Another fucking spree shooting. Great.

I've seen folks in other places comment only that 'it's terrible how bad our mental health care is', in response to the disproportionate level of shootings in the US.

Fox News has been shrill and excessively focused on the Islamic terror bent, they can go fuck themselves.

State of Emergency has been declared - I have a feeling folks are going to be jumpy in public for a while.

there is a lot of rallying going on in the community already. the LGBT community here has been great about banding together and achieving community in a tough time, and there are grief counselors being brought to various sites. but many are scared that this is only the tip of the iceberg - maybe not, but it's hard to feel safe now. especially given the meticulous selection of the target.

suspect law enforcement presence is going to be stepped up for weeks to come.

xpost

I'm curious to hear how so

In an interview on WFTV, a witness said the shooter was laughing.

I'm so fucking angry right now I don't even know what to do with myself.

it's such a feeling of helplessness that pieces of shit like that guy can pretty much effortlessly destroy 100+ people's lives and shatter hundreds of thousands of people's emotions, all while smirking.

feeling numb cos my psyche just doesn't want to experience this horror.

(My xpost was in response to the bad-haired FOX moron claiming this was obsma's fault, sorry)

so I said earlier this is now the worst spree shooting in US History.

the previous #1 and #2? were in 2007 (VA Tech) and 2012 (Sandy Hook).

doesn't it say something about the problem that the top three spree shootings in US history have HAPPENED WITHIN THE LAST TEN YEARS??!!!!

Obviously, more people are crazy. It has nothing to do with the assault weapons ban being allowed to expire. o_O

Aye, you can work in a secure psychiatric hospital where the patients have foam bats, or one where they have knives and guns. Who would pick the latter.

"doesn't it say something about the problem that the top three spree shootings in US history have HAPPENED WITHIN THE LAST TEN YEARS??!!!!"

THANKS OBAMA

This is absolutely heartbreaking. Blood drive information here, in case any ILXors are around Orlando (O+ and O- blood and AB plasma needed, blood from gay and queer men will be accepted):http://hydramoon.tumblr.com/post/145805294600/anyone-in-orlando-or-has-followers-from-the-area

Since the job I currently have (but in no way like) is in the commercial insurance field, I just started thinking about how this is probably the end of Pulse. On top of the fact that it would be hard to make people ever want to go there again, for a variety of reasons, it will probably send their liability premiums through the roof after they're hit with 103 (or more) claims. And now I'm wondering if other LGBTQ bars will run into the same problem, because the insurance industry is a fucking vulture. :(

I really hope not. we have a thriving LGBTQ scene and those places are needed to continue that. but that is a valid concern.

I think the trouble of owning a business but by tragedy is you either go under or you use the tragedy, which can seem ghoulish.

This is probably a better donor information link for people statewide (all donors welcome, O+ and O- blood and AB plasma needed):
https://www.oneblood.org/donate-now/

they're at capacity today and asking us to make appointments for later in the week, which works for me. that and the fact that all of my friends have checked in as ok is reassuring.

my brother has a co-worker who is missing and the friend of this co-worker is in the hospital with gunshots :(.

*wounds

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

Ugh, it looks like the usual homophobic and transmisogynistic restrictions are still in effect:

http://67.media.tumblr.com/5a085ff3fdffbdf5033eeccb98d89299/tumblr_o8o4ieSk7R1rge7zlo1_500.png

Everything is nauseating right now; I need to go offline.

wtf xpost

yeah my psyche gave up with its usual repression, I'm bawling now. the LA news is just too much, though I am thankful they thwarted it. hoping to Odin there are no other shoes to drop.

it won't be, in fact it might even win him support, but I really want this to be his Waterloo: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-gets-self-congratulatory-after-orlando-mass-shooting/

Obama looks so tired of having to talk about this shit.

yep

clearly we shouldn't ban handguns cos that'll just make gun crime worse. I mean England has only had one school shooting ever and only one spree shooting since 2010 but that's just too many man.

we'd have zero crimes if everybody had guns clearly. criminals would just jump in the ocean and swim away

sigh: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/texas-lt-gov-ripped-ill-timed-tweet-mass-shooting-article-1.2670663

# of private guns in England and Wales: 1.8M
# of private guns in America: 313M

Giving wall to wall coverage to this shit, which killed fewer people than automobiles will today, both this and every time it happens a) gives the disturbed attention whores, in this case someone likely adopting the brand of a self-styled homophobic death cult likely enabled by our failure to depose Assad, what they want, and b) increases the likelihood of something like this happening again. IMNSFHO.

his handlers claim he's out of the country and that this was scheduled on Thursday. still tho....this was news when I woke up this morning (and that was early, thanks to my asshole roommate). you don't think maybe you coulda re-read it and said "uhhh wait maybe not a good idea".

xpost jesus fuck go away dude

But I'm sure if we just stop raining bombs on them Steph Curry-style they'll either kill only people we don't care about or turn into a tolerant eden

hey mods wanna zap this dude out of this thread pls

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CkxHAVgVEAA6PGD.jpg

*heart sinks*

In the past two weeks Mateen legally purchased a Glock pistol, found at the shooting scene, from a St. Lucie County area gun store, a law enforcement official said.

woke up this morning after a horrible nightmare inspired by having read about this just before going to bed

i can only imagine the horror of folks in that club

this is two sicknesses colliding — the sickness of ISIS and the sickness of America’s obsession with "gun rights".

i don’t know which one is "worse," but i sure know which one I’m more worried about as an American.

fun fact: fewer people were killed by ISIS in 2012–2014 than were murdered with guns in the USA

i was pretty terrified about the notion of a bataclan-style attack on american soil, based on the relative ease that one can acquire guns here plus the idea that someone (not necessarily ISIS related) would be inspired by it. and it's a particularly sickening thing that the first thing to knock the christine grimmie murder off the front page of CNN.com is a mass killing in the same city.

this sort of thing is going to start happening more often, and it's only going to make millions of idiots more secure in their resolve not to give an inch on "gun rights"

if i sound angry, i am, but i'm mostly just sad as hell

gabbneb, I don't generally have a problem with you and I hardly ever FP anyone but you are making me FP the shit out of you today and you need to stop. Seriously.

Welp, guess I wasted my breath on that one.

xpost My wife lived in Germany for a few years in the mid-'80s and she still can't donate blood.

Already donated yesterday morning. Noticed that part of the foreign-travel section now has a Zika exposure warning. The dayjob is sending me to Mexico next week, which is of course on the list of countries. Curious if this will affect future warnings.

Apparently the FDC sets the donation regs, not the Red Cross.

"this is two sicknesses colliding — the sickness of ISIS and the sickness of America’s obsession with "gun rights"."

I think you missed a third sickness. Rhymes with slomotrobia.

If absolutely nothing else comes from this (and I have basically zero hope at this point that anything gun-related will change in this country), I do hope at the very least that the perpetual legislative othering of the LGBTQ community will start to abate. But ISIS 2nd amendment mental health will probably dominate the conversation.

I've always been saddened and angered by unsavory aspects of the US but I've never felt cynical or hopeless. That's starting to change.

what's really going to be skipped over by everyone is the common currency of patriarchal culture in the shooting in the gun rights in the homophobia in the aggrieved fundamentalism etc. because too many fucking people are implicated.

otm

Good gaybar thinkpiece:

http://www.thenation.com/article/please-dont-stop-the-music/

Blown away by this NYT tweet:

June 12, 2016
Dec. 2, 2015
Nov. 27, 2015
Oct. 1, 2015
July 16, 2015
June 17, 2015

The list goes on:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/mass-shootings-timeline.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Besides the shootings in Texas a couple weeks ago that, bizarrely, received almost no coverage - I'm shocked that we went six months without a major mass shooting. Hopeless

I mean England has only had one school shooting ever

Not that this is the time or place for pedantry but it was in Scotland, not England, if you're talking about Dunblane. But that directly led to the banning of handguns in the UK. And the fact that we've had so little in the way of indiscriminate shootings (just Derrick Bird, I think?) ever since (20 years ago) is maybe a sign that it seems to have worked - not that we had much in the way of them before, I can only recall Michael Ryan in Hungerford as the other one in my lifetime. I mean, sure, there are random pockets of gun crime, but it's so rare as to be a huge thing when it happens, not just another thing to post on an "another fucking spree shooting" thread.

Also, Donald Trump can fuck off. And yer reap what you sow Texan bellend.

Might also be worth mentioning at this juncture the nail bomb attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in London, probably the closest comparison we've had to this over here (three killed in an attack on a gay bar by a neo-Nazi). Perhaps could have been worse had he had easier access to a gun, who knows?

I'm not playing any sort of UK/US side-taking here, btw, just riffing on how relatively fucking easy shit like this is when you can legally get hold of guns to carry out attacks.

But, as has been probably already been said a million times, if Sandy Hook wasn't a turning point in gun legislation, I don't know what will be.