The night of June 11th now marks the worst mass shooting in US history, as 50 were murdered and another 53 injured in a domestic terror incident at a gay night club:
A gunman opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando, killing 50 people and injuring dozens more in a rampage that was the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s history.
Authorities in Orlando said Sunday that the siege at Pulse, a popular gay bar and dance club, was quickly deemed an act of domestic terrorism. In addition to the 50 people killed, another 53 were injured, officials said.
Police had said earlier Sunday that 20 people were killed before saying that the toll was significantly higher. Until Sunday, the 2007 rampage at Virginia Tech — which saw 32 people killed and 30 others injured — was the country’s worst mass shooting.
Orlando Police Chief John Mina said that the toll from this latest mass slaughter could have been even greater, saying that a SWAT team “rescued at least 30 possible victims and brought them to safety.”
The gunman was killed by police officers in a shootout after the rampage, authorities said. It was not immediately clear if the death toll included the gunman.
While police have not publicly identified the gunman, law enforcement officials and relatives on Sunday identified him as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old from Fort Pierce, Fla.
“We’re dealing with something we never imagined and is unimaginable,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer (D) said during a news briefing Sunday.
Dyer said he had issued a state of emergency in the city and asked Gov. Rick Scott(R) to issue a similar order for the state. Scott said he was traveling to Orlando to meet with officials there.
Police have not identified a possible motive, and details about Mateen’s background were scarce on Sunday morning.
The article goes on to describe a text message exchange with one of the victims and their mother shortly before their murder.
My thoughts go out to the victims and their families. A crime, a chilling message sent straight home to all of us, so soon after my local city celebrated Pride. My rainbows are back on today.
Comments policy for this: We focus on the victims and the families. We can talk politics and the shooter’s motivations on the next post.
-Shiv
Edit: It has also been brought to my attention that last night was the gay Latinx night.
I just got a post up, about the gunman’s father saying that at least part of his son’s motive was probably anger over seeing two men kiss a few months prior. I’m utterly lost as to why so many lost their lives over that. I don’t grok that depth of hate, revulsion, and fear.
Full disclosure: The main reason I don’t want to talk motives right now is because I saw another outlet go from “brown dude + it’s Ramadan = isisdidit.”
We’re not going there until the investigation turns up more. It’s patently obvious the shooter’s motives are homophobic; less so why he is homophobic, and isisdidit is distasteful unless we have more concrete evidence than “his skin is brown.”
Back to the families…
Hatred.. loses in the end but does horrific, needless, avoidable and horrible damage as it goes down. Love wins. Eventually and sometimes at a terrible unfathomable price.
Horrific news out of America. Again. Yet again. Will it change anything? Other than the lives of so many families, so many friends, so many survivors, fathers and mothers, sisters, brothers, children, nieces and nephews, who will never see the individual people killed again for all their wishing and all their hopes and prayers. Individual lives and people who could’ve done, well, we’ll now never know, people who have had their stories and possibilities and potential ended forever by some hate-filled killer also now dead. Nothing I say could be other than understatement or make things change. That Second Amendment, that NRA are sacrosanct and blood can and will be spilled in rivers and oceans forever without end because freedumb and guns and US political reality which is shit.
So just, condolences to those who have lost their family and friends. Anger and horror and numbness as usual. Wish, so wish it were otherwise and sanity could one day prevail.
I keep hoping it will from afar.
That’s all folks.