning!

But the intention was for people (or states depending on your interpretation) to be able to protect themselves from the federal government. Having just gone through a revolution, there was a bit of mistrust of government and the military.

The government at the time had a military with muskets. The founding fathers wanted people to be able to equip themselves with the same muskets. That's the argument people use when they think that individuals should have the right to any weaponry. But clearly the "shall not infringe" has been interpreted in various ways before that allow bans. Perhaps the 2nd amendment can stay intact but only allow personal ownership of muskets.

Okay, I do believe you know or realize that I wasn't talking about George Washington and Muskets. So I will reword this for more understanding. Beginning in the 20th Century, semi automatic weapons, squad automatic weapons, sniper rifles, guns, ammunitions were being massed produced for the military armed forces. Those weapons should have been only available for the military and government officials that were authorized to use those kind of weapons.

From Wikipedia: List of individual weapons of the US Armed Forces

I'll give you an example of a squad automatic weapon. My dad served in the US Marine Corps during the Korean War. Here are some photos of him and two of his squad using an automatic weapon.

http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m243/Angie1998/Family_Photos/Dad_Korea/Korea_Dad1_zpsc2c37efe.jpg

http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m243/Angie1998/Family_Photos/Dad_Korea/Korea_Dad2_zps4d753618.jpg

http://s106.photobucket.com/user/An...ea/Korea_Dad3_zps8e7610e3.jpg.html?sort=2&o=2

These type of weapons including sniper rifles should have been forbidden for civilian use. Those weapons were produced for the US Armed Forces and that's how it should have remained.

That's my opinion, of course, and I'm posting about it just like other FSUers have posted in this thread. I'm not talking about Muskets or founding fathers and George Washington.

 

[skatesindreams]

Here is an example of love and service, in the reality of the tragedy:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/17/opinions/sutter-orlando-shooting-caskets/index.html

 

[Artistic Skaters]

*** OneOrlando fund changes course, will give money to victims :

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...da8280-34bd-11e6-ab9d-1da2b0f24f93_story.html

The largest fundraising arm for the victims of the Pulse nightclub attack reversed course Friday and will now distribute millions of dollars directly to families and survivors instead of through nonprofit agencies.

The OneOrlando fund’s decision comes a day after the families of victims from previous mass shootings at Virginia Tech, Columbine High School and elsewhere said in a letter that they objected to the fund distributing money only to nonprofits.

“We believe that donations that are collected in the wake of national tragedies for victims should be disbursed directly TO them,” the letter said. “That is why Americans are giving. To help the victims directly.”

 

[Nomad]

Okay, I do believe you know or realize that I wasn't talking about George Washington and Muskets. So I will reword this for more understanding. Beginning in the 20th Century, semi automatic weapons, squad automatic weapons, sniper rifles, guns, ammunitions were being massed produced for the military armed forces. Those weapons should have been only available for the military and government officials that were authorized to use those kind of weapons.

From Wikipedia: List of individual weapons of the US Armed Forces

I'll give you an example of a squad automatic weapon. My dad served in the US Marine Corps during the Korean War. Here are some photos of him and two of his squad using an automatic weapon.

http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m243/Angie1998/Family_Photos/Dad_Korea/Korea_Dad1_zpsc2c37efe.jpg

http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m243/Angie1998/Family_Photos/Dad_Korea/Korea_Dad2_zps4d753618.jpg

http://s106.photobucket.com/user/An...ea/Korea_Dad3_zps8e7610e3.jpg.html?sort=2&o=2

These type of weapons including sniper rifles should have been forbidden for civilian use. Those weapons were produced for the US Armed Forces and that's how it should have remained.

That's my opinion, of course, and I'm posting about it just like other FSUers have posted in this thread. I'm not talking about Muskets or founding fathers and George Washington.

This. And here's something a friend sent me: https://thetab.com/us/2016/06/14/i-was-able-to-buy-an-ar-15-in-five-minutes-19833

 

[judiz]

This. And here's something a friend sent me: https://thetab.com/us/2016/06/14/i-was-able-to-buy-an-ar-15-in-five-minutes-19833

Saw this on Facebook after giving my drivers license in order to buy Sudafed

 

[Nomad]

Saw this on Facebook after giving my drivers license in order to buy Sudafed

And if your pharmacy is like mine, it took more than five minutes.

 

[Simone411]

And I can't get a Tramadol prescription for the pain I have in my leg without seeing my doctor first. He has to approve, write out the prescription because he can't phone or fax it to my pharmacy anymore. And the doctor makes the final decision whether he wants me to have it or not. In my case, he decided no but said I could use Aleve if I had pain. I can't take Ibuprofen, Motrin or Advil because of being highly allergic to it. He decided no because of how long I had taken it. He knew I wasn't addicted to it and he didn't want me to become addicted, either.

Gee. I guess I could go to the pawn shop here in town and see how fast it would take me to get an AR-15. I could probably get that easier than I can get a prescription of Tramadol for pain and walk out within 5 minutes.

 

[AliasJohnDoe]

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Why do people not understand the first part of the amendment?

Probably because of the "time" period the amendment was written. Guns back then were muskets, not ar-15's. Some guns manufactured today were intended for military use, not public use.

The children of the inventor of the ar-15 said their father intended for the ar-15 to be used for military use, not public (the people) use.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-ar-15-inventor-speaks-out-n593356

The ex-Marine and "avid sportsman, hunter and skeet shooter" never used his invention for sport. He also never kept it around the house for personal defense. In fact, he never even owned one.

 

[snoopy]

http://www.out.com/popnography/2016...is-twitter-account-gives-it-fabulous-makeover

Anonymous hacks into hundreds of pro-Isis Twitter accounts and gives them gay makeover.