I am in shock-orlando terror attack

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Lots of breaking news about another guy in LA armed and headed to the gay pride parade over there. All the local news channels and radio stations are covering this. The radio people all came in to do live shows instead or repeats.

I live in Orlando, grew up here, I live a few miles from the Pulse and I drive by there all the time.

The shooter apparently drove in from Port Saint Lucie, FL. apparently to target GLTB folks. I also live a few miles from the nightclub in which the Voice singer was shot and killed the previous night.

It would be difficult to state the level of shock here locally.

At first it was reported 20 were dead. Now it is 52 with another 50+ injured. Pulse is not a very big club and I do not know how one gunman could kill that many people without being jumped or having the people jump him but I guess it happened. I’m stunned that the shooter would target that particular club. I think the guy arrested in LA, who apparently had a license plate on his care from Indiana, is a copy cat but not affiliated with ISIS or, as the Orlando shooter did, called 911 to pledge support for ISIS right before he did it.

The Plaza Theater shooter for the Voice singer drove to Orlando from St. Petersburg, FL about 40 miles away apparently to target that singer because she was doing an appearance in Orlando. The Plaza Theater is a small venue with not much traffic that I thought was closed down.

There is a candle light vigil tonight at 7 p.m. that I will be at. My wife and youngest son are in LA visiting relatives so I am alone. My oldest son is in summer classes in Tallahassee, FL. finishing off his BS degree. About a year and a half ago, a gumman went to Strozier Library on the FSU campus and killed a few people before being shot and killed by alert police officers. My oldest son almost went to the library that night to print something. Events like these remind me of how random life can be.

I do not understand why a crazed man claiming allegiance to ISIS would go into a mostly gay club and kill people. It is the definition of senseless violence. The people on the ground here are shocked, upset, mad, etc. because this is the exact opposite of what Orlando is. This is a seriously safe community, just big enough to have an NBA team, growing, with a broad based economy and no state income taxes, not far from the beaches. In other words, a really great place to grow up and live and thrive no matter what you are.

There will always be acts of violence and people who crack and have a few screws loose. Not much you can do about that. But, I can assure you, Orlando is going to show some serious love in reaction to this. I’ll be at Lake Eola tonight, with a candle, doing what I can. I ill be giving blood also. I told my son, who just texted me, basically to not worry about these two events and to enjoy the trip he is on. When he gets back we will talk about extremism, hate, anger, terrorism, GLTB issues, etc. because that is what parents do. I want him to realize that some people look at things differently for whatever reason to prevent him from using hate or fear as a way to manage his life. The is power in knowledge.

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@albert69 MSMs (men who have sex with men) who have had sex in the last year are not eligible for blood donation. That would exclude most gay and bisexuals and otherwise non-straight men.

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I just looked on the map and the nightclub Pulse is only about 2 blocks away from Orlando Regional Health Center (where my BIL works in the ER). I hope that proximity helped with the wounded being more likely to survive.

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And yet I hope they are heartened and comforted that they have so many allies, people who aren’t LGBT who nonetheless stand in solidarity.

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I saw that. It was very frightening to me. My son is in Los Angeles right now on vacation, and was planning to participate in Pride today. I trust him to be careful, but who anticipates something like this?

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It’s bitterly ironic that gay men in Orlando are not allowed to donate blood for the victims.

http://gawker.com/reports-orlando-blood-center-lifts-ban-on-blood-donati-1781837902

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The news just reported that some is Isis affiliated news media called him and Isis fighter brother or something like that apologies I don’t remember the exact term.

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“At what point is it a terrorist attack?”

When it’s determined that he was acting as an agent of a terrorist organization and that this was a coordinated attack by ISIS.

Just because he uttered alleged to ISIS and appears to have been consuming ISIS propaganda does not make his action a terrorist attack. No different, IMO, then Dylan Whatshisname in Charleston mass shooting who was motivated by white supremacism and their radical hate groups.

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That’s not the legal definition of terrorism, emilybee. There’s no requirement that an action like this has to be undertaken as an agent of or along with an organized group in order to be terrorism. And, yes, Dylan Roof’s action was clearly domestic terrorism as far as I’m concerned.

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@gonoles85:
The shooter probably targeted Orlando because it is a known place, major tourist area, home to Mickey Mouse (about as American as you can get), if you are going to make a statement you want to do it in a place associated with what you are fighting against (or whatnot). In a sense, Orlando was chosen because they are not a hateful place, and in more than one sense this was an attack against Orlando or any place that dares not to base its beliefs on some 2000 year old nomadic code or some such. As far as shooting up a gay club being senseless, any act of terrorism is senseless in that acts of terrorism like this don’t change people’s minds, they didn’t with the blitz and other forms of terrorism in WWII, it didn’t with 9/11, attacks on Israelis and the like.

The reason gays were chosen is pretty easy, gays these days are the universal symbol for many of the ‘decline in morality’ and some such, and even in our country that has gotten much more diverse and understanding, all you have to do is look at the ‘religious liberty’ laws to see the kind of attitudes that are still out there, there is a difference of course between promoting violence and trying to find a way to legally allow people to discriminate against gay people, or see the many who privately and publicly are probably cheering this shooting while in public bowing their head and saying how terrible, making the right noises (a longtime friend of mine called me this morning, haven’t heard from her in a while, she is a church goer, and just resigned from the church she belonged to because the minister gave this sermon where he talked about the shooting, and while saying it was a horrible tragedy, also turned around and said that this is what happens when society moves away from the right moral choices and such, and he was not talking about the shooter, he was talking about the victims…and worse,a number of people afterwords were saying that it was a good sermon, I think that really settled it. This was not an evangelical church, this was a mainline Presbytyrian church in an area that is very libertarian, socially moderate…)…I don’t judge Orlando, I think the Orlando PD acted professionally and bravely, and they really were trying to save people’s lives inside and I think like most people of good will, they are horrified about this.

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Yes, LasMa, I am crying at the immense outpouring of love and support.

I’ve been watching a lot of early AIDS documentaries and the difference that just a few decades has made is just overwhelming.

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It is sad about gay men not being able to donate blood, without hijacking the thread (that is another discussion) given what we now know about HIV, and that there are other groups who have higher than normal risks of HIV exposure, why are they singled out rather than behavior? (for example, so a gay married guy can’t give blood, even though he is monagamous?). That to me sounds like prejudice, not science.

I don’t understand why the rules aren’t about having unprotected sex in the past x months (where x is the period where it can be detected), there are a lot of people who are at risk of HIV infection, pretty much anyone who is having unprotected sex has some risk, at varying levels.

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“That’s not the legal definition of terrorism, emilybee. There’s no requirement that an action like this has to be undertaken as an agent of or along with an organized group in order to be terrorism. And, yes, Dylan Roof’s action was clearly domestic terrorism as far as I’m concerned.”

Then every mass shooting is a terrorist act. I can get on board with that - except we don’t label them such.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/17/423881551/when-is-an-act-of-violence-an-act-of-terrorism

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" I think it’s a mistake to focus on the shooter’s religion in lieu of looking critically at a culture which, in some places, condones the homophobic attitudes that lead to this kind of violence. I don’t think that’s happening on this site, but some people hear “terrorism” and don’t recognize the homophobia behind it as well"

I think the police should focus on whatever contributes to the crime, with an open mind. And while one can look at the American culture and see people that don’t support gay marriage, or make judgmental comments and slurs against gays…the Muslim culture is far harsher on gays. Imprisoning them, executing them, making them hide for fear of their lives. In his parents home country (Afghanistan), being a homosexual can get you publically executed. However, it’s fine for boys to be kidnapped to be sexually abused and humiliated, because it’s considered an act of power, not of homosexuality. Talk about sick and twisted.

So while some may like to lay blame on a culture of homophobia for violent acts like this, maybe the proper culture to blame is one that promotes execution. That is, if one is trying to blame society, and not the individual that pledged to ISIS.

It sounds like this guy managed to obtain two of his obvious goals. Terrorism and homophobic violence. So awful.

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@busdriver11:
Homophobia is homophobia, and while I don’t disagree about Islam and homophobia (put it this way, there isn’t an Islamic majority country in the world as far as I know, where you can’t be arrested and jailed for gay sex acts, with penalties ranging from time in jail to being executed), distinguishing between homophobia in the Islamic world and homophobia anywhere else is a mistake, because the underlying principal is the same, whatever the penalties are. Denying gay people the right to marry is homophobic in that it means you are saying their relationships aren’t valid, and it was only in 2003 that the Supreme Court overturned laws that could send someone to jail, felony convictions, simply for having consensual sex with someone of the same sex. When someone thinks that someone else is ‘the other’ or less human, it doesn’t matter the scale that they will go. The paramedic who refuses to treat someone because they are perceived to be gay or transgender can claim religious belief, but in the end it is just as bad as the guy who shot up the nightclub. The US is becoming more of a tolerant place, even accepting, but the backlash after same sex marriage shows this country is not necessarily a safe place to be LGBT, for a lot of reasons, we may not have iSIS calling for people to have their heads cut off for being gay, but we have law that allows people in many places in this country to be fired for being gay, allows them to be discriminated against by official state agencies, and it is perfectly legal…

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Thank you, GoNoles. I’m here too.

“The people on the ground here are shocked, upset, mad, etc. because this is the exact opposite of what Orlando is. This is a seriously safe community, just big enough to have an NBA team, growing, with a broad based economy and no state income taxes, not far from the beaches. In other words, a really great place to grow up and live and thrive no matter what you are.”

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Just spoke to my SisIL in Orlando. She is very shaken and the attack was only a few blocks from her house. She’s at a birthday party with her kids trying to be normal. Good luck to her.

They’re reporting there that the man was upset that his 3 year old child witnessed two men kissing in Miami. Really? What does a 3 year old even know or care about sexuality?

FWIW there are religious people who come to New Orleans every Mardi Gras to protest. They stand together with their hellfire and brimstone signs, speaking out of a megaphone, “stop fornicating, move out of your trailer…”, etc. People goof on them, usually by enjoying lengthy kisses right where they can see or shaking various parts of their costume. No one gets hurt. I think the religious people enjoy their version of Mardi Gras as much as anyone else does. That’s the American way, IMO.

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@musicprnt

Shooter targeted Orlando because that’s where he lived and a gay bar was targeted because he was a homophobe. It also seems plausible that may be him or his son was abused by someone there or he was paranoid about it happening or was afraid of his own homosexual tendencies.

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For the poster who talked about the weapon used. The AR15 is not fully automatic, it is the civilian version of the military weapon that can go full automatic mode. The AR15 is a semi automatic, which means it can fire a bullet with each squeeze of the trigger. As shown with this shooting or Newtown, it doesn’t really matter, a semi can fire up to 100 rounds a minute. Worse, as is likely in this case, you can put a large magazine on the gun (legally), so you don’t even have to reload, which would give the victims a chance to fight back or flee. I personally think they shouldn’t ban these weapons but they should have rules on refire rates and the size of magazines (and more importantly, that it be made so someone cannot switch a magazine quickly),but that is me.

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The President, in a town hall just last week, got a comment about him wanting to take away people’s guns. The President’s response, which in retrospect is pretty prophetic, in part:

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The FBI is saying that they have questioned him 2-3 times over the past 2 years, but couldn’t do anything because he had not made overt threats. They could, however , have put him on the no-fly list. He bought his guns last week.