domestic terrorism/tragedy: florida nightclub shooting

Demosthenes wrote:
Stengah wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Apparently the wife knew about the attack and perhaps did nothing to warn the authorities..

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/breaki...

Ugh.. wtf.

I wouldn't be so quick to judge, she might have been afraid he'd turn the guns on her and the son if she went to the authorities.

Given the history of domestic violence, I'd say that was likely a very well founded fear if it's one she had.

To play devil's advocate (I'm not sure anything could really justify someone not blowing the whistle on this) in addition to your point, after he had been investigated several times, and each time let go without enough evidence to warrant action, she had reason to believe there that the authorities would be unable or unwilling to do anything this time. He had every legal right to that gun after all, and his plans for what to do with it may not have been much more than his word versus hers.

Demosthenes wrote:
Stengah wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Apparently the wife knew about the attack and perhaps did nothing to warn the authorities..

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/breaki...

Ugh.. wtf.

I wouldn't be so quick to judge, she might have been afraid he'd turn the guns on her and the son if she went to the authorities.

Given the history of domestic violence, I'd say that was likely a very well founded fear if it's one she had.

I'm honestly surprised he didn't shoot her and his kid on the way out the door. The guy was clearly abusive, and I'd have to imagine she had effectively no support system whatsoever outside the marriage to turn to. The Trumplestilskins are going to demonize her, but, as a mother with a young child coming out of that environment, I would think she felt completely trapped and hoping he didn't do it was the best she felt she could do.

Yonder wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
Stengah wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Apparently the wife knew about the attack and perhaps did nothing to warn the authorities..

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/breaki...

Ugh.. wtf.

I wouldn't be so quick to judge, she might have been afraid he'd turn the guns on her and the son if she went to the authorities.

Given the history of domestic violence, I'd say that was likely a very well founded fear if it's one she had.

To play devil's advocate (I'm not sure anything could really justify someone not blowing the whistle on this) in addition to your point, after he had been investigated several times, and each time let go without enough evidence to warrant action, she had reason to believe there that the authorities would be unable or unwilling to do anything this time. He had every legal right to that gun after all, and his plans for what to do with it may not have been much more than his word versus hers.

Honestly, between my point and your devil's advocate point, I'd be willing to grant her a pass on this... especially in lieu of how many other mass shooters have been reported to the cops/investigated/etc... to have nothing happen.

Suggesting she had a chance to stop this when history has shown that nothing stops these before they happen (except, of course, proper gun control laws, as plenty of other countries demonstrate for us daily), except the occasional one we see on the news, I just don't believe she would have made a difference here.

If you want to be mad at her not doing anything, be mad at the culture and justice system that don't take women seriously.

Seriously, can we stop short of laying responsibility for this sh*t on a battered woman with ample cause to be frightened and intimidated into inaction?

FFS, people.

Ted Cruz, a human-shaped pile of walking excrement who has appeared at a conference organized by a man who has openly called for gays and lesbians to be put to death multiple times, is lecturing Democrats on how to support LGBTQ people in the aftermath of the shooting.

another from facebook, nsfw language I guess.
user readingintheshade / @readingintheshade

Spoiler:
Final thoughts on the pulse shooting-

Something has been bothering me, and I couldn't land on it until just now.

I realize it was the lie. That's what's hurting the most right now.
The lie from the bigots in their own closet. The bigots who are out. The bigots who pretended they weren't bigots at all.
all of you lied to all of us.

The loud church goers that threaten hell.
The people who stare on the streets when we hold hands.
The people who laugh when we're called names.
The ones who stand on the floor of government buildings screaming about freedom of religion while pushing ideas to make us subhuman.
The ones who won't make us wedding cakes or dj our events.
The ones who call child services when we adopt because we are a "danger to children"
The ones who threaten to shoot us if we're in the wrong bathroom.
The ones who dead name.
The ones who spit on us in the streets.
The ones who won't hire us.
The one who secretly fantasize about us, but beat us as punishment for their sins.
The ones who call us slurs and try to make us cry.
The ones who threaten rape to correct our behavior.
The ones who call us unnatural abominations.
The ones who leave their own children on the streets for being born this way.
The ones who swear we choose this life for attention.
The ones who don't understand why we can't just hide it.
The ones who think we need be locked away because it's a mental illness.
The ones who think we have an agenda to convert the youth.
The ones who think they can beat and pray the gay away.
The ones who love to remind us we'll never pass.
The ones who "have gay friends" but don't support gay rights.

The ones who say "keep it away from me"

You f*cking lied to me. To us.

Because we did keep it away. We kept in a dimly lit club, away from your sensitive eyes. We Pay to hold hands and kiss on dance floors inside buildings where we won't be seen. We sing with our friends under flashing lights that obscure clear vision. We create relationships in secret. In the dark. In a club designated for freaks like us. In a designated safe space where we could just live, and you didn't have to look at us and be disgusted.

From the outside, you couldn't see what we are doing.

We did as we were told.

We kept it away from you.

But you murdered us anyway.

You never meant what you said. You don't want us to merely "keep it away" from you. This isn't about your physical proximity to women kissing or men holding hands. When you said "keep it away from us" you didn't mean act straight while on the bus with you, you meant keep it in another realm of existence.

"Keep it away from us" means we aren't entitled to share the same planet with you. I know that now, but saying "I just don't wanna see a bunch of queers" doesn't fully encompass your vitriol. I didn't fully understand that a few days.

We hid in a dark club because of you, because you said that was enough. And you lied. Being in the dark wasn't enough. Because a club isn't as dark as a morgue. Or a coffin. Or a freshly dug grave.

And there's where you've wanted us all along.

Tanglebones wrote:

So.. basically what we have is that there are two groups of people in this thread. Those who want to uphold the status quo of few/no restrictions on guns, and passively allowing homophobia to die out, and those who want increased restrictions on gun purchasing, and a more active stance on stamping out homophobia. Am I more or less correct, here?

Actually there are also people here who don't fit into either of these categories.

Farscry wrote:

Seriously, can we stop short of laying responsibility for this sh*t on a battered woman with ample cause to be frightened and intimidated into inaction?

FFS, people.

His ex-wife's description backs up this idea

The description of Mateen as a controlling husband match what his first wife, Sitora Yusufiy, has told the media. Mateen was physically and emotionally abusive during their brief 2009-2011 marriage, she said, adding he tried to cut her off from her family in New Jersey. Yusufiy said her parents eventually came down to Florida and rescued her from Mateen.
Farscry wrote:

Seriously, can we stop short of laying responsibility for this sh*t on a battered woman with ample cause to be frightened and intimidated into inaction?

FFS, people.

I'm not laying blame on her. The whole situation is just beyond awful now that I found out he had this wife and small child. The fact she tried to talk him out of it showed she at least attempted to stop it. I'm concerned that with his FBI involvement (which she may have known nothing about) that law enforcement wasn't ever alerted in any way shape or form. Perhaps there was a moment on that day when she could have reached out to someone anyone even with a text. Would it have made any difference I have no idea.

I also had no idea she was being abused.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Ted Cruz, a human-shaped pile of walking excrement who has appeared at a conference organized by a man who has openly called for gays and lesbians to be put to death multiple times, is lecturing Democrats on how to support LGBTQ people in the aftermath of the shooting.

Oh good. I was worried I couldn't possibly be more infuriated by the reactions to this.

By the way, since it was talked about in several threads - I'm gonna say this is what shameless, empty opportunism looks like.

I like the bit where he says nobody has the right to murder because of sexual orientation or religion right after hoping that the next president basically flattens the middle East. *sigh*

Follow up on that thing with Owen Jones on SKY News - the host, Julia Hartley-Brewer just compared him to ISIS

“If Owen Jones wants to live in a world where people can only say what is on the officially approved list of platitudes, then perhaps he has more in common with Islamic State than he thinks,” she wrote.

Quick thought: Time and again, when people commit atrocities and claim that they are doing so in the name of Islam, there are those who ask "if moderate Muslims are truly opposed to these behaviors, why do they not speak out more forcefully against them? Why are they not doing more to stop them from happening?"

I have a question for my fellow Americans:
If responsible gun owners are truly opposed to mass murder using guns, why do they not speak out more forcefully against them?

When a "bad guy with a gun" commits these horrible crimes, we see the opposite. Many "responsible" gun owners go into full defense mode, citing the same tired arguments that the NRA has been feeding us for years. The people committing these crimes are making all gun owners look bad.

Why, my responsible gun owning friends, are you not doing more to stop these attacks from happening?

Farscry wrote:

Seriously, can we stop short of laying responsibility for this sh*t on a battered woman with ample cause to be frightened and intimidated into inaction?

FFS, people.

She can certainly present that defense at her trial.

In other news, Chris Cox of the NRA blames Obama's "political correctness". Yes, the same NRA that would have defended Omar's right to buy the rifle, since he had never been convicted of a crime.

Abu5217 wrote:

I have a question for my fellow Americans:
If responsible gun owners are truly opposed to mass murder using guns, why do they not speak out more forcefully against them?

One might ask the same question about abortion. Many pro-choice people wouldn't be opposed to some reasonable late-term restrictions if it weren't for the fact that once you agree to one restriction, it creates a huge slippery slope to banning it altogether because opponents are going to keep chipping and chipping and chipping away at it until it's all gone.

I happen to know a number of people who vote Republican *entirely* because of the gun control issue for this reason, even if they typically agree with many liberal social issues, including abortion or LGBT rights.

I think what we need to do is assume that gun ownership is a right same as abortion is a right and go from there so that we can all work together to solve the problem of *people* having so much hatred that they would even be tempted to do horrible things to other living beings. Education is what overcomes this ignorance, not laws. Would-be criminals don't care about laws, so it's only honest citizens who would suffer because of them.

Fair point Rebecca. Don't get me wrong, I actually don't have a problem with gun ownership. I would never personally have one, but I understand the feelings of those who cherish their rights. I am simply pointing out the hypocrisy of the statements. I also disagree that honest citizens would be harmed by tighter regulations on gun purchase/ownership.

Another common refrain is along the lines of "if the Muslims are not doing anything wrong, then they should not have a problem with increased surveillance". If you were to ascribe to that line of thought, and you were a responsible gun owner, then you should not have a problem with tighter licensing laws, right?

Abu5217 wrote:

Another common refrain is along the lines of "if the Muslims are not doing anything wrong, then they should not have a problem with increased surveillance". If you were to ascribe to that line of thought, and you were a responsible gun owner, then you should not have a problem with tighter licensing laws, right?

Ongoing surveillance vs one-and-done licensing hurdles. Religion vs ownership of a deadly weapon. I don't see the equivalence. (Granted, I know you're arguing the other direction - that they already have that thought for Muslims.)

Abu5217 wrote:

Another common refrain is along the lines of "if the Muslims are not doing anything wrong, then they should not have a problem with increased surveillance". If you were to ascribe to that line of thought, and you were a responsible gun owner, then you should not have a problem with tighter licensing laws, right?

I don't ascribe to that line of thought as I don't believe there should be all this surveillance on U.S. citizens, Muslim or otherwise, so can't really answer that one.

I am still pretty irked over the whole TSA thing after 9/11. Now everyone just treats it as normal. Slippery slope.

bekkilyn wrote:

I think what we need to do is assume that gun ownership is a right same as abortion is a right and go from there so that we can all work together to solve the problem of *people* having so much hatred that they would even be tempted to do horrible things to other living beings. Education is what overcomes this ignorance, not laws. Would-be criminals don't care about laws, so it's only honest citizens who would suffer because of them.

I don't see how any progress can be made on this front. First of all if gun ownership is a right like abortion is a right, then almost all gun control becomes impossible. Mentally ill women can get abortions, criminal women can get abortions, domestically abuse women can get abortions. How does treating gun ownership the same way help?

On the "only criminals break laws" that's not actually true. From a real perspective or from a legal perspective. When does a person with anger issues and a gun in the glove box become a criminal? When he flips off the person that just cut him off? When he drives alongside them and yells at them? When he brandishes the gun at driver? When he points the gun at the driver? When he pulls the trigger? When the bullet hits the other drivers face? When he is convicted of murder eight months later?

The idea that there are "good people with guns" and "bad guys with guns" ignores the fact that millions upon millions of people, maybe most people, jump across that line several times during their lives. Do they threaten the girl friend that broke up with them? Or punch her? Or shoot her? Do they clock the friend that dated the girl they have a crush on, or shoot him. Just last year one of my neighbors had a drunken argument with his nephew about money, shot him (he lived) put his gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger (he didn't). Does the person who just got fired key their bosses car, or walk into the office and start firing into their stupid coworkers stupid faces?

In most other countries 9999 times out of a thousand they choose the "not gun" option because they don't, maybe not mostly because they don't have a gun on hand, but it certainly helps. In this country 9980 times out of a thousand people choose the not gun option. What that translates into is a couple mass shootings a day.

Do we need to work to make sure that people don't hate gays, don't assault women, don't hate Muslims, and atheists, and don't use violence to solve their problems? Absolutely, we 100% do. But in the 100 years it's going to take us to sort that out (what can I say, I'm feeling optimistic today) it'd be nice if we didn't have two mass shootings a day.

Thank you Yonder. Thank you.

Every legal gun owner is a good guy with a gun, until they are a bad guy with a gun.

Unless I am mistaken, nearly every mass shooting event (the "famous" ones, at least) was carried out with legally purchased firearms, with the exception of Sandy Hook, where the shooter first murdered his mother, then took her (legal) guns to commit his crimes.

I wanted to point out that I am not accusing anyone in this discussion of anything that I am talking about, I am being general for the purpose of discussion.

That said, I realize that we are moving more into the gun control topic than the tragedy, so I am willing to drop it or move the discussion to the other thread.

I don't really have much interest in extensively arguing gun control, and not just because I don't agree with it. I simply don't believe a "war on guns" will be any more effective in this country than the "war on drugs" or even prohibition. A sense of false security isn't a good reason for giving up liberty.

A time of heavy stress and emotion and panic isn't the best time to make rational, balanced decisions, either on an individual level or a larger scale. We lost a huge amount of our rights as citizens after 9/11.

bekkilyn wrote:

I don't really have much interest in extensively arguing gun control, and not just because I don't agree with it. I simply don't believe a "war on guns" will be any more effective in this country than the "war on drugs" or even prohibition. A sense of false security isn't a good reason for giving up liberty.

A time of heavy stress and emotion and panic isn't the best time to make rational, balanced decisions, either on an individual level or a larger scale. We lost a huge amount of our rights as citizens after 9/11.

Well said, and I agree. I guess my concern is that since this is not the time to make rational, balanced decisions, what is the right time? I honestly believe that there are steps that can be taken, but it seems like the only time we discuss these things is in the aftermath of yet another horrible tragedy. Maybe it's because these tragedies keep happening, we don't actually have a time where we are not under heavy stress and emotion.

:shrug:

Noor Salmon does bear some responsibility for what happened. From what's been reported so far, she was with him when he purchased ammo, took him to the nightclub on at least one occasion, and heard him discuss something like this.

She saw this coming for a while, unlike the shooting victims who had no warning. They didn't have a chance to prevent this. She did. It's likely she feared him, and he has a history of abuse. That does not absolve her of all responsibility based on what she knew and how long she knew it. She didn't have to make a fight or flight instantaneous response. There were many ways and many people she could have tried to stop him.

She is not alone in responsibility. The FBI, who on multiple occasions felt the need to contact him, did nothing. Others have come out and stated how open the shooter was about his hatred. A former employer did not even discipline him after reports of erratic and concerning behavior. Gun laws are partially responsible for making it so easy for him to get the guns and ammo, even after multiple contacts with the FBI. Heck, assault rifles in general really have no legitimate place in public. Many people have some level of responsibility here. One of those is Noor Salmon.

I don't think she should be charged with anything. It's sad that in order to protect her and her son, she was willing to let 49 other die. Sure, she probably didn't know the details, or hoped he wouldn't follow through, but this is what happened. I do wonder if the victims families will try and go after her in civil court because she knew this was a real possibility and did not notify anyone.

Abu5217 wrote:

Well said, and I agree. I guess my concern is that since this is not the time to make rational, balanced decisions, what is the right time? I honestly believe that there are steps that can be taken, but it seems like the only time we discuss these things is in the aftermath of yet another horrible tragedy. Maybe it's because these tragedies keep happening, we don't actually have a time where we are not under heavy stress and emotion.

:shrug:

The part that I bolded likely does much to explain every major problem we have in our culture. We need to make time for the things that are important to us rather than putting band-aids all over everything and then trying to hold it all together with duct tape.

MattDaddy wrote:

I don't think she should be charged with anything. It's sad that in order to protect her and her son, she was willing to let 49 other die. Sure, she probably didn't know the details, or hoped he wouldn't follow through, but this is what happened. I do wonder if the victims families will try and go after her in civil court because she knew this was a real possibility and did not notify anyone.

My guess is that she sincerely feared for her life and especially the life of her child from this man, and he had her so worn down as to be convinced that if she talked to anyone, he would torture and/or kill her/the child. Abusers have this way of making their victims seem very isolated and so they aren't always able to think and make decisions rationally. Not when they are under such constant emotional and physical duress. It's a lot easier for those of us on the outside to decide what she "should" have done.

I have to be honest that I don't feel its possible or see how it could be done where we don't politicize this. Even if we have a dedicated support thread, many good people died in about the most senseless manner you can imagine.
So people are going to come into this conversation really upset and the people that are trying to support them are bound to mix some words in an unclear way.
It would seem the the best route to take is for us to not be so sensitive about being right. If someone disagrees with you, then disagree and apologize/lament that you just see eye to eye with this friend or colleague.
I think that should be the lesson of tragedies like this. Its that we can be angry/frustrated but we can be civil.
At the risk of sounding like a flower child, now is the time for love to rule. Love meaning love, but love also meaning acknowledgment of feeling, patience and listening, acceptance of and insight of who people are and can be, mourning the lost potential/futures of the victims, and supporting humanization over the dehumanization that is the root of all this.

MattDaddy, being contacted by the FBI is pretty vague. Is there evidence that Omar broke federal law and the FBI ignored it?

bekkilyn wrote:

My guess is that she sincerely feared for her life and especially the life of her child from this man, and he had her so worn down as to be convinced that if she talked to anyone, he would torture and/or kill her/the child. Abusers have this way of making their victims seem very isolated and so they aren't always able to think and make decisions rationally. Not when they are under such constant emotional and physical duress. It's a lot easier for those of us on the outside to decide what she "should" have done.

I really appreciate how calmly and effectively you communicated this. I am so unbelievably livid over the vile victim-blaming being directed at Salman (edit: not limited to this thread; my offline experience is impacting this too) that I simply can't comment constructively. I wonder how many of the armchair moralizers would fail the standards they espouse if they were under similar duress.

Farscry wrote:

I wonder how many of the armchair moralizers would fail the standards they espouse if they were under similar duress.

Barring a few edge cases, every damn one of them.

bekkilyn wrote:

I don't really have much interest in extensively arguing gun control, and not just because I don't agree with it. I simply don't believe a "war on guns" will be any more effective in this country than the "war on drugs" or even prohibition. A sense of false security isn't a good reason for giving up liberty.

A time of heavy stress and emotion and panic isn't the best time to make rational, balanced decisions, either on an individual level or a larger scale. We lost a huge amount of our rights as citizens after 9/11.

My issue with this line of reasoning is that the pro gun control crown's main goal right now is to lift the functional ban the government has on researching gun violence. Calling the sense of security false when you have no data to back up your assertion is one of those emotional responses we're not supposed to make so soon after a tragedy, more-so than calling for a ban on guns is because other countries have actually tried that and seen it have a measurable effect. Doing actual research would tell us just how much security we might gain by giving up a little gun liberty, and an informed decision can be made from there.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

MattDaddy, being contacted by the FBI is pretty vague. Is there evidence that Omar broke federal law and the FBI ignored it?

He was investigated twice by the FBI, but neither time uncovered anything substantial.

The FBI scrutinized Mateen for 10 months beginning in 2013, putting him under surveillance, recording his calls and using confidential informants to determine whether he had been radicalized after he talked at work about his connections with al-Qaeda and dying as a martyr.

Then, in July 2014, Mateen surfaced in another investigation into the first American to die as a suicide bomber in Syria. In both investigations, the FBI found no evidence that Mateen had committed a crime or intended to break the law.

bekkilyn wrote:

My guess is that she sincerely feared for her life and especially the life of her child from this man, and he had her so worn down as to be convinced that if she talked to anyone, he would torture and/or kill her/the child. Abusers have this way of making their victims seem very isolated and so they aren't always able to think and make decisions rationally. Not when they are under such constant emotional and physical duress. It's a lot easier for those of us on the outside to decide what she "should" have done.

I'll also point out that, as difficult as it is for some liberals to accept, much of the Muslim world has little respect for women's rights and women are repressed throughout. How much this has to do with Islam is debatable (it's interesting to note that Noor Salman did not wear a Hijab, which clearly marks her as not an Islamic fundamentalist), but what is not debatable is that these people's families immigrated from regions where women were horribly oppressed.

Mateen's family immigrated from Afghanistan, a region rife with child brides and known to be one of the worst places in the world for women to live, even before we went in and messed it up even more. His wife, Noor Salman, is of Palestinian descent (although it is not clear to me whether she was second generation), a region in which women fare marginally better than Afghanistan (hey, they can vote there now!) but one which is still thoroughly regressive.

None of this is to say that these people are trapped by their heritage and unable to overcome it, but at best they're one generation removed from a culture where women were essentially viewed as property. This is on top of the various economic and social pressures still present in American society that oppress women and make them feel subservient to their husbands.

It's easy to imagine a scenario in which she felt completely trapped and unable to do anything.