| Author | Message | ||
     Reepicheep |
First, my thoughts to anyone who was directly or indirectly effected by this criminal act of violence. As more facts come out, things will be clearer. Right now, the media "not stated but clearly implied" talking points are a Jihadist shooter attacking a gay nightclub. If that is true (and while the circumstantial evidence seems obvious enough, it is going to reinforce some standard political entrenchments for some, but may shake up some for others. I hope the far right comes out and declares that murdering groups, even ones that they view as unrepentant sinners, is abhorrent and rallies to love the people impacted by the crime. I hope the GLBT community looks at the fact that a bad guy with an illegal gun continued to execute one gay after another until he was stopped by a good guy who had a legal gun (and a number of other tools he thought would be useful). I'd love to have more gay legal CCW carriers armed and a part of the general public. I hope conservatives find ways to show more love, I hope liberals loose a little niavitivity about the efficacy of treating the world about how they wish it was and think it should be, instead of how it is. Such a tragedy. | ||
| Slaughter |
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3637576/Te rrified-text-son-sent-mother-Orlando-terror-unfold ed.html Heartbreaking. Orlando mother texted by her son from within the club. He knows he's going to be killed. 2 hours before SWAT was able to enter. Tragic. What frightens me as much as anything else are the typically mindless (and predictable) comments in news articles. The comments by the Brits on the Daily Mail are much more reasoned than those comments I see on domestic news which read like junior high school graffitti. | ||
| Aesquire |
I have long suggested an all gal Army ( or Marine ) unit... The Xena Brigade... Or Gabrielle Company.. Whatever. And make them the spearhead of the war on Western Civilization. "The women captured us, stripped us naked, and mocked our manhood while they transported us to their base. When we complained the men at the base laughed at us and told us we were lucky it wasn't "that time", when the Gabrielles don't even bother to take prisoners, and the UN observers hide in their tents." While my Mother & I often disagree on politics, she had one wonderful idea for Afghanistan. Send the Army into a village, take all the guns from the men, and give them to the women. "Sgt. Trixie here will teach you ladies to shoot!"..... "This is my Rifle, that is their gun! This ones for killing! That one's for Fun"... They lack of rational response to the Jihad by women & gay groups would be bewildering in any rational universe. Simply, the Terrorists want to destroy Civilization, so they must be allies to the Leftists....... Clinically insane, sure, but just ask a fire breathing Feminazi about women's rights in Saudi Arabia when they are bitching about bathroom signs. And I say that as a feminist. You can't have leftist without lie. And self delusion is the First Lie. Now, I could mock the Conservatives too.... but any jack-off that says it's a great thing that a bunch of gays got shot will have every Conservative ripping his head off...... | ||
| Rick_a |
Afghani parents, American born. 22 years old. Sources say he claimed ISIS affiliation in a 911 call before the attack. Dad claims he just hated gays. Had been previously investigated in 2012/2013 for possible terrorist links. Bragged about ISIS links in social media before the attack. Apparently traveled 120 miles to the club. It'll be hard for the popular media to spin this one. We'll see shortly what angle the president will try to push. | ||
| Reindog |
pResident LameDuck is indirectly responsible for this terrorist attack which murdered The Fifty. His "line in the sand" cowardice demonstrated weakness and helped create ISIS because they learned that Obama would do nothing. The only way to minimize future losses is to carpet bomb ISIS strongholds to dust and summarily execute on the battlefield any ISIS fighter who is captured or surrenders. ISIS is composed of barbarians and they must be put down like the mad dogs that they are. The lone wolfs will no longer have anyone to emulate. In the long run, there will be fewer casualties. There is no other way. | ||
| Whisperstealth |
It is my belief that this was allowed to happen. Intentionally Allowed, if not outright set up. It furthers both the Left's demand for gun control, and the Right's push to enrage the country against ISIS. It helps set up both the taking away of our rights, and support for more war. One man did this? ONE? Two hours before SWAT went in? And the media already has all the info it needs to frame the narrative.... I call BS. But then, I still don't think Obama is gonna leave office voluntarily; especially if Trump does somehow manage to win the election. | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Well, stripping the Second Amendment isn't going to fly. All that will do is create another group of "terrorists". | ||
| Hootowl |
I wonder whether the president will be able to bring himself to utter the words 'islamic terrorist'? Maybe he won't have to. Maybe this didn't really happen. It was, after all, a gun free zone, so how could anyone have been shot? | ||
| Rick_a |
Mentions terrorism. Still blames "high powered assault weapons." | ||
| Sifo |
I was traveling most of the day, so I'm way behind in what has gone on here. This morning before getting in the car though, I did hear the FBI say that there was reason to believe it was ISIS/terror related. I went to NBC to see what was being said. They were saying it was "clearly a hate crime on the gay community". That may be an underlying component, but it's far from the whole story, even as it was known then. In fact, at that point in time, it would have been very possible that the location was random. Typical poor reporting and left it to the imagination who might do this "hate crime". They're probably very disappointed that it's Islomo-terrorism. While I personally disagree with homosexuality, I would never wish this on anyone for such a thing. I understand that BO has once again failed to mention the Islamic connection in this. A true failure of leadership. What will it take to at least acknowledge who our enemies are? | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Sifo, going to take the election of Trump | ||
| Rick_a |
 | ||
| Rick_a |
 | ||
| Aesquire |
Cut hair before attack. Very traditional. If you give him an ear stud and a bit of makeup ( and a less hostile expression ) he looks like a typical club goer. Once more murder for power is exploited by evil men for power. I can't express my disgust with proper language. Exploitive wretches. | ||
| 86129squids |
LOOK> PRAY DEFEND. CALL PEACE, bring peace. . (Message edited by 86129squids on June 13, 2016) (Message edited by 86129squids on June 13, 2016) | ||
| Reepicheep |
It's been a hard couple of days, so much ignorance in so many places, and everyone angry and wanting to blame "something". Beyond the tragedy, I think the posts on facebook that were really making me sad were the "The NRA has blood on their hands" comments with regards to this horrible act. What I really wanted to do was reply "Yeah, I knew the NRA was trouble when they started rounding up gays and throwing them off of buildings while shouting 'god is great'". But that is just replacing one kind of hateful and half thought out stereotype with another hateful and half thought out stereotype. The first and core problem here is that someone decided it was OK to kill innocent people. The second problem is that nobody else was able to identify and stop the person before they were able to take action. There will obviously be a discussion about gun rights here. And I'm OK with that. So far, here is what I see... 1) I could not have stopped this individual from killing lots of LGBT's with any gun laws. Assume a massive country wide civilian disarmament, pretty much making all guns and gun ownership illegal (the first hard part) and then forcibly confiscating them all (the second even harder part). OK, so it isn't murder by gun then, but there are lots of other tools that can be (and have been) used. This was a night club PACKED with people. 2) Interestingly, gun laws *almost* did stop this individual. From what we know so far, this guy was investigated twice by the FBI for terrorist connections, and he beat his wife. Rumor (I haven't been able to vet this yet) was that he legally bought the gun. Had his wife filed the appropriate domestic violence charges, he would not have been able to legally buy a gun, and the attempt to do so would have been another red flag the FBI could have acted on. I don't understand at the moment why an act of buying an AR15, which requires an FBI background check, didn't trigger another look by the FBI already in this case. The guy was already investigated twice, and there was already a pattern of escalation 3) If there were multiple concealed carry people carrying in the club, it is hard to imagine the body count would not have been lower. One on one, the aggressor probably has the advantage. But two or three CCW carriers, and it seems likely an intervention would have stopped him sooner. So I don't want to blame the Muslim religion. For every Muslim that says gays must die, I expect I could find 100,000 others that say murdering gays is wrong. I don't want to blame guns. A gun was an effective tool of choice for the guy to start killing, a gun was an effective tool of choice to stop him from killing, and if you could push the magic "all guns vanish" button he would just have made a different plan for killing people with a different tool. I don't even want to blame law enforcement, though a review of practical changes that could have properly intervened based on the available data seems in order. With that regards, legal paths to gun ownership make a kind of interesting "honey pot" that can be used to get some potentially valuable analytics about criminals planning crimes. I kind of want to blame the ex wife, but I am trying not too, and don't have all the facts regardless. If she really was a victim of domestic violence, and she really didn't report it, then she chose to hide and enable the clearest and most pressing indicator that this guy needed an intervention. | ||
| Gaesati |
A really well thought out comment. | ||
| Slaughter |
Bill, Well said. We ALL want to direct this rage somewhere and cannot (yet) be productive. Mike Rowe had the very best response of any "known" celebrity type in his quoting of Fred Rogers, "Look for the helpers."
| ||
| Hootowl |
"For every Muslim that says gays must die, I expect I could find 100,000 others that say murdering gays is wrong." Your numbers are off. It's a lot more than 1/100000. And since there are over a billion Muslims on the planet, that's a lot of people who believe gays must die. And, according to their holy book...gays must die, so these types are probably not outliers. The real question is, what percentage of Muslims believe gays must die and are willing to do something about it? Unfortunately, it doesn't take many of them to cause problems. | ||
| Sifo |
Hard to say what the exact ratio is. One thing seems to be a constant in any conflict though. There is always a very small minority who actually takes action, while supported by a much larger group who will never lift a hand in any sort of direct action. In our own Revolutionary War, it is accepted that about 3% took some sort of direct action. Assuming about half the population actually supported revolution, you have 48 supporters for every 3 that take action, or about 16 for every person taking action. If supporters of this sort of thing were only 1 in 100,000, it would truly be the "JV" team. It should be clear to any person watching what is going on in the world that ISIS has quite a large number who are doing incredibly evil things to innocent people. The number of supporters of those taking action in the name of Islam, is certainly much higher. Very likely, roughly 16 times higher than the active ranks that you see taking action. This was published on YouTube only a couple of months ago. This is what their "Islamic scholars" are teaching. Killing gays is the "compassionate" thing to do. If this is what they are being taught by their religious scholars, what are the real numbers who support this? I have real doubts about that 1 in 100,000 thing. I'm pretty sure that's nothing but wishful thinking. It's also the thinking that eventually lead to the response to Islam that we know as the Crusades. It would be nice to prevent the need of another crusade. The time to prevent that is now. It has to start with understanding the enemy. | ||
| Tootal |
Not only was this guy a security guard, he worked for a company that was hired by our government! So you see, this was nothing more than another disgruntled government employee!! Seriously though, I wish the NRA would come back out with their "I'm the NRA" posters with guys like Tom Selleck etc. The media constantly regurgitates the narrative that the NRA is only the gun manufacturer's lobby like there are no citizens involved. Well, I'm the NRA and so are a lot of voters. We need to see all the NRA members at the polls this year! | ||
| Reepicheep |
I refuse to speculatively indict a whole religious group by trying to interpret their holy writings for them. I know that when others have done that to me, it wasn't just offensive, it was also clueless and wrong. Be it matters of my Christian faith, my card carrying geekdom, my information security profession, my membership in the motorcycle community, or my general midwestern redneckyness. When others outside the community tell me what I believe based on what they have read about my "clan", they are generally clueless at best. It would be an offensive poll to take, but it would be interesting to see the breakdown of people who answer "yes" to the question "do you think LBGT's should be executed". I find it hard to believe there is any demographic outside of the criminal or mentally ill that would answer yes to that question. From what I have observed, there are far more Muslims condemning jihadist terrorists than embracing it. So I'm inclined to believe that the problem with jihadist terrorists is jihadist terrorism. Just like the problem with pyscho gay hating white guys is the psycho gay hating part. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GAY_PRID E_EXPLOSIVES_ARREST_THE_LATEST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOM E&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-06-12-17-58-57 | ||
| Hootowl |
"indict a whole religious group by trying to interpret their holy writings for them" Who is doing that? The actions of, and beliefs professed by, Muslims themselves are the evidence. No one needs to interpret anything. | ||
| Sifo |
I refuse to speculatively indict a whole religious group by trying to interpret their holy writings for them. I sincerely hope that comment wasn't in response to what I wrote. If it was, please reread what I wrote. No doubt there is a wide spectrum of beliefs in the Muslim community. I was simply pointing out that for every one who is taking action, there are almost certainly many more who support that action. More yet that are undecided about how much action should be taken. The lessons of history should not be ignored though. Islam has in the past been very oppressive where it gains a foothold. I see nothing in today's Muslim countries to make me believe anything has changed there. We are currently seeing them press hard to overtake the western world again. | ||
| Reepicheep |
The response was general, not directed at you Sifo. Hitler used a twisted version of Christian ideology where convenient to facilitate a racist genocide. Anyone can selectively trot out a lot of old testament (or even some new testament) to make pretty much any point they want to make. I don't have any interest in trying to interpret others holy works. I have a hard enough time interpreting my own. So I'll just judge people by that they say and they do, and judge just those that say it and do it. I'll let the constitution and rule of law be the guidelines of what is and isn't allowed, and what the ramifications of violation should be. And I'll try and keep the courts just, objective, thoughtful, apolitical, and free of any kind of theocracy. Terms like "Islamic Jihadist" are a step in the right direction, just like in Hitlers time it would have been a little more accurate to call them "Christian Nazi's". But I think both terms are unnecessarily offensive. "Jihadist" and "Nazi" alone are more accurate and meaningful. And even there, those terms are still pretty imprecise. There were Nazi party members that wanted a strong post WWI Germany, and that were deeply shocked and offended when they learned of the atrocities being committed by their party government. https://www.amazon.com/Black-Edelweiss-Conscience- Soldier-Waffen-SS/dp/0966638980 | ||
| 86129squids |
"From Mike Rowe's FB Page: "I’m on a plane now, headed back to Baltimore, watching this nightmare unfold on the seat-back in front of me. There’s a kid sitting next to me - maybe ten years old - trying to get his head around the details of what’s happened. He has many questions, and because he’s seen me on television, he thinks I have the answers. All I could think to tell him was the same thing I always recall on days like this one. It’s a quote from Mr. Rogers. 'When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' Orlando, and the rest of us, need all the helpers we can get. Godspeed." | ||
| Aesquire |
best numbers I have are... a dozen terrorists in one act. 200,000,000 ( by survey ) support their actions. will state it is good to kill infidels for various reasons. But normally wouldn't do it. 1,7 Billion Muslims. ( Wiki ) However, the Dozen number is a One time phenomena. Far more common is the daily stonings, rapes, assaults, and Slavery practiced in the middle east and the Pacific . Consider that it is relatively common in Pakistan/ "the Stans" to have mob attacks that include the "not normally overtly evil" part of that 200 million. A handful of folk point the Mob at the little girl who got raped and complained, the Christian lady who does laundry down the street, and the nice fellow who said we should all get along. And they get the Mob to kill them. Now, the nature of the Mob is not needfully a "Muslim" thing. Quite common in history. Ancient Greece, Germany, Football games. So asking "how many are really bad?" you get 2 answers. A few hundred thousand, a Million at worst, scattered over the planet, and joined in groups that really want to kill your daughter's gay classmate, and rape your daughter... and destroy Western Civilization. Because it's in the book. And/or about 200,000,000 folk that can get whipped into a frenzy, and gang rape & murder everyone they are pointed at, if the Pointer hauls the right quotes out of the Book, and is good at preaching hate. Or about the non-illegal immigrant population of the United States. | ||
| Macbuell |
If anything is said or done regarding Mohammed that is perceived in a negative light, there are protests from Muslims all over the world in huge numbers. Where are the protests against this Terrorist attack or any other? Have you seen any? I just did a google search and did not find one protest in response to the Orlando shooting. Not one. I see "Muslim Leaders" condemning the attack but not one protest where thousands, or even hundreds, of Muslims get together and denounce this attack or any one like it. Until I see such demonstrations from "normal, everyday Muslims", I will continue to think that these types of things are acceptable to them. If they were so appalled, they wouldn't continue to quietly sit on the sidelines while a "select few" do horrible things in the name of their religion. (Message edited by macbuell on June 13, 2016) | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Macbuell, sounds like common sense to me. Some people over think too much. | ||
| Whisperstealth |
The question remains, who Allowed this to happen? Look for the helpers indeed.... And there is no way to convince me a single gunman did this. The pure numbers, the math makes it impossible. 800-1000 rounds shot by one person? Caring that much weight, that much ammo unnoticed? Reloading that many times without being stopped. And all those in power benefitting from it. Everyone of them scoring points with their various demographic groups. |
