This incident of horrific violence will soon vanish from the news:
Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S.-born citizen, has been identified as the suspect in Sunday’s mass shooting that left at least 50 dead and more than 50 others wounded at the Pulse Nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Mateen’s parents were born in Afghanistan, and he was “on the radar” of U.S. officials for some time, but was not the target of a specific investigation, law enforcement officials told ABC News.
A police officer working at the club responded to shots fired at 2:02 a.m., and then exchanged fire with Mateen, according to police. Mateen then took hostages, holding them for hours.
At approximately 5 a.m., the SWAT team made the decision to rescue the hostages, officials said. Mateen was killed in a gunfight with those officers early this morning.
FBI assistant agent in charge of the agency’s Tampa division, Ron Hopper, said this morning investigators were “looking at all angles right now” to find a motive.
Go here to read the rest. May the souls of the slain rest in peace. Mateen was a registered Democrat and from reports seems to have been a jihadist. Since this story does not serve the agendas of most of the media, it will soon be treated as a local crime story. If he had been a Republican and a Christian, this story would be receiving constant national coverage from here to election day.
Update 1: Hatip to Dave Griffey at his blog Daffey Thoughts. The bodies are barely cold, and Mark Shea is beating the drum for gun control.
Gun Cult! To your posts! Remember the playbook!
1. It’s too soon to talk about this completely forseeable and preventable tragedy.
2. Any discussion of trying to prevent future statistically certain slaughters, or the other 33,000 preventable slaughters we *will* have by 12/31/16 is “politicizing tragedy”–because the dead are always insulted by not wanting to add to their numbers.
3. Instantly politicize the tragedy by calling for MOAR GUNS to fatten the profits of the gun industry.
4. Blame the victims for not being armed.
5. For extra credit, theorize that this slaughter was actually planned by Obama or shadowy liberal forces to make the Gun Cult look bad
6. Compare the death toll with abortion and assure everybody that hardly anybody was killed so it’s no big deal.
7. Declare, “If the killers had not used guns they would have used rocks or knives, because evil is found in the heart, not the gun.”
8. Toss in a foolish non sequitur about outlawing cars and swimming pools since people die in them too.
9. If the shooter was brown, this was a terrorist act telling you everything you need to know about the pathologies of brown people. We need to elect Trump to ban all Muslims from the country. If the shooter was white, he was a “lone nut” and it tell you nothing about the pathologies of Patriots fondling their guns. We need to elect Trump in order to keep the Liberals from taking all our guns.
Never let a tragedy go to waste, eh Mark?
Update 2:
ISIS has claimed responsibility:
I don’t know. My Victim and Perpetrator Matrix isn’t finely calibrated enough to figure out what the press will do with this one. Nothing can be distinguishable when viewed through as many prisms as this attack will be.
. It’s not a question of blaming the victims for not being armed ( Shea makes half his money by instigator hyperbole but the suckers keep sending him their money). It’s instructing them with love that they should arm in those states that allow concealed carry. But gays will arm going forward with no urging from me as will many others after this. This does seem similar to ISIS who throws gays off buildings. I’d guess Mateen simply agrees with them from afar. The USA won’t search people like Mateen despite his being on their radar. In fact he continued to have a gun license as a guard despite being on their radar. That tells the gays of Florida that they should arm going forward. In fact I suspect every gay night club will now obtain a permit going forward in all states. Even bizarre New Jersey will give them permits for in building guns.
Why did God at one time mandate stoning for gays? Because God mandated it for adultery, abusing one’s parents, and for dreamers who led the people away from God…simultaneous to mandating it for gays….because prior to sanctifying grace and the reduction of satan’s power by Christ, man needed great threats to avoid any visible mortal sin. As it turned out, the Jews repeatedly worshipped Baal anyway and in addition in the north….the golden calf brought back by Jeroboam.
Christ ended mortal sin death penalties but not criminal death penalties. ISIS and perhaps Mateen live as though Christ did not reduce satan’s power nor make sanctifying grace possible.
NBC’s take was leaning towards hate crime.
Believing liberal media is delusional.
CNN isn’t exactly middle of the road either.
Who to believe?
It really is a perfect storm of leftist anxieties, isn’t it?
Ernst Schreiber;
http://davidgriffey.blogspot.com/2016/06/yep.html?m=1
Hillary will sort it all out for us…with a little help from her friends.
If I were the type to troll Mark Shea (a waste of time, I know), I’d point out that the FBI did forsee it in 2013, and again in 2014, and so, as far as prevention goes, maybe Donald Trump really does have the right idea after all.
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Come to think of it, given what we now know, Shea pretty much trolled himself by going knee-jerk auto-post there, didn’t he?
Send Mark Shea to Afghanistan! He is as vile as this hateful Islamic terrorist.
Being a known wolf since 2013 and all we can do is wait for the wolf to attack. Ouch.
Thanks Ernst for the links.
Muslims are #1 on the Official Protected Class Ranking. This is because they are probably the one group in the country that really is suspect, and so they need to be surrounded by constant clucking by federal hens, not to protect them from gun-toting xenophobes, but so most people don’t realize the colossal and inexplicable mistake the federal government has made/is making in immigration and discouraging assimilation. The establishment can be as sympathetic as they want to be on Gays in general without changing that, as long as the narrative is (1) guns; and (2) hate, and the words “Muslim” or “Islam” are never mentioned. The Bear wishes every American could be given a tour of the Islamosphere so they could see for themselves what Muslim countries look like without a benevolent American culture propping up Islam on American soil.
“The bear wishes every American could be given a tour of Islamosphere so they can see for themselves what Muslim countries look like without a benevolent American culture propping up Islam on American soil.”
Why on earth are the listless progressive liberial elites hell bent on destroying our County? Why is the Muslim brotherhood and CAIR given such presidential acceptance and support? Discrimination or sabotage?
The leftists believe they will and can control Islam in the United States once they control the guns, they fail to realize that Islam will control them in the end.
Bush made it clear:
“Our strategy is this: We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”
Boston, San Bernardino, Oklahoma, Ft Hood, Orlando, and on and on.
We don’t need gun control. We need terrorism control.
A massacre of 5 or 10 people might disappear from the headlines, but a massacre of 50 people is way too big to sweep under the media rug. It’s also way too big to dismiss as a mere “hate crime” against gays, no matter how hard the media try to spin it as such. It is terrorism no matter how you slice it. May the Lord have mercy on all who died and protect and heal all who were wounded.
“A massacre of 5 or 10 people might disappear from the headlines, but a massacre of 50 people is way too big to sweep under the media rug.”
Watch it happen Elaine. This is a major act of terrorism and the optics are all bad for Hillary Clinton. That is all most of the media needs to know to spike this story as soon as the next major story comes along.
#NEVERHILLARY.
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America is a far more dangerous place than it was in December 2008.
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You can thank for that Obama’s and State Secy. Hillary’s disastrous policies.
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Already, the fiction-peddlers/professional liars (Coalition to Blame Gun Owners, major-league moron Brokaw, MSNBC, et al) are blaming the high-magazine-capacity AR-15, the NRA, you, and me — not the ISIS jihadi.
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They would blame the victims. But, they can’t blame gays. They’re major parts of the fictional, protected classes.
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Oh, by the way, Happy Ramadan from the White House!
Kyle Miller – 100% correct.
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We need a vast coalition to stop Muslim violence and it needs to be run, in major part, by the millions of peace-loving Muslims about which the fiction-peddlers/professional liars constantly squawk.
The American people privately hold 200,000,000 guns and 12,000,000,000,000 rounds of ammunition. But, 1 Muslim/ISIS jihadi had the 1 gun in the night club. The Muslim operator (SEAL Team Six wouldn’t assume to run up a 50 body count) correctly assumed that he would be the only armed person present.
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Gun-free zones work . . . for the bad guys.
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I will stop now.
The perpetrator had a state gun license, since he worked security for the past several years, so the 9mm handgun in his possession could not have realstically been prevented him by any gun laws. As for the “AR-15” which may have been made fully automatic —if initial medical center reports are accurate, it is likely it wasn’t an AR-15 but a miltary-grade assault rifle like a Kalashnikov, illegal by any laws, and I predict it will be shown to gave been smuggled into FL through our porous borders or ports. The same has occurred of course in Belgium—powerful arms are being smuggled in via the Balkans, only occasionally intercepted by German security forces.
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Of course, if this administration was serious about the war on terror, when the FBI questioned him in 2014 for known contact with a suicide-bomber in Afghanistan or Pakistan, Homeland Security could have then had his license revoked and sought an order to search his premises for weapons, as well as other contraband. Look, they put Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the “Ben-Ghazi video producer”, in the slammer instantly when it served this administration’s purpose in Sep. 2012.
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But this administration has reduced federal gun crime enforcement and convictions are at an all time low, to only 6000 convictions in all of 2015 (cf. Washington Times, “Obama’s Gun Cotrol Push Undercut by Fall in Prosecutions,” 12/31/15.) Golly gee.
Right now (Sunday afternoon, June 12th), it is so bad, the media thinks over 50 are dead, and the bodies are so many they’ve stopped counting. The nightclub floor of “The Pulse” eyewitnesses have said is a vast pool of blood.
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Boston Marathon. Ft. Hood. Chattanooga. San Bernardino. Orlando.
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Right now a sane person would call for this president to resign.
If the massacre soon disappears from the headlines it’s because we let it happen.
We’re are the letters to the editor?
We’re are the letters to the editorial staff of news outlets?
The posts on this thread are from the brightest Catholics with one exception, me. So I implore you all to keep your opinions, good solid opinions, in the front of as many outlets as possible.
Do it for God’s sake and the sake of your neighbors.
Press. Full court press! Now!
“It really is a perfect storm of leftist anxieties, isn’t it?”
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Every victim name released so far is Hispanic. The MSM is going to have to ramp up the right-wing Christian gun nut meme. The ACLU already has.
Donald would be correct, i.e. headlines would soon disappear, if the victims were Christians being beheaded or lined up on a beach and slaughtered. Or, if the victims were diners who happen to be Jewish. Being the group is a constituent group bought and paid for by the Democrat party, I expect them to milk the event for all its worth. It’ll be played for a call for more gun laws, more anti-homosexual regulations (Watch out free speech!), and of course a call for more tolerance and understanding, which is always a one way street. Ask Little Sisters of the Poor. Let no tragedy go to waste. Progressives always fight to move the ball forward.
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And to think Obama has been working hard to release people worse than this from Guantanamo.
A minor quibble: I’m not sure what “medical center reports” means, but I doubt most civilians(myself included) would be able to tell the difference between full auto, burst, or rapid fire (i.e. pulling the trigger as fast as you can), or that one can tell whether or not a ballistic wound was caused by a bullet fired from an automatic, semi-automatic, or manual action firearm. So I think it’s probably best to hold off on speculating what kind of legal/illegal long gun the bad guy was armed with.
What if God is allowing to be done to us what He allowed to be done to Israel and Judah for their rebellion, heresy and apostasy? He allowed their enemies Assyria and Babylon to conquer and deport them into captivity, killing tens of thousands along the way. Think about it. Murderous Islamic terrorist indiscriminately kills and maims scores of sodomites partying the night away. It seems like the party which the King of Babylon had before invasion by the Persians and Medes in the book of the prophet Daniel. Remember Luke 13:1-5. Ain’t none of us innocent. I darn well know what I deserve for my having failed Christ. Buckle up, folks, because we are going to see that passage in the Gospel of St Luke played out before our very eyes. We played the whore Gomer and everything that the prophet Hosea wrote will come to pass.
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.
One can try to argue your position but I believe you have read this as St. Paul would of.
Gay Pride week had a Hurricane of sorts.
Remember the Natural threat years ago in New Orleans and Miami. Southern Decadence they boasted, but somehow Nature had other plans.
As you said Lucius. Buckle up.
In a better time, Obama would probably be impeached, and Hillary would likely be the target of a Special Prosecutor. The resurgence of Militant Islam overseas and now here is due substantially to the moral vacuum present in the decadent West.
Did the ancestry of the terrorist’s parents have anything to do with the decision he made to kill? Just asking. (ducks)
What if God is allowing to be done to us what He allowed to be done to Israel and Judah for their rebellion, heresy and apostasy?
I have asked the same ever since Obama was elected. He has been the bringer of destruction.
Y’know, I have about as much use for Donald Trump as our host, but after the the scold-in-chief, the last thing we need is a nag-in-chief.
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So it will be interesting, at least for me, to see how Trump responds in the next couple of days.
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Because even I can see that making Clinton either own or repudiate Obama here would help the GOP regain at least some of the intellectual, intestinal and testicular fortitude that it’s been wasting away for too long.
Regarding the likelihood of an assault-type rifle’s use in this attack, medical experts familiar with the triage info stated early on the weapon was a high-velocity weapon (not like a standard rifle or the 9mm. Glock with which Mateen was also armed). The caliber is a .223 bullet, not the standard 7.62mm (30mm) Kalashnikov caliber, but a weapon causing massive shock trauma around the point of impact. But some of the live video I have watched also puts into doubt that it was fully automatic. Doesn’t sound fully auto.
Correction, 7.62mm =
30 caliber..
“Assault weapon/rifle” is such an overhyped term that I try (probably unsuccessfully) to avoid using it High velocity, when it comes out of the mouths of people like your typical reporter, who wouldn’t know one end of a rifle from another, isn’t much better, as I’m sure you know.
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Thanks for the update.
Do you think they’ll learn?
If I were LGBT I’d be jumping on the Trump train right quick to stop further Muslim immigration. The nice law-abiding Muslims we hear about would vote to make sodomy a crime.
http://sonarz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/islampboa.jpg
This is what I think will happen:
–The story will be used in Republican commercials against the Democrats so the media won’t matter so much.
–A significant number of folks in Florida and elsewhere will obtain a concealed carry license.
–Gun Control will be the bottom line conclusion for Obama, Hillary, and the media.
–More killings like this will occur before election day.
–More folks will believe Islam is a dangerous and fanatical religion.
–More folks will believe that Obama and Hillary are soft on Islamic terrorism.
–Trump will be helped by this tragedy.
“Political Correctness Kills”: sums it up.
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Everything Obama, Hillary, et al have ever said is 100% lies. That’s not the problem. The problem is the millions of leftist America-haters and assorted imbeciles/mental defectives that believe it and vote.
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Yeah, I’m off to buy .223 cal. ammo this AM.
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This is why I avoid crowded places, malls, gay bars, . . .
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Steve P. I’m pretty sure NATO 7.62mm is .308 cal., a bit larger than the .30/06 cal. of the 1903 Springfield and M1 Garand US Army WWI/WWII issue battle rifles. I don’t have .308 b/c all our deer rifles are .30/06 and we don’t want to complicate gun safety considerations.
If the massacre soon disappears from the headlines it’s because we let it happen.
Where are the letters to the editor?
Ever send a letter to the editor?
My mom frequently does. Exactly ONE has been published.
They edited it so that it seemed to say exactly the opposite; it took threats of a lawsuit (and worse, the Wrath of Mom) for them to publish a tiny not-apology at the bottom of the next letter page.
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Somehow, a Daesh-bag who was known to the authorities for YEARS is…the fault of Christians.
When he goes into a homosexual nightclub during Ramadan.
This is as dumb as “the attack was because of a video, nothing to do with 9/11.”
I think the bullets are the same diameter, but the case sizes are different (7.62×51 vs. 7.62×63). More bang for your buck (literally!) with the old gov’t .30.
The NATO cartridge and the 30/06 are the same diameter, both .308. The NATO round being a bit shorter. I have been a hand loader of my ammunition for almost fifty years. I do this for the affordability but more for developing the most accurate load for various of my toys. Sub minute of angle groups can be attained. It is most satisfying to put five shots into a 3/8th inch hole at 100 yards, from the bench of course. From a comfortable position, remember the acronym B-R-A-S-S. Breath – Relax (Letting a little air out) – Aim – Take up the Slack – Squeeze (The Trigger slowly) All while saying a silent, “For Your Honor and Glory Lord”.
“Where I come from, gun control is a steady hand.”–US Senator Alan Simpson (R-ID, retired)
Mark Shea, if your hand causes you to sin…
“It really is a perfect storm of leftist anxieties, isn’t it”
As evidenced by an incident at (where else) Mizzou, where a Latina SJW scolded a crowd of 800 people attending a prayer vigil for the Orlando massacre victims — for not showing the same level of interest in racial issues:
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/27839/
The attendees included two (civilly married) gay men, one of whom had once lived in Orlando, knew at least one of the deceased victims, and left the event in disgust over the woman’s remarks. I can’t say I blame them for that, although trying to make the massacre ONLY about gays isn’t much better than trying to make it ONLY about Latinos or Blacks or some other affected racial/ethnic group. To paraphrase a famous election slogan of yesteryear, “It’s the terrorism, stupid!”
“Watch it happen Elaine. This is a major act of terrorism and the optics are all bad for Hillary Clinton. That is all most of the media needs to know to spike this story as soon as the next major story comes along.”
You think Trump and co will allow this?
Right now the news media is trying a blackout of Trump, only letting snippets of what he says through. Long term I do not think the strategy will work.
Perhaps many in the media gave Trump support via heavy coverage during the primary as a way to sabotage Republican prospects against the Woman Who Would be Queen.
We might properly blame the massacre and much of ISIS world-wide reach on what may be called the Sede Vacante Presidency.
“Perhaps many in the media gave Trump support via heavy coverage during the primary as a way to sabotage Republican prospects against the Woman Who Would be Queen.”
I think that likely and I also think it likely they outsmarted themselves. This is a bizarre election year and if I am certain of nothing else, I am certain that the usual political rules simply do not apply this year.
No doubt the media had the poms-poms for Trump, as Mark Levin says. But, it cannot explain the cult like following. No matter the vulgarity, bad press, or proof of liberal inclinations, his supporters would not budge.
Regardless of one’s views on gun control, this never would never have happened in Texas. The bartender and a good many of the patrons would have been armed and in the end, the body count would have been much lower. That not being the case. a fuller explanation of why the authorities did not take action sooner might be in order.