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It's been only a day since Christina Grimmie was fatally shot in Florida and now we have another tragic shooting in Florida. "About 20" people are dead and at least 42 injured.

This is absolutely crazy. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.

Considering both happened in Orlando, I hope there isn't a connection between the two.

It's another gift from the religion of peace, a mere week after ISIS again reiterated their call for lone wolf attacks on the US and Europe.

{ When asked if the FBI suspected that the gunman may have an extremist leanings, including a possible sympathy with Islamic State, Ronald Hopper, an assistant FBI agent in charge, said: "We do have suggestions that the individual may have leanings toward that particular ideology. But right now we can't say definitively." }

Nice of them to bury that in the middle of the story.

Very sad to hear. I heard it was a gay club, that's frightening for me…

Suspect identified as Omar Mateen, 29, a Port St Lucie resident. Parents are from Afghanistan.

ISIS released Florida "Kill List" 3 days ago.

Currently 53 dead, 50 injured

It has been confirmed that there are about 50 dead with 50 more hospitalized.

The deadliest mass shooting in american history, jesus christ…

"Names on the list range from local law enforcement officers to members of the State Department."

I wouldn't necessarily call the list and the gay bar related, unless the law enforcement spends their weekend parties at gay bars.

Please take note that the shooter was a US citizen who lived in Florida, and had no known connections to any terrorist groups.

People are already saying that he was a refugee or that he came from Mexico (?) when neither of those things are remotely the case.

Fair enough. One could also argue that as proverbial "terrorist chatter," this indicates ISIS' interest in Florida-based targets.

This list was first reported on Friday and identified nearly 8,000 Americans as targets. Of these, 600 were from Florida, second only to California. The list has not been been made public, so we do not know many specifics about it.

It is possible there is no direct connection between the attack and the list. It is possible the suspect heard about the list and felt motivated to act. It is possible the suspect knew a specific individual from the list was going to be at the Pulse last night. Until there is more information released, the connection between the list and attack is only speculation. But it is still worth mentioning and keeping in mind.

{ Please take note that the shooter was a US citizen who lived in Florida, and had no known connections to any terrorist groups. }

He's yet another twenty-something child of immigrants who is an openly fundamentalist Muslim and willingly shares his extremism on social media. Initial evidence does in fact lead investigators to believe he has connections overseas, which they're looking into. They just said all of this in the press conference, which of course started off with the typical parade of Muslim groups/leaders condemning the attack.

{ 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.

“He’s a known quantity,” the source said. “He’s been on the radar before.” }

v ISIS specifically called for Ramadan attacks a couple weeks ago. v

It's also reasonable to believe that Ramadhan have a major role on the shooting. (Basically he got pissed)

Of course. They'll certainly look into the list, and check if any of the targets on the list were regulars at that club.

And why the fuck are people still defending that religion?!!
They are just as bad (if not worse) than extremist Christians…

@Lisa

twenty-something child of immigrants

who is an openly fundamentalist Muslim

willingly shares his extremism on social media

So what? There are literally millions of Americans who have two or three of those qualities. (Yes, even the last one – I've seen a number of users on this very site post "KILL EVERYONE IN (group)" more than a few times.) Is the government supposed to investigate anyone who meets any of those criteria?

{ 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.
“He’s a known quantity,” the source said. “He’s been on the radar before.” }

What's your source for this?

@Mako

And why the fuck are people still defending that religion?!!
They are just as bad (if not worse) than extremist Christians…

Uh, I dunno, maybe it's the 1.5 billion Muslims who aren't terrorists?

Mateen "known quantity" to FBI

-"Person of Interest" in 2013 and 2014
-FBI opened investigation but found nothing to proceed
-Father says son "angered" by sight of two men kissing. Apologizes and says had "nothing to do with religion."

I've also seen reports that Orlando's GayDays ended on June 5. I wonder if that will become important or not.

The subreddit r/news keeps deleted/censoring any posts about this event.

The deadliest mass shooting in American history? Jesus….

It is now the deadliest single-attacker incident of mass murder in the US history, having replaced the Bath, Michigan attack(s) of 1927.

/pol/s take onnit:

Also found this on /pol/:

:V

I really hope the shooter is caught or dead.

Quran (7:80-84) – "…For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds…. And we rained down on them a shower (of brimstone)"
Abu Dawud (4462) – The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, "Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Loot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done."
There are several lesser hadith stating, "if a man comes upon a man, then they are both adulterers," "If a woman comes upon a woman, they are both Adulteresses," "When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes," and "Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to."
Those are just a few passages I found on the matter of homosexuality…
Take this as you will, but at least groups like WBB don't pull shit like this, as far as I know…

He was shot to death holding I think 30 hostages in a bathroom

11/25 of the links on the reddit frontpage are from /r/The_Donald, causing voting to lag

Admin response

Criticizing the Muslim religion and criticizing the Muslim people are two different things. Both Christianity and Islam call for its followers to do shit like this to those who do not follow the word of their book, why can't we call it out when its followers decide to actually do what their book is telling them to do?

The Muslims who aren't terrorists are the ones who don't follow every word of the Quran, same with every Christian who doesn't stone their child to death for being disobedient. When the more you follow your religion, the more horrendous shit like this happens, I think it's appropriate to discuss where these people are getting their instructions from. Not to sound like an Anti-theist, but fundamentalism needs to be addressed directly when the religion being followed has barbaric demands like this in it.

Or we can just ignore how 95% of terrorist attacks are motivated by Islam because we are too afraid of being called racist and just continue to allow their religious jihad to claim the lives of even more innocents. It's a touchy subject, and I understand that it can easily turn into racism against the Arab people in an instant, but god damn 50 people are dead, it's time for a country-wide open discussion on this issue.

{ What’s your source for this? }

It literally says ABC News right there in the sentence… it's from their live update page.

{ Is the government supposed to investigate anyone who meets any of those criteria? }

Yes, a fundamentalist of any ideology posting extremist threats online is exactly the kind of behavior which warrants investigation, the hell is so hard about that to understand? Especially when context is taken into consideration, he wasn't anonymously posting on a meme site, he was sharing his hatred with his like-minded friends on facebook with his real name and real information for all to see. It is exactly this kind of thing that friends and family are supposed to report but the rest of them hate gays just as much, who would report it? Just like gang culture, nobody sees anything, he's just a one-off nutjob and we're all reminded that Islam isn't terror for the tenth time this year.

Meanwhile from Donald Trump himself…

'Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!'

He's expecting "congratulations" on being correct about the deaths of 50 people.

Absolutely fucking disgraceful.

I have little interest in discussing the shooter's possible extremist leanings, so I'll just post this

To be fair. He's not saying he wants to be congratulated on 50 people dying. Just on the ideas that radicalists from Islam would come here and cause something.

http://www.latimes.com/la-me-ln-gay-pride-la-weapons-20160612-snap-story.html

First Orlando, now this. The US might be dealing with an organized effort.

Obama is delivering a statement at 1:30 PM ET:

Link is dead

Some outlets are starting to report he was with ISIS or at least aligned himself with them.

{ Mateen “made a pledge of allegiance to ISIS,” California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN.

Schiff said the timing and target of the attack can’t be a coincidence.

“The fact that this shooting took place during Ramadan and that ISIS leadership in Raqqa has been urging attacks during this time, that the target was an LGBT nightclub during (LGBT) Pride (month) and, if accurate, that according to local law enforcement the shooter declared his allegiance to ISIS, indicates an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism,” Schiff said. }

It works for me, but here's a different source.
http://abc7.com/news/suspect-w--arsenal-in-car-taken-into-custody-in-santa-monica/1382290/

Just highlight and copy-paste into your adress bar.

This will of course bring in the discussion of gun laws, but that should be brought to another thread. all i can say is there is something that needs work. my thoughts go to those affected

Obama already beat you to it during his statement.

{ all i can say is there is something that needs work. }

He had no background or criminal history. He was only on a list of extremist Muslims with possible ISIS sympathies, and according to Democrats it's racist to create a searchable database of Muslims just because they're super Muslim.

He planned this out by himself in advance to kill as many people as possible, that was his clear intention from the start. What could have stopped him, other than people around him noticing something was up and reporting it? All the laws in the world can't tell you what they see.

The reactions to various posts in this thread are bipolar as hell.

But anyway, let's make this clear- no one here, and very few people anywhere else has said something like "all Muslims…" blah blah blah. If you find yourself arguing against this position, chances are what you have there is called a strawman.

Let's add more Gun restrictions so criminals who don't abide by those restrictions can't get guns, brilliant! Unfortunately you are probably right, that discussion will be steered towards gun control rather than towards a topic that might actually help the situation.

What I hope the discussion brings up is how there are more issues than just gun control. even if the guy didn't have a gun, what else would he have? a bomb?, knife?

Except that this guy was an American citizen for years. Trump's proposed ban on Muslims from entering the nation would have done nothing to prevent this attack.

Also, it's pretty shitty for the families involved to hear that their personal tragedy is being used to encourage xenophobic policies.

(I've neglected to mention this, but I'm deeply sorry for those who have been impacted by the event. What happened is absolutely horrifying and we need to take measures to ensure that more tragedies like this don't happen.)

Here's a piece from FiveThirtyEight on the issue. They say that there is a growing trend in lone wolf domestic terrorism away from bombs and towards guns, because the US government is now heavily monitoring the sale of explosives, but not guns.

Hardly surprising. I think the key reason for that is that nobody's really opposed to the restriction of sales and distribution of explosive weapons (which are inherently more dangerous and can't be used for self-defense).

So my last comment was a pretty shitty one, so lets try again with a new one:

Obviously my condolences go out to anyone affected by this tragedy, shit like this shouldn't be happening in real life.

Next up, sadly I can't say I'm surprised at all at the shooter being an extremist. If you ever needed solid proof why I detest extremism as a whole, stuff like this is why. Extremism, as its name implies, leads to extreme actions that only make non-extremists who happen to be of a similar ethnic, religious, political, etc backgrounds look bad by proxy.

An "explosive weapon" can be a lot of things, and that's not even counting IEDs. Something as simple as a pressure cooker can be used as an explosive weapon.

So the r/News thing is officially a disaster.

Knife stabs are in general more survivable and it would have been much harder for him to commit a mass stabbing. They don't control knives yet you never hear about mass stabbings because guns are just easier.

The US government already has heavy restrictions and control when it comes to explosives.

Also these mass killings aren't done with knives they are done with guns. That is why people only discuss gun control when these specific incidents happen. When there is a mass stabbing I'm sure you will see people talking about knife control.

He was appreciating the congrats for being right on who this attacker's allegiance was.

Reading comprehension, people.

Then all arguments delve into violence in general when you mention how restricted this weapon is or how relaxed laws are on this weapon, I do think current gun laws need to be evaluated because somehow(correct me if im wrong) but wasn't the shooter "on radar" by law enforcement and still managed to legally acquire a gun?

My analysis:

I think it's important to remember that terrorist attacks are, at their heart, political statements. First and foremost, I think that it's imperative to not buy into the threat. As unfortunate as it is, those who died are an extremely small percentage of the population and as a whole it means that we have to exercise more security to actually limit ISIS actions within the US. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean more surveilance, but rather actually patching the hole. The moment that one submits is the moment that terrorists realize that their strategy works, and they can then begin to corrupt infrastructre from there.

What ISIS is doing, or really this whole Middle Eastern conflict has been doing, is developing a new form of warfare that doesn't follow the standard rules. As it turns out ISIS really doesn't give a fuck what the west has to say, and because the terrorism is politically based, merely wiping them out is going to just replace them with even more ferocious adversaries.

Now I'm not educated enough on Middle Eastern politics to even really go into details of what may be done to repair damage to the region, however, it is necessary to address the situation from this angle. We've been doing the same thing for years, isn't it time we actually tried to resolve these issues?

Ultimately I don't think ISIS will survive more than 5 years without external support. Its social and economic infrastructure is not self supporting and will collapse in time, and if they were truly big enough of a threat, they could be eliminated by a unified effort from world powers. However, what bothers me is how little people seem to be looking into what has caused these problems in the first place. No, it's much more complicated than just "ew white people", it's a very complex issue that I think most, if not all of us, have no real ability to have any constructive input due to our sheer ignorance of the problem.

If anything, I think that's probably the biggest consequence of having a war in a region so far away for so long. A lot of us don't really know why all that shit is going on and just know it's been a problem for a long time.

Not sure why gun control is being brought up at all considering ISIS attacks have taken place in areas with tight gun control. It's clear they have a means to get weapons regardless.