UPDATE 2, 1 PM central time
Horrific news out of Orlando: A gunman armed with an assault rifle and other weapons killed at least 50 in a terrorist attack the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; more than 50 have been taken to hospitals.
The gunman, killed in a shootout with police, has been identified as Omar Mateen; the Daily Beast reports that he was previously investigated by the FBI. NBC is reporting that before the shootngs he called 911 and swore allegiance to ISIS.
NBC is also reporting that Mateen was a violent homophobe, according to his father. It seems clear that the club was deliberately targeted because it catered to the LGBT community. The father told NBC that the shootng was likely motivated by his son’s hatred of gays. “This had nothing to do with religion,” he told them.
His ex-wife told the Washington Post that he was an unstable and abusive man. “He beat me,” she saud. “He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”
Horrendous.
Meanwhile, 4chan trolls are busily spreading disinformation about the shooting.
Please post your thoughts, and any relevant information you run across.
Okay, maybe the “ties to ISIS” isn’t as outlandish as I thought it was. Dude still isn’t ISIS, he just probably liked them. ._. He may have been a sympathizer.
He still wasn’t particularly religious.
I have a bad feeling that this will turn into pinkwashing.
This is dreadful. My sympathies to everyone affected.
Like Redsilkphoenix, I suspect that Republican politicians will fight gun control until people they can empathise with are victims of gun violence. Rather like they fought stem cell research until there was a chance it might help Ronald Reagan.
I have an uneasy feeling that it might happen when Trump loses.
It seems trite to suggest that this amounts to ‘good’ news, but perhaps there’s some comfort/relief in that it appears the authorities successfully interdicted an attempt to bomb the gay pride event in Los Angeles. One man in custody, explosives recovered, no further details as yet.
I need to go tell my sister I love her. She came out a while back and the fact that I fear for her even more than I do is very depressing.
I can’t even process this right now. I just can’t. I’m sick of gun massacres. I’m sick of hiding that I’m bisexual at certain times for fear of my safety. I’m sick of worrying about the safety of my LBGT+ friends or anyone else who doesn’t fit into the small, restrictive box our society puts sexual relationships in.
Missed my edit window. I have friends visiting Orlando right now. They were in a Target checking out and their cashier kept making mistakes and acting all flustered. They asked her if something was the matter. She responded that a co-worker she knew really well was killed at The Pulse. I can’t imagine losing a co-worker like that.
@Saphira No shit. No fucking shit. The thing that got me (well, broke my numbness, anyway) was looking on the facebook page for the documentary Upstairs Inferno and noting that their tagline ‘Largest Gay mass murder in US history’ had been crossed out in red. :/
I see a lot of helpless feelings and expressions that there’s nothing anyone can do to get gun control enacted.
That’s not true. What you can do (if you are an American) is take a close interest in your state elections. Republicans own the House because of gerrymandering; gerrymandering happens because the state legislature draws the district lines to maximize the Republican representation in the House.
In 2020 (4 years) there will be a new Census. After the Census, state legislatures will be required to re-draw their district lines. TAKE AN INTEREST IN YOUR STATE LEGISLATURE, NOW, IF YOU WANT THE HOUSE TO EVER CHANGE.
Too many people get worked up about the presidential election, and to some degree their elections to the US Congress, and then fall down completely when it comes to their state government. Fucking stop it, people. The important races are the down-ticket ones. Those are the ones that count, and those are the ones that so many Americans can’t give the first shit about until it’s too late.
If you feel helpless and you wish there was something you, personally, could do, this is it: work toward getting your state representation changed. District lines are drawn every 10 years and now is the time to do something about what is going to happen in 2021 and 2022 when the Census numbers come in.
I’m not sure what it says about me, but I’m increasingly finding myself more horrified by the public’s reaction to these things than the actual atrocities. And let me tell you, I sure feel great that the hard-right tools that couldn’t give less of a shit about LGBT people like me are showing their support as an excuse to hate muslims.
@Alan + Scildfreja
Thanks for the explanations re: ‘virtue signalling’. They think they’re so clever, don’t they?
In the US, guns have more rights than people. I don’t think the right wing will take gun violence seriously until an innocent gun is accidentally shot. Then there’ll be hand-wringing and lamenting over a firearm cut down in its prime, before it even had a chance to form a well-regulated militia.
Then the NRA’s response will be to urge everyone to arm “good guns” with guns, to protect themselves from the “bad guns”. And then the gun’s guns will need guns, because you never know.
I’m so disgusted with this country’s priorities right now, and the way we’ve allowed the gun lobby to take our politicians hostage, and the fact that so many of these shootings are motivated by hatred of women, minorities, and LGBT folks, while almost nobody talks about the toxic stew of male entitlement that makes someone reach for a gun to satisfy their wounded grandiosity. I’m at a loss for words. My heart is aching for the victims and their families.
@Axecalibur
Despite being ninja’d, I recommend this video, courtesy of H. Bomberguy:
ETA: @Buttercup Q. Skullpants
I snorked rather loudly.
I’m one of those people who deals with these events through humor, so I needed that.
@ Buttercup. Thanks for the humour. 🙂
@Anne Lewis ROFLMAO!! 🙂
I was marching in LA Pride. It was good to see so many people who weren’t afraid to come together, but it’s scary that we were almost the second tragedy of the day.
@katz
Oh no! Hope you had some fun, and I’m glad you’re safe
🙂 <3 🙂
Edit: less creepy smileys
authorialAlchemy
The person he most reminds me of is Man Haron Monis, the shithead in Sydney with the Lindt cafe siege. He went so far as to have a couple of the hostages hold an ISIS flag up to the windows of the cafe. Everybody was all flustered about “terrorism” and “we’re all gunna die”.
In reality he was well-known as a chronic offender – charged as an accessory in the murder of his former wife – who had a long history of sexual assaults against women. He was basically a fantasist and a braggart – who despised women. Unlike this guy, he didn’t try to sign up as a police officer, he preferred to boast that he was a secret agent along with other unlikely claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Haron_Monis
I’d put both of these men’s claimed allegiance to their religion in the same box as all those “christians” who attack Planned Parenthood. They wear the religion badge as a cover for their bigotry and an excuse for unforgivable violence.
In its most visible form it’s the latest pop attempt to explain away altruism and it’s particularly unthoughtful. It basically assumes that self interest is the only real motivator. People who use it that way think in general that as they long as they assert it, it’s true, without caring for evidence.
Rather few of Da’esh’s supporters or members are. Many have a history of petty crime, including recreational use of alcohol or other drugs. ‘Radicalisation’ has more to do with the rejection of mainstream society over (real and perceived) grievances than zeal.
Taking the extreme violence and the perpetrators obvious intent to die in the process into account, I don’t see what’s wrong with acknowledging that extremist rhetoric may have had a role to play in this.
The shooter’s father seems to be in a competition with Brock Turner’s father about who can be the biggest apologist dickhead.
So he’s sad that his son did this rather than leave it to god. Charming.
Woke up this morning to the CBC radio 2 coverage of this, and i was relieved to hear the gunman described as a new york born man living in florida after they mentioned his name. No mention of ISIS, and they did say it was a gay nightclub.
Just wanted to let those of you dealing with shitty coverage know that is is being discussed in a better way in some places.
The difference reminds me of the cbc coverage i streamed during the ottawa attack. They didn’t speculate, the kept repeating what little they knew.
I also wrote up a long post yesterday but didn’t hit ‘send’ because it was too much. My heart goes out to everyone affected by this. I donated a little money.
And anyone who wishes they could donate blood to help… you can. Help out your local blood bank, they could always use it. I also saw that the restriction in Florida on gay/bi men has been temporarily lifted… omg i was wrong, i can’t find any evidence of this.
http://gawker.com/reports-orlando-blood-center-lifts-ban-on-blood-donati-1781837902
So it was on social media, but OneBlood is denying it.
This was big news on the Toronto Metro Morning show today, obviously. Along with an interview with Rob Oliphant:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/orlando-shooting-muslim-gay-toronto-mp-rob-oliphant-1.3632244
@ jenora
When someone explained Twitter to me I couldn’t see the point. What could possibly be worth saying that you could fit in 144 characters?
But that Tweet shows that occasionally there is a point to it.
(I still reserve judgment on every other Tweet ever though)
@Alan:
Yes, Twitter rewards pithiness. Some people can manage it, some can’t. It takes a fairly decent wordsmith to really make art out of it.
Needless to say, here in Toronto, there’s already been talk about dedicating the Pride Parade in three weeks to the victims of this shooting.
And just yesterday, some friends of mine were talking about how this year at Pride both George Takei and Justin Trudeau were going to be marching in the parade; people were joking that if you posted a picture of the two of them kissing you could break the Internet.
(Trudeau will actually be the first sitting Prime Minister to march in Toronto’s Pride Parade. Of course, this is also the man who created a gender-balanced cabinet and said ‘You may ask me why? Because it’s 2016.’ And the son of the man who helped decriminalize private homosexual acts in Canada and whose most famous quote is probably ‘There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation’, even if he took that line from reporter Martin O’Malley. So, quite honestly, I suspect people would have been more surprised if Trudeau had said ‘no’.)
@ignorantianescia Orthodox Sunni Islam (like the variety in Saudi Arabia) tends to be fairly homophobic and more generally hateful towards anyone who doesn’t fit in with their expectations of sexual mores. But the vast majority of Muslims in the West tend to be more moderate or liberal in terms of what they actually believe about sex. Similarly, most young evangelical Christians don’t feel guilty at all about feeling sexually aroused by the opposite sex and many are becoming pro-gay now (only the small group of really dedicated people worries about “lustful thoughts”).
But you’re right, if you look at radical groups like ISIS and the biblical patriarchy groups, you’ll find more people with criminal backgrounds and substance abuse history. Patriarchal churches are attractive because they subversively reject almost every aspect of modern society and they’re heavy on “forgiveness” for members of the in-group but vindictive towards outsiders and society. In some groups, child molestation is literally just as bad as masturbating and “wasting your seed,” so in a sick way child molesters (and other criminals, since bad sex is “worse” than violence and theft) are less stigmatized while other people feel extremely guilty.
So yeah, radicalization happens more because someone wants to reject society and less because someone is interested in spirituality.