49+ Dead in Florida Gay Club Shooting

boskil said:

Trump is the only option to save this country from lunatic liberal, multi-culti, open-door, politically correct madness.
Plus, that ISLAMIC EXTREMIST MUSLIM would have gotten the gun in any case: forbidden or not.

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You are crazy. Trump will start World war 3, that's what he'll do, with his psychotic ways.

This evil creature carried out a homophobic attack - and homophobia is not exclusively an Islamic trait. How many of those charming little flies at the Westboro Baptist Church would have been cheering as news came through of the number of deaths? Even here some vile Christian jerk who wants to be an MP was claiming this was not as bad as the evil "gay agenda" would be to the kids.

karne said:

Oh, look. Another mass shooting in the US. How unusual.

WHEN WILL THEY LEARN?! When will some politician grow some balls?! When will the country as a collective finally stand up and shout NO! at the NRA?! HOW MANY MORE PEOPLE HAVE TO DIE, AMERICA? HOW MANY MORE?!
There is no sane world in which a civilian NEEDS an AR-15!
And your STUPID, MORONIC, IDIOTIC GUN LAWS ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN! They allowed a homophobic ***** to LEGALLY purchase an assault rifle and go commit this horrible atrocity!

No doubt the politicians are all weeping their crocodile tears, and saying their prayers, but none of them will actually DO anything about it!

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Indeed, according to USA Today, “The Senate voted down an amendment in December that would have blocked people on the FBI terror watch list from purchasing guns and explosive materials.” Apparently, The National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union weren’t pleased. So, “New Jersey is the only state that has a law on the books that prevents a person on the terror watch list from legally purchasing a weapon…. [Elsewhere in the USA] membership or suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization does not prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives under current federal law…. Suspected terrorists purchased more than 2,000 weapons between 2004 and 2014.”

Most surprisingly, from my point of view, not everybody at FBI wants changes either. USA Today quotes a former FBI agent Michael Gunman who said, “‘Narrowing constitutional rights based on being placed on a terror watch list, which is believed to include hundreds of thousands of individuals and perhaps 10,000 Americans, is problematic.’” He farther states that since the list includes people who are only being investigated for ties to terrorist organization, but whose wrongdoing hasn’t been proven yet, “‘the idea that people would lose some of their rights just because somebody had made the accusation against them would make the United States a very dangerous place to live.’” I’m afraid I find myself quite at odds with Mr. Gunman’s view of what makes the US a dangerous place to live in.

[email protected] said:

What were you expecting - it was just a question of time. And ISIS has nothing to do with it. There are polar cultures which are present in the planet right now. And they do not coexist - they are separately present. It was a political flick to bash Russia for bigotry, etc. before Sochi. Russia is like an innocent lamb here. There is the whole Muslim world, part of which, namely Saudi Arabia is doomed to be the USA's friend (despite Saudis were behind 911) because they keep American debt. Saudis stone to death women who sit in the same taxi with men. In Iran they also stone women - a famous movie The Stoning of Soraya M. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1277737/?ref_=nv_sr_1 is based on a true story. What would you expect if people from that culture move to the West in search of better life? That they would soak immediately western values that were gradually built over decades?

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I agree with you that tolerance should be a two-way street, and that the western nations should be much more careful as to who they admit into their countries. However, it must be acknowledged that in the USA there’s also plenty of homegrown “talent” in this area. In Orlando and in Boston the perpetrators were radical Muslims, but in Newton, in Colorado and at the college shootings they weren’t. There was even a case when a (white and non-Muslim) elementary school kid took a home gun to school and shot a classmate.

The irony is that back when the US Constitution was ratified, most Americans had guns, and a fair number of children the age of elementary school students today used guns regularly, hunting for sustenance. But nobody thought to bring a gun to school and kill somebody or go on a shooting spree to a college. Later there was a time when western novels and films were very popular in the US, but because the action in them was far removed from reality, again it didn’t occur to anybody to recreate wild west in their neighborhood.

I think that when drugs appeared and made many city centers unsafe, it was the first step, and then films appeared which placed the violent action not in some mythical place, but in the here and now. It seems to me that with time the attitude towards violence in films became more and more accepting, and probably for the first time since the Romans the concept of violence as entertainment emerged. This paved the way for videogames many of which exploit this very concept. Even in the first Star Wars movie, the saintly Luke Skywalker, grieving for his mentor, is forced to take arms for self-defense, and then suddenly his mood clears, a smile appears on his face, and he declares, “This is fun!” I know some people will say that he was fighting robots, and that everybody knows that videogames characters aren’t real, but I’ve read an account of a soldier who said that while he was firing rockets from the ship in Iraq, he thought it was fun, just like videogames, but later when they entered the city and he saw “collateral damage,” he was shocked. You’d think he should have known he wasn’t playing a videogame, right? And, yes, I know that people who commit massacres don’t do it for fun (except in the movies), and they generally realize what they are doing, but I think it’s this shift in how our culture perceives violence that makes it possible for disturbed or intolerant individuals to conceive the idea of going on a shooting spree, or makes joining a foreign terrorist organization like ISIS acceptable and even exciting to them. Just look at the endless rows of violent films and videogames at stores and think what growing up consuming this entertainment does to a mentally unstable person or somebody naturally predisposed towards violence (USA Today reports that Mateen’s ex-wife said that he used to abuse her on a regular basis during their marriage).

[email protected] said:

Of course, it's a big tragedy and the guy was a psycho. But I think Trump has a point saying that blind tolerance and openness to various cultures can lead you to occasional disasters.

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However, if you wish to ban the sale of automatic weapons to civilians, Mr. Trump is not your man. In fact, in the same article USA Today reports that “on Monday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called for a ban on assault weapons, while GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump said he opposed such a prohibition.” Far be it from me to say anything in support of either party, but since the NRA is among the Republican Party’s main sponsors, there’s no way a Republican politician will ever cross it.

Still, it’s not just the NRA and their politicians. As USA Today writes, “The military-style weapons were once illegal under the federal assault weapons ban, but the ban expired in 2004. Assault weapons sale skyrocketed following the Newtown massacre in 2012, as the Obama administration made an unsuccessful push for legislation that would have placed restrictions on the sale of such weapons.” Apparently, for a sizeable chunk of American population, the reaction to a massacre is to go buy oneself an automatic weapon, so as not to be outgunned by a terrorist or a madman. I don’t know if these people take their assault rifles with them everywhere they go, but according to USA Today, “there are currently upwards of 8 million such weapons in the U.S.”

karne said:

You are crazy. Trump will start World war 3, that's what he'll do, with his psychotic ways.

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Not to mention Trump will make America more of a target than it ever was by extremist groups. It seems like the writing is on the wall: how can a candidate all gun ho on American supremacy who paints immigrants, other cultures and other nations all with the same bigoted brush really make America great again? No, seriously. How?

*shudder*

Fact is that the gun related homocide rate correlates with the number of guns per residents in a country. The example for that is not only the U.S., but also f.e. Switzerland.
And I see no reason why any ordinary citizen should be allowed to own aussault rifles or anything similar. If someone wants to own a gun for self-protection nobody can possibly need more than a semiautomatic gun. And children/teenagers below the age of 21 should not be allowed to handle any kind of gun outside a gun club. People with addictive or mental disorders should not be allowed to own guns at all. Gun owners have to store their guns properly, they should be locked away and it would be best to store the guns and munition seperately.
It's not that all deaths could have been saved by this kind of precautions, but certainly a couple. Because availability is key to those kind of crimes, it's not certain that the guy who did it would have done it a couple of days/weeks/months later when he either could have tried to buy the gun on the black market, steal it or get a firearms license.
My father owns a lot of guns and rifles. No all-automatic stuff. He inherited most of them. The munition and the guns are stored seperately and locked away. That's the law in the country I live in If someone wants to protect himself munition

I don't like how people turn tragedies into political platforms. No matter what we ban or don't won't have any impact on people's urge to kill. A trash can full of bleach and amonia can kill hundreds or maybe even thousands of people.


God rest the poor souls of this tragedy

Sam-Skwantch said:

I don't like how people turn tragedies into political platforms. No matter what we ban or don't won't have any impact on people's urge to kill.

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But the gun control laws are crucial here. So this is political, because it's easier to kill with a gun than with a knife and you can kill a lot more people using an aussault rifle before being stopped than with an ordinary gun. And if the potential killer hasn't access or easy access to a gun there's still the possibility that he won't commit the crime. Would Oscar Pistorius have shot his girlfriend if he wouldn't have had a gun beside his bed? Probably not.

Sam-Skwantch said:

A trash can full of bleach and amonia can kill hundreds or maybe even thousands of people.

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True, but most killers want to kill certain people. Bleach and amonia doesn't affect minorities only.

Ugh....

So you'd prefer to not discuss gun control laws at all? Because I can assure you, people only discuss gun control laws if something bad happened and guns where involved. Gun control laws are not discussed if nothing happened.
But yes, you could say that such discussions are not appropriate right after the incident. But how long should we wait until we start the discussion, how long is appropriate? A couple of days, a week, or maybe a couple of weeks? Because the public tends to forget fast. I think we all agree that something like this should not happen, but we all know that it will happen again, but I think that the number of victims could be reduced with certain measures.

I have to agree with psusanne. While I love that americans can choose to have or not have a gun, I think the process should at least investigate more througly who is buying. I by no means claim to understand how buying a gun works there (perhaps you can explain to me - I mind understand your reasons better if I fully know what I am talking about). Do they have a fully psychological check before? Are antecedents checked? Must the person renew the license (is there one?) every few years? Depending on the circunstances, can one lose the permission to carry and have to hand back their gun?

rvi5 said:

Firearm related death statistics by country

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Ooops, link fixed.

I'm not sure what saying only that our thoughts and prayers are with the families does though. It is all very well saying not to politicise a tragedy, but action is needed. I agree that politicians using a tragedy to self-aggrandise is repugnant (and Trump thanking people for their congrats for him being 'right' is a repulsive example of this); however, there is a difference between that and wanting to talk about and then work towards action.

Your countrymen are dying and yet your nation loves guns. What possible justification is there for a private citizen to have an automatic weapon? What possible reason could there be for politicians to vote against those on the watch list being not allowed to buy these guns as some have that are now mealy-mouthed with their 'thoughts and prayers'? Those who call this out and call for action are not the sickening ones: the politicians in the pay of the NRA and the gun industry and the citizens who love guns more than people are the sick ones.

I know that it's not possible in the US to have national referendums, but I believe that the US citizens should decide about wether assault rifles should be freely accessible or not and also wether people with addictive or mental disorders should be allowed to buy/keep guns.

Spiral said:

Indeed, according to USA Today, “The Senate voted down an amendment in December that would have blocked people on the FBI terror watch list from purchasing guns and explosive materials.” Apparently, The National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union weren’t pleased. So, “New Jersey is the only state that has a law on the books that prevents a person on the terror watch list from legally purchasing a weapon…. membership or suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization does not prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives under current federal law…. Suspected terrorists purchased more than 2,000 weapons between 2004 and 2014.”

Most surprisingly, from my point of view, not everybody at FBI wants changes either. USA Today quotes a former FBI agent Michael Gunman who said, “‘Narrowing constitutional rights based on being placed on a terror watch list, which is believed to include hundreds of thousands of individuals and perhaps 10,000 Americans, is problematic.’” He farther states that since the list includes people who are only being investigated for ties to terrorist organization, but whose wrongdoing hasn’t been proven yet, “‘the idea that people would lose some of their rights just because somebody had made the accusation against them would make the United States a very dangerous place to live.’” I’m afraid I find myself quite at odds with Mr. Gunman’s view of what makes the US a dangerous place to live in.


I agree with you that tolerance should be a two-way street, and that the western nations should be much more careful as to who they admit into their countries. However, it must be acknowledged that in the USA there’s also plenty of homegrown “talent” in this area. In Orlando and in Boston the perpetrators were radical Muslims, but in Newton, in Colorado and at the college shootings they weren’t. There was even a case when a (white and non-Muslim) elementary school kid took a home gun to school and shot a classmate.

The irony is that back when the US Constitution was ratified, most Americans had guns, and a fair number of children the age of elementary school students today used guns regularly, hunting for sustenance. But nobody thought to bring a gun to school and kill somebody or go on a shooting spree to a college. Later there was a time when western novels and films were very popular in the US, but because the action in them was far removed from reality, again it didn’t occur to anybody to recreate wild west in their neighborhood.

I think that when drugs appeared and made many city centers unsafe, it was the first step, and then films appeared which placed the violent action not in some mythical place, but in the here and now. It seems to me that with time the attitude towards violence in films became more and more accepting, and probably for the first time since the Romans the concept of violence as entertainment emerged. This paved the way for videogames many of which exploit this very concept. Even in the first Star Wars movie, the saintly Luke Skywalker, grieving for his mentor, is forced to take arms for self-defense, and then suddenly his mood clears, a smile appears on his face, and he declares, “This is fun!” I know some people will say that he was fighting robots, and that everybody knows that videogames characters aren’t real, but I’ve read an account of a soldier who said that while he was firing rockets from the ship in Iraq, he thought it was fun, just like videogames, but later when they entered the city and he saw “collateral damage,” he was shocked. You’d think he should have known he wasn’t playing a videogame, right? And, yes, I know that people who commit massacres don’t do it for fun (except in the movies), and they generally realize what they are doing, but I think it’s this shift in how our culture perceives violence that makes it possible for disturbed or intolerant individuals to conceive the idea of going on a shooting spree, or makes joining a foreign terrorist organization like ISIS acceptable and even exciting to them. Just look at the endless rows of violent films and videogames at stores and think what growing up consuming this entertainment does to a mentally unstable person or somebody naturally predisposed towards violence (USA Today reports that Mateen’s ex-wife said that he used to abuse her on a regular basis during their marriage).


However, if you wish to ban the sale of automatic weapons to civilians, Mr. Trump is not your man. In fact, in the same article USA Today reports that “on Monday, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called for a ban on assault weapons, while GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump said he opposed such a prohibition.” Far be it from me to say anything in support of either party, but since the NRA is among the Republican Party’s main sponsors, there’s no way a Republican politician will ever cross it.

Still, it’s not just the NRA and their politicians. As USA Today writes, “The military-style weapons were once illegal under the federal assault weapons ban, but the ban expired in 2004. Assault weapons sale skyrocketed following the Newtown massacre in 2012, as the Obama administration made an unsuccessful push for legislation that would have placed restrictions on the sale of such weapons.” Apparently, for a sizeable chunk of American population, the reaction to a massacre is to go buy oneself an automatic weapon, so as not to be outgunned by a terrorist or a madman. I don’t know if these people take their assault rifles with them everywhere they go, but according to USA Today, “there are currently upwards of 8 million such weapons in the U.S.”

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Good points well said. Hilliary Clinton pointed out in her speech that automatic weapons were banned for 10 years during her husband's administration. The NRA is a super powerful lobby beholden to the Republican Party and vice versa with a sick/twisted ideology that carrying/owning weapons is a fundamental constitutional right (as in The Right to Bear Arms) but I doubt the original framers of the Constitution would agree with assault weapons which, after all, are offensive not defensive weapons. If an individual is or has been under surveillance by the FBI ever, a weapons ban should be permanently placed on that individual.
I agree fault lies in the USA's political structure.

psusanne said:

I know that it's not possible in the US to have national referendums, but I believe that the US citizens should decide about wether assault rifles should be freely accessible or not and also wether people with addictive or mental disorders should be allowed to buy/keep guns.

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I'd never own one but I can certainly see why someone would want to. I'll always vote for freedom of choice and the ability to protect yourself from others or God forbid a natural disaster that creates social unrest.

As for mental disorders...well that's tricky because obviously the government can't afford to test everyone who buys a gun but I'd be in favor of granting psychologist the power to make decisions on the matter for people they are currently treating. I'd even go as far as taking away the right to someone convicted of any violent crime for a short period. The thing is government can't fix this problem and the war on drugs just goes to prove that. As long as people have the desire to possess them they will find ways. Sadly as long as people have the urge to kill they'll also find a way. Heck...that guy could have fought his way in with a few low level pistols and a pack of explosives and killed a just as many people or worse maybe even more.

If I honestly believed that banning assault riffles would solve the problem I'd most certainly vote for it but I just don't believe it would change much. I guess though the notion that the assault rifle is so deadly that banning it may save lives in a future arrack is a very good point. I'm afraid that it may be too late though and as long as those guns exist they'll always be a way of getting them. Especially a determined and well planned attack. It's really sad isn't it.

[email protected] said:

What were you expecting - it was just a question of time. And ISIS has nothing to do with it. There are polar cultures which are present in the planet right now. And they do not coexist - they are separately present. It was a political flick to bash Russia for bigotry, etc. before Sochi. Russia is like an innocent lamb here. There is the whole Muslim world, part of which, namely Saudi Arabia is doomed to be the USA's friend (despite Saudis were behind 911) because they keep American debt. Saudis stone to death women who sit in the same taxi with men. In Iran they also stone women - a famous movie The Stoning of Soraya M. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1277737/?ref_=nv_sr_1 is based on a true story. What would you expect if people from that culture move to the West in search of better life? That they would soak immediately western values that were gradually built over decades?

Of course, it's a big tragedy and the guy was a psycho. But I think Trump has a point saying that blind tolerance and openness to various cultures can lead you to occasional disasters.

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There is nothing absolutely nothing "innocent" about the way Russia treats its LGBT citizens.

Freedom has its price. But tolerance and openness will eventually make the world a much better place FOR EVERYONE. What has its polar opposites done that can compare to that.

Sam-Skwantch said:

I'd never own one but I can certainly see why someone would want to. I'll always vote for freedom of choice and the ability to protect yourself from others or God forbid a natural disaster that creates social unrest.

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I agree. My father actually owns many hunting rifles/guns. He inherited most of them. He always says that he would have a hard time confronting a burglar in his house, because you must have the munition and the guns locked away seperately where I live. And there are controls. You have to have a firearm certificate and it can be revoked, also f.e. if your drivers license gets revoked because of driving drunk for example. That's taking it too far in my opinion. And a couple of crazy people can certainly fake it, so that they get the firearm certificate anyway.
And I also think that people should be allowed to protect themselves.

If assault rifles are used in an attack you can be certain that the result will be more victims, more seriously injured victims and that it is more difficult to disarm the attacker.
About 50 people killed and 50 injured by only one single person is insane. The assault rifle he used fires 24 shots in 9 seconds.

WeakAnkles said:

There is nothing absolutely nothing "innocent" about the way Russia treats its LGBT citizens.

Freedom has its price. But tolerance and openness will eventually make the world a much better place FOR EVERYONE. What has its polar opposites done that can compare to that.

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You are poorly informed, basically Russia does not treat LGBT in any way. Current Russian government generally don't care about them at all. So they treat them just any other regular citizen. LGBT citizens are just normal citizens in Russia, with no special treatments or privileges. It's their Russian church having a strong public influence on their society and promoting conservative ideas of marriage should be only between male and female. Other than that, it's really nothing "innocent" neither discriminative. And yes if their police would be doing better job of watching over public safety, life of LGBT in Russia would be easier and safer. For a now LGBT lives by American military principle: "don't ask don't tell, no one cares". Russian society has approximately the same amount of homophobes as us, approximately 5%, although this amount is higher aprox 7-10%, depends on a city. They need to improve their police and introduce stricter laws against homophobes, like they did the law against those who promote ethnical hate (back in the days it helped a lot, when police start paying attention to that). But for a now their police don't have a special law or don't have orders to specially protect LGBT, so their police generally don't care about safety of LGBT and their gay-nightclubs. Although private security/protection firms are common and legislation to have your own protection is surprisingly the least bureaucratic. So every club or event is protected by own security, who have lot of rights and ways to protect. Sometimes I wonder why they won't just use taxpayers money to organize low-tier police and make a simple street cruising patrol out of them like we have in the U.S.

ETA:They only way when situation would change in Russia is then gays inside Russian government will start to lobby and be more vocal about pushing gay rights. Putin don't care about his LGBT community, they basically underground "don't ask don't tell" in their own nightclubs and events. If gays would be more influential voters and powerful voting electorate - the situation would change in blink of the eye. Heck, few close buddies of small Poo (yes that how I call Vlady Putin ) are well-known gays, they don't insists for more public acceptance of special gay rights - this is the most ironic part.

What President Ronald Reagan said about gun control and automatic weapons.

Just saying.

Spiral, you make some interesting points in your lengthy post on the previous page. I wonder though, how do we explain other western countries who follow strict gun control? For example, I'm Canadian. In Canada, we have the illegal drug war. We have western movies. In Canada, we all play the same video games that Americans play. How does the cultural shift in how violence is perceived still lead to completely differing systems of gun control amongst similar countries?

I don't own a gun. I never have, and I never will. I have a hard time rationalizing Americas obsession with the second ammendment. I feel safe in my own home and community. My front door is always unlocked when I'm awake and inside. Sometimes I even leave it unlocked to go on a short errand.

Even if I did have a gun and someone was burglarizing my home, would I even be in the right place to get to it?

While I understand that gun ownership is within our constitutional rights, I don't think that just anyone should have access to automatic weaponry. They were created for battle. What 'normal' citizen needs them?

I also don't understand why people are against making it harder to acquire guns. If I owned a gun and sold it to someone without doing a background check and found out that it was used to murder someone in cold blood, I would feel horrible. I wouldn't say - oh, well, how was I supposed to know?

I was conversing with a co-worker today. She's thought about getting a gun just because she feels like the world's getting dangerous. Today, she indicated that she might be changing her mind. She sees that there are so many countries with tight gun controls that don't have the same problems with gun violence as we do in the US. Australia banned guns within the last couple of decades and they are better off.

What annoys me is the people who say that if someone in else in the club (i.e bartenders, bouncers) had guns, then fewer people would've died. The terrorist had an automatic weapon. When he started shooting, people ran. He had the element of surprise. Odds are that anyone else in the club with a gun would've ended up injuring or killing others in the chaos.

It's just sad that people are now being trained on what to do if a terrorist attacks. At work, we were required to watch a video on what to do should someone enter the building with the intent to harm. Flee if you can. Hide if you can't. Barricade yourself inside a room. Silence your cellphone. If you can't, 'play dead'.

This is not the world I grew up in and not the world I want the next generations to live with either. Stop the madness!