Dancing in Blood

A person who survived the Pulse shooting here in Orlando a decade ago wants to have a discussion about the shooting on a local television news station’s website. The topics, according to him, will be “gun safety” and the rights of the LGTBQIABCDEFG community. This is putting a political spin on things that I think is dishonest. I won’t bother engaging in the discussion- that particular news outlet heavily censors opinions with which they disagree.

First, this man is no more an expert on law and policy than I am. Simply being present when a mass shooting takes place doesn’t give anyone some magical wisdom or insight that enables them to assess public policy. He was there, and for whatever reason, the shooter made the decision to not shoot him. That doesn’t mean he is more qualified on any topic except hide and seek.

Second, and Miguel pointed this out on his own webpage this morning:

Omar Mateen began his killing and maiming rampage at 2:02 am. Police began to arrive at 2:04 am. He was sent to Allah at 5:14 am after killing 49 people and wounding 58 more.

The police stood around outside of the killing ground with their dicks in their hands for over three hours before managing to do a thing about the killer who was inside shooting people. No one is going to talk about that, even though it keeps happening.

Third, this shooter was likely targeting gays because he is Muslim and was carrying out a Jihadist attack. Those sorts of attacks aren’t going to cease, even if you pass a Constitutional Amendment saying that anyone who is gay is a deity. It just isn’t.

Fourth, no one in that bar was armed. The shooter was. Passing a law banning guns isn’t going to work in changing that. Read this list of the twenty deadliest mass murders:

1. On 9/11, there were 2,996 dead and over 6,000 injured. The weapons used were box cutters and airplanes.
2. October 31, 1999: Gameel al-Batouti cried out “I entrust myself to Allah” 11 times in Arabic as he deliberately piloted a plane full of passengers into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 217 people.
3. The Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995. There were 168 dead and over 680 injured. The weapon used was a bomb made from fertilizer and diesel fuel.
4.  The Hartford Circus Fire. 167 dead, 682 injured. Weapon used: fire
5.  The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. There were 120 settlers killed when their wagon train was ambushed by Mormons. (I hesitated to include this one since it was a group of 20 Mormons who committed the killings, but if you are going to include 9/11, I figured you should include this one.)
6.  The Happy Land fire of 1990: 87 are killed when a man sets a nightclub on fire.
7.  The Las Vegas shooting. 58 killed, 413 injured by gunfire. Another 456 injured while fleeing.
8. The Pulse Nightclub shooting, 2016. 49 dead, 53 injured. The weapon was an MCX rifle.
9.  The Bath School massacre of 1927: 45 dead, and 58 injured. The weapon used were a pair of bombs.
10. Pacific Air Flight 773 of 1964: 45 killed when a man murdered the pilot and copilot of an airplane, which subsequently crashed.
11. United Airlines Flight 629 (1955): A man blew up a plane with a bomb, killing 44 people.
12. Pacific Southwest Flight Flight 1771 of 1987: 43 people were killed when a man shot and killed the pilot and copilot of the plane, which subsequently crashed.
13. New York Bombing of September 1920: There were 38 killed and several hundred injured. The weapon was a bomb.
14. National Airlines Flight 2511 of 1960. 33 people killed by a bomb on an airplane.
15. Virginia Tech massacre of 2007. 32 dead. The gunman was a South Korean student that had been showing signs of mental instability.
16. The Upstairs Lounge Fire in New Orleans on June 24, 1973 was an arson that was intended to kill the patrons of a gay bar. It worked, killing 32 and injuring dozens. It was started with a Molotov cocktail.
17. Newtown School shooting of 2012. 26 dead. The shooter used an AR-15 rifle that he acquired by murdering his mother.
18. Dorothy Mae Arson of 1982. 25 killed. The arsonist claimed he didn’t mean to kill anyone, and only set the fire because he was stoned on marijuana and angry at his uncle, who was in the building.
19. The Luby’s Cafeteria Massacre of 1991. A total of 23 people were killed by a spree shooter.
20. The LA times was attacked with a bomb in 1910, killing 21.

Murder weapon

Of the above 20 killings:

• 4 of them included an airplane as the murder weapon
• 10 of them were committed by people using a bomb, incendiary device, or other arson tool
• 5 were spree shootings
• 1 (The Mountain Meadows Massacre) was committed by a group of people with multiple weapons, including gunfire, knives, and clubbing)

The fact is that guns have nothing to do with spree killings. In fact, 75 percent of the deadliest spree killings were not performed by firearms. The weapon used most frequently in prolific killings is an incendiary device or bomb.

No, this is a person who abhors guns, and is using his surviving a massacre to give his stance some sort of legitimacy that he wouldn’t otherwise have. He is dancing in the blood of dead victims.