Police: Approximately 20 dead inside Florida nightclub after mass shooting

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From today’s Guardian:
**FBI to investigate if Orlando gunman’s sexuality was a motive in shooting
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The FBI has told members of the LGBT community it will pursue accounts that the Orlando nightclub shooter was partially motivated by internal conflict over his own sexuality, the Guardian has learned.
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A conference call held late Monday pulled together representatives from the FBI and departments of justice and homeland security with 358 civil-rights-minded leaders, particularly from the LGBT and American Muslim groups, a senior US official told the Guardian, to share information and hear concerns from communities reeling from one of the worst incidents of gun violence in recent US history.
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FBI officials on the call “indicated they would follow up” on reports that shooter Omar Mateen had on a number of occasions visited the LGBT nightclub Pulse where he killed 49 and wounded 52 on Sunday. That focus is thus far unprecedented in nearly 15 years of post-9/11 counterterrorism, which has yet to confront a known case of a suspected closeted LGBT individual ostensibly committing a mass murder in the name of a homophobic terrorist organization.
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theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/14/orlando-shooting-omar-mateen-motive-pulse-nightclub
 
Hoosier_Daddy said:
Trying to pick up guys does not mean he was gay. In fact many “hate crime” perpetrators make many “dry” runs to practice their crimes. In my state right now there is a murder under investigation where a man lured another man to a secluded lake and killed him. He took out many ads on Craigslist “fishing”.
It very well could be he was toying with the idea of serial killing gays or who knows. What I don’t think is that he was “gay”. It’s an interesting culture. In some Islamic countries the sex trade includes young males. Though homosexuality is forbidden and persecuted. I suppose the us equivalent is prison…
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Okay. Thanks for the explanation. I am well aware of perpetrators making dry runs. But the situation in your area is not one in which trying to pick up guys could be used as political / wartime propaganda.

To me, it doesn’t really add up that someone disciplined enough to be making dry runs for a jihad-motivated slaughter over a period of three years would also be leaving bread crumbs for the FBI (like trying to pick up guys) that could easily be used as propaganda against jihadists - and thus undermine the “glory” of his “martyrdom.” If he truly was that disciplined and patient, then he was probably also smart enough to think through all the contingencies. Casing the club would certainly help him plan. But trying to pick up men undermines him as a “glorious martyr.” Consequently, it makes more sense to me, logically, that it would be both… i.e., that he would both be attracted to men and that he would also be attracted to radical Islam.

Obviously, we are in the early phases of the investigation, so I could revise that (tentative) opinion as we get to know more. But that is what makes the most logical sense to me at the moment. That the killer’s potential same-sex attraction could also be used as propaganda against ISIS is at least one positive to come out of this horror.
 
Hoosier_Daddy said:
I think people who walk into a bar and kill 50 people because of sexual orientation probably did some recon.

The propaganda is simple. Release information that embarrassed possible Isis recruiting.

This is not a “gay” issue. It’s an extension of the war of radical Islam with the west. We can’t seem to grasp that. So a self hating gay makes more sense to us, it isolates us from the danger.
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Okay, I get it. That would make sense if it’s to try and embarrass ISIS.

I think it’s probably both, ISIS and self hating gay. Seems this is the exact person they want, someone that is easily manipulated into doing what they want. They don’t care if he’s gay, he killed a bunch of people and that’s enough for them. They haven’t found any connection to ISIS yet but I’m not sure how much they’d tell us anyway.
 
mikekle said:
Well, focusing on the guns is just addressing the tools he used, to really combat the problem, you have to focus on the source…WHY he did this, it was due to his radical beliefs.

If he had not been able to use a gun, Im sure he would have found another way, maybe a large truck bomb, like McVey used in OK.

You cannot ‘regulate away’ terrorism.
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I’m not sure that he would have found another way and neither are you. The goal would be to minimize the amount of damage he might have done.

I don’t think we can understand why he did this yet. My take is that he was very, very mentally ill and I’m not quite buying that Islam played that much of a role in it except to give him a lot of self-loathing because he was gay. But we need to learn more.
 
didymus said:
Could Congress Have Stopped Omar Mateen From Getting His Guns?

Actually, banning people on the terror watch list from owning guns doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
I’m all for the 2nd Amendment but this hardly seems like a case of “they’re coming to take your guns!!!”
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People who want to harm others and commit acts of terror shouldn’t able to get a gun, but there are some issues of concern regarding the terror watch list. According to this article there is a “low threshold for designating someone a terrorist”. According to this other article there are “nearly 700,000” people on the terror watch list and:
All it takes is for the government to declare is has “reasonable suspicion” that someone could be a terrorist. There is no hard evidence required, and the standard is notoriously vague and elastic. Last year The Huffington Post listed “7 Ways That You (Yes, You) Could End Up On A Terrorist Watch List” (tinyurl.com/ktmppgy). They include being nominated by someone else. In 2013 alone, HuffPo notes, 468,749 watch-list nominations were submitted to the National Counterterrorism Center. It rejected only 1 percent of them.
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news-journalonline.com/article/20151130/opinion/151139997
 
_Abyssinia said:
People who want to harm others and commit acts of terror shouldn’t able to get a gun…
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How do you determine that? What if the terrorist says that she wants a gun because she only wants to defend herself?
 
zerocrossing said:
Let’s see if we can understand each other’s points. 🙂

My point was that the notion that he was gay is coming from homosexual men who were patrons of the club and saw him trying to pick up men there, and also from homosexual men who saw him on a gay dating app. Are you suggesting that these homosexual men are participating in some form of propaganda that undermines their own community’s propaganda about anti-gay “bigots”? I guess that’s what I’m not following. Who is engaging in the propaganda here?

I do like the idea, though, that the suggestion he was gay minimizes his “glory” among radical Muslims and minimizes the recruitment of future jihadists. I just don’t see what the gay men claiming he was gay have to gain by making that statement.
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It is very possible it wouldn’t. Men in the role of a ‘top’ is not frowned upon in much of the ME. It is only men taking on the role of the ‘woman’ in the sexual encounter that are despised.
It is a culture that also derives from the Greek of the Greco-Roman culture that has given rise to all cultures in the ME. It was deemed perfectly fine for men to do with young(hairless) boys all that they please, with no real loss of status for either the boy or the man. But men taking on the role of the submissive is a capital offense.
 
Darryl1958 said:
It is very possible it wouldn’t. Men in the role of a ‘top’ is not frowned upon in much of the ME. It is only men taking on the role of the ‘woman’ in the sexual encounter that are despised.
It is a culture that also derives from the Greek of the Greco-Roman culture that has given rise to all cultures in the ME. It was deemed perfectly fine for men to do with young(hairless) boys all that they please, with no real loss of status for either the boy or the man. But men taking on the role of the submissive is a capital offense.
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Yes. This is a very adequate understanding of the culture.
 
Crossbones said:
I’m not sure that he would have found another way and neither are you. The goal would be to minimize the amount of damage he might have done.

I don’t think we can understand why he did this yet. My take is that he was very, very mentally ill and I’m not quite buying that Islam played that much of a role in it except to give him a lot of self-loathing because he was gay. But we need to learn more.
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He personally pledged allegiance to ISIS, in turn they called him one of their soldiers…that sounds pretty clear to me.

Trying to delve deep into this guys psyche trying to uncover other reasons he may have done this is pointless.
 
mikekle said:
He personally pledged allegiance to ISIS, in turn they called him one of their soldiers…that sounds pretty clear to me.

Trying to delve deep into this guys psyche trying to uncover other reasons he may have done this is pointless.
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It hardly matters what ISIS says. What if ISIS said that Donald Trump is one of their soldiers, would that sound pretty clear to you and not require any other delving? 😉

What people say about themselves deserves more consideration, but is not conclusive proof of their motives.
 
J_Peterson said:
Okay, I get it. That would make sense if it’s to try and embarrass ISIS.

I think it’s probably both, ISIS and self hating gay. Seems this is the exact person they want, someone that is easily manipulated into doing what they want. They don’t care if he’s gay, he killed a bunch of people and that’s enough for them. They haven’t found any connection to ISIS yet but I’m not sure how much they’d tell us anyway.
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I would imagine the pro-LGBT crowd does not like any implication the shooter may have done this over some self hatred or something similar…that would only lead to new restrictions and regulations on gay people (or people that think they may be gay or have problems with it).
 
Thorolfr said:
It hardly matters what ISIS says. What if ISIS said that Donald Trump is one of their soldiers, would that sound pretty clear to you and not require any other delving? 😉

What people say about themselves deserves more consideration, but is not conclusive proof of their motives.
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If Donald trump pledged himself to ISIS, well then yes, that would be proof enough for me, If it was JUST isis making the statement, I could understand, but the shooter specifically mentioned ISIS, I think we may be trying too hard to overthink this.

Like another poster said, this could be due to fear, we just dont want to admit ISIS is here and has these abilities, so we start looking for other explanations, anything and everything that could possibly stick, sometimes the truth is the hardest thing to accept.
 
mikekle said:
I would imagine the pro-LGBT crowd does not like any implication the shooter may have done this over some self hatred or something similar…that would only lead to new restrictions and regulations on gay people (or people that think they may be gay or have problems with it).
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What kind of restrictions and regulations on gay people do you think could possibly result from proof that Mr. Mateen was struggling with same-sex attraction?

Most LGBT people and their allies that I know are not surprised at the possibility that Omar Mateen might have been gay. As one LGBT ally, Dr. Omid Safi, a professor at Duke University wrote today:
What would a compassionate response to this news of Omar Mateen’s same-sex attractions be? Sadness and compassion. Sadness not that Omar Mateen might have been gay or struggled with same-sex attractions, but that we live in such a homophobic society that homophobia becomes internalized, that such self-loathing results in lashing out towards others in monstrous violence.
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Compassion is the response. Always.
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Also in today’s news:
SACRAMENTO – A Sacramento Baptist preacher’s sermon praising the attack on an Orlando nightclub that left 50 people dead has the local LGBT community outraged, reports CBS Sacramento.
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Recordings of the sermon by Pastor Roger Jimenez surfaced on the Verity Baptist Church’s YouTube account.
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“Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?” he said in the sermon. “Um – no – I think that’s great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight.”
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The remarks were delivered on Sunday morning, hours after the attack.
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“We don’t need to do anything to help. As far as I’m concerned, Orlando is a little bit safer tonight,” he said.
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cbsnews.com/news/mass-shooting-orlando-gay-club-pulse-fierce-controversy-over-pastors-remarks-about-orlando-attack/

As some poster on this thread have implied, no Christians could possibly commit such a terrible act, only Muslims…:rolleyes:
 
mikekle said:
I would imagine the pro-LGBT crowd does not like any implication the shooter may have done this over some self hatred or something similar…that would only lead to new restrictions and regulations on gay people (or people that think they may be gay or have problems with it).
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Yep…let’s blame it on the LGBT crowd…as long as it doesn’t lead to new restrictions and regulations on assault style weapons that whakos can freely get to kill a bunch of innocent people…after all it’s their right to bear arms also …killing people is just collateral damage of that right…happens here every day…why change something that works so well:rolleyes:
 
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