This video from the USA says about itself:
Orlando Massacre Comes After Lawmakers in U.S. Filed More Than 200 Anti-LGBT Bills
13 June 2016
In a tweet that went viral after Sunday’s attack on an LGBT nightclub in Florida, ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio wrote: “The Christian Right has introduced 200 anti-LGBT bills in the last six months and people [are] blaming Islam for this. No.” The attack has also renewed calls for lifting what advocates say is a medically unnecessary ban on blood donations from many gay and bisexual men. We speak with Hannah Willard of Equality Florida.
American Muslims Send A Powerful Message Of Solidarity To Orlando Victims: here.
This video from the USA says about itself:
Openly Gay Muslim Imam Reacts to Orlando: Clubs Like Pulse are Safe Havens for LGBT Muslims, Too
13 June 2016
Authorities have identified the Orlando gunman as 29-year-old Omar Mateen. He was born in 1986 in New York to Afghan parents. Since 2007 Mateen had worked as a security guard at G4S, the largest private security firm in the world. … We speak to Imam Daayiee Abdullah, executive director of Mecca Institute. Imam Abdullah also is one of the first openly gay imams in the Western Hemisphere.
There are mounting questions about the conduct of the FBI in relation to Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people Sunday morning at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. FBI officials have confirmed investigating Mateen in 2013 and 2014, but claim they concluded he was not a threat: here.
This 13 June 2016 video from the USA is called “How Many Shootings Must We Have?” Florida State Senator Calls for Gun Control After Pulse Massacre.
We Bought An AR-15 In Orlando In Less Time Than You Spent At The DMV. Purchasing a killing machine, even after a national tragedy, is just too easy: here.
This 13 June 2016 video from the USA is called Australia Stopped Mass Shootings After 1996 Massacre, So Why Doesn’t the U.S. Follow Suit?
This video from the USA says about itself:
Activist: Latinx LGBTQ Community & Its Stories of Survival Should Be at Center of Orlando Response
14 June 2016
On Monday night, thousands gathered in downtown Orlando for a candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub. A nearby church bell tolled 49 times—once for each victim. Most of the victims were young and Latinx. To talk more about the Orlando shootings, we are joined by Isa Noyola. She is director of programs for the Transgender Law Center, the largest transgender organization. She’s a translatina activist and a national leader in the LGBT immigrant rights movement.
This video from the USA says about itself:
When It Comes to Orlando Massacre, Domestic Violence Is the Red Flag We Aren’t Talking About
14 June 2016
In a new article for Rolling Stone, journalist Soraya Chemaly writes, “The Washington Post reported Monday that ‘although family members said [Omar] Mateen had expressed anger about homosexuality, the shooter had no record of previous hate crimes.’ But that depends on how you categorize domestic violence.”
Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, has come forward to describe how Mateen beat her and held her hostage. ThinkProgress reports that between 2009 and 2012, 40 percent of mass shootings started with a shooter targeting his girlfriend, wife or ex-wife. Just this month in California, a UCLA doctoral student gunned down his professor, prompting a lockdown on campus. But first, Mainak Sarkar allegedly killed his estranged wife in Minnesota, climbing through a window to kill her in her home. Last year alone, nearly a third of mass shooting deaths were related in some way to domestic violence. We speak to writer Soraya Chemaly. Her recent article in Rolling Stone is called “In Orlando, as Usual, Domestic Violence was Ignored Red Flag.”
Many terrorists’ first victims are their wives – but we’re not allowed to talk about that. The links between domestic violence and mass killings are now exhaustively documented. So why the conspiracy of silence? Here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
LikeLike
Early Sunday, one person, firing one weapon, killed almost fifty people, in just a few minutes.
These people were sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. The parents of two of them, living outside the United States, contacted my office yesterday and asked if they could have visas to attend the funerals of their own children. How wrong is that — parents attending the funerals of their slain children. So many; a slaughter of the innocents.
It’s much too easy to kill a lot of people very quickly.
The weapon that the killer used was an AR-15 assault weapon, derived from an M-16 military model. The main difference between the two is that you can pull and hold the M-16 trigger, making it spit out hundreds of rounds each minute, while the AR-15 trigger is one-pull-one-round, or “only” 100+ rounds per minute (subject to reloading). That’s automatic versus semi-automatic. But a legal modification to the AR-15 (a “replacement rifle stock”), costing around $300, essentially takes each recoil and make it a trigger pull. And that makes the AR-15 a machine gun.
Either way, it’s hard to imagine any legitimate use for a weapon like that. Does anyone really want to drill a deer with a few hundred rounds in a minute or two? That doesn’t seem very sporting.
We need to end this lunacy.
Please sign my petition to restore the assault weapons ban >>
For a decade, you couldn’t buy an assault weapon. The original legislation had a “sunset” provision that ended the ban after ten years. Thanks to the NRA and its GOP puppets, that ban was never extended.
Seven states enacted bans (or heavy restrictions) on their own. Three of those seven states enacted their restrictions after 20 children were shot dead at Sandy Hook.
That’s where we are now.
Convicted felons can’t buy these weapons, in Florida and elsewhere. But pretty much anyone else can. In fact, until last August, anyone could buy them in WalMart. (Then WalMart imposed its own ban.)
Let me just ask you, straight up: Do you want virtually anyone to be able to buy weapons whose only practical purpose is to be able to kill hundreds of people in a matter of minutes?
No?
Then sign our petition, to reinstitute the ban on assault weapons >>
I’ll introduce the bill this week.
Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson
LikeLike
There is a culture of hatred in our midst, targeting our LGBT community. It is not some remnant of a generation soon to pass, nor merely a product of the fringe. To some degree, it is born in the halls of our own offices of government offices, and lauded by some of our own so-called leaders.
Westboro Baptist Church “leaders” have announced that they are coming to our City Beautiful, Orlando, to “protest” at the funerals of our friends and neighbors whom we lost in the terror attack/hate crime on our LGBT community at Pulse. But even their demented cries of “God hates f****” won’t be as loud as the deafening silence against such hatred exhibited by so many elected officials, and even worse, that barely-audible sound of pen on paper signing hatred into law.
Florida Governor Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Senator Marco Rubio have spoken out against mass murder perpetrated on the LGBT community this weekend, though often conveniently excluding the LGBT detail. But they have launched legal attacks themselves against this community for years now. They have not apologized, and they have not committed to do better. They have cried crocodile tears for the cameras. That’s all.
A few months ago, Rick Scott removed protections from discrimination for LGBT foster youth in Florida. Pam Bondi wasted $500,000 of our tax dollars fighting tooth and nail to stop marriage equality from coming to Florida – all the way to the Supreme Court. Marco Rubio dismissed same-sex couples who wanted to start a family as a “social experiment,” and fought against their right to foster children in our state.
They have attempted to normalize, and even mandate, discrimination against the LGBT community. Now they ask how a gay nightclub could be under attack, how such a horrific hate crime could happen in our home state. They should be asking who created this culture of hatred, now that more than 100 innocent people, their friends, their families, and our entire community, must pay the hefty price.
I am heartbroken. But I am also furious — not only about what has happened on Sunday morning, but about what has happened continuously to an innocent, victimized group of decent people throughout the years. I am frustrated at a society that makes members of my own staff nervous to hold their same-sex partners’ hands in public, for fear they could be shamed, hurt, or even killed. (None of them will ever be able to forget that the killer’s father suggested that the killer’s action was triggered by seeing two men showing affection in a public place.) I am frustrated at right-wing media who ask questions like “was it a terrorist attack OR a hate crime?” or “why hasn’t the President launched [yet another] attack against ISIS?” rather than reporting on the hatred and discrimination against gays and lesbians that still thrives.
Young or old, male or female, black or white, English-speaking or Spanish-speaking, gay or straight, WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS. Whatever your religion, whatever your age, we have to put hatred and discrimination in the rear-view mirror. It has no more place in the 21st century than slavery, or cannibalism. It’s the year 2016. Enough, already.
Today, I ask everyone to acknowledge that this wasn’t just an attack on my home, on our beautiful city of Orlando. This was an attack on our LGBT community. Forty-nine people were murdered for no reason other than their sexual orientation. The fundamental benefit of every civilized society is a sense of personal safety. Our LGBT friends deserve that as much as anyone else. We must organize against hatred and defeat it – and anyone who would perpetuate it.
NO H8.
Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Orlando)
LikeLike
LikeLike
LikeLike
LikeLike
LikeLike
Pingback: Orlando mass murderer, self-hating homophobic gay rather than jihadi | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Orlando massacre, self-hate, not jihadism | Dear Kitty. Some blog