Interesting alternate scenario – but I doubt it would be nearly as easy to carry an AR-15 into Disney World without somebody noticing.
I dont say either. I ask “what gun control law would have prevented this? Would that law be legal under the 2nd Ad? Would it put a undue burden on non-criminals?”.
In this present case, the guy was a registered Security guard with no felonies and bought and registered the guns legally. He passed the background check.
The rifle was a .223, technically yes, a "high powered rifle’ but most all centerfire rifles, all deer rifle etc are “high powered”. Actually the .223 is not that powerful in comparison. Yes, it looked scary, but that means nothing. It did have a large magazine, but from what i have read, just limiting him to a 10 round mag (and plenty pf them) would not have changed things- he had plenty of time. He could have done this just fine with a deer rifle.
No gun control law would have prevented this.
I checked several stories and it seems it was never reported. Yes, certainly that would be a acceptable reason for denying a gun purchase, it is in CA.
He could have done this handily with a deer rifle or a shotgun. likely would have killed more.
I dont see where it sez that.
Ok, I want to apologize for my posts, but it’s really hard to follow instructions, where the instructions are after the post we’re responding to.
Sorry.
And surprise, surprise: regulars at the club are saying they’d seen Mateen there a number of times, and he was using a gay dating app (“Jack’d”) to communicate with some of them. Must of have been so he could hate up close, eh?
Hadn’t heard that, but luring gays is common among violent homophobes. See: Russia. Doesn’t mean they’re gay and suffering from internalized homophobia, although that certainly happens. Did he suck lots of dick to establish his cover?
Link: Witness: Omar Mateen had been at Orlando gay nightclub many times – Orlando Sentinel
I suppose it’s possible that he was just scouting out his target but a dozen times seems excessive for simply checking out security or whatever. I suppose he could have been using the chat app to find out about gay hangouts but on and off for a year?
This is a job for Pastor Strate!
You’d really rather be remembered as a mass murderer than a self-hating queer, wouldn’t you, Omar?
Just to ask, how many statements from Republican lawmakers at all even hinted at the particular significant demographics of the victims? I’m curious.
So, a guy (whom the FBI looked at as a suspected Muslim terrorist) goes into a gay bar and starts to shoot people. In mid-rampage he calls 911 to profess his allegiance to ISIS. But it’s not really about Islamic terrorism?
I see parallels to the late-19th century anarchist movement (See Barbara Tuchman’s The High Tower). The rhetoric of the anarchists was incendiary, calling on the workers to rise up in mass revolt against capitalism and the government. Almost nobody did however. The few who did were almost without exception lone nuts who used anarchism as an excuse to avenge their real or imagined grievances. The authorities tried, and tried hard, to find some prosecutable link between those who advocated violence and those who carried it out, usually without success.
If the only thing he said about the shooting was the IS affiliation - maybe it would be solely about Islamic Terrorism. But he didn’t, and it’s not.
It’s also about the fact that he’s a self-hating gay man freaked out by homophobia. So far, there’s more evidence about the homophobia than about the IS thing. So why should we ignore the homophobic aspect? Why should we panic about the Muslim thing and give our society’s homophobia a pass?
That is interesting.
Homophobia was most likely a factor, and it shouldn’t be ignored. But Islamic terrorism was very clearly a factor, and to ignore that since it’s un-pc is both ridiculous and despicable.
We’re not “ignoring” it and political correctness has fuck-all to do with it. Mostly we’re trying to fight the very loud and ignorant narrative that THIS PROVES MUSLIMS WANT TO KILL US ALL!!! rather than trying to find out what the hell was going on with this guy.
It’s entirely possible, for example, that he was a gay man who grew up in a strict religious household and expressed his increasing level of self-loathing in a series of violent episodes - from assaulting the wife he married to prove to himself and his family that he was a manly straight man and not one of “those faggots”, to killing the people who represented everything he simultaneously wanted to be and loathed about himself. He’d hardly be the first closeted gay-basher by a long shot, although usually the guys who go out looking to kick in the heads of a few “queers” outside gay bars only assault a couple of people at a time. And of course what better way to prove that he was a “proper Muslim” than to ascribe his actions to the holy cause du jour? You’ll note he only did this halfway through the massacre, suggesting this wasn’t really part of the plan; if he’d left a video that’d be a whole other story. Frankly this whole episode has “Daddy, do you love me now?!?” written all over it.
Of course, all that is a purely speculative narrative I’ve built based on the few facts of the case I’ve encountered grafted onto some previous stories of right-wing closeted Christian homophobes who, after years of inciting hatred, suddenly turned out to have been acting out against their own repressed urges and making everyone else the victims of their own self-loathing. It may be true, it may be partly true, or it may be complete nonsense. But it at least attempts to understand what makes a young man kill or attempt to kill a hundred people rather than leaping straight to “MUSLIMS BAD! THEY KILL I!” and pretending that “they” are nothing like us at all.
Homophobia and radical Islam go hand-in-hand, so you can’t exactly say it’s about one but not the other. Also, we now know he went to Saudi Arabia twice. ISIS didn’t “do” the attack, but this guy didn’t pull off the worst mass shooting ever purely by luck. We don’t know the full extent of professional terrorists’ involvement, but the guy drove over 100 miles to just the right target and used perfect tactics used by terrorists in places like Mumbai to maximize the body count. I think it’s very unlikely that he didn’t get professional advice.
According to a co-worker he had a serious problem with gays, blacks, and Latinos.