Martin Dyckman: By electing pro-gun politicians, we are allies of home-grown terrorists
What fools we are. What willful, stubborn, persistent, incurable fools. Americans submit by the millions to the Transportation Security Administration’s multiple indignities and inconveniences. The TSA will cost us $5.1 billion this year. We’ll fill its trash barrels with tons of cosmetics, lotions and bottled water that we can’t carry on board. This is in the hope of preventing terrorists from committing more mass murders, such as those of September 11, 2001. And there haven’t been any more in that manner. But that guards only one gate, while leaving another gaping. Even as you next pose like a prisoner with arms raised or stand still for a TSA officer to wand you, some terrorist with massacre in mind could be walking into any gun shop and walking out with the means to carry it out. That’s what Omar Mateen did last week in Florida, where no permit is needed to buy or possess any firearm other than a machine gun. Florida allows even an AR-15 or its equivalent. Such weapons were invented for use in war, not self-defense. They fire as rapidly as a finger can pull a trigger. With a technique called bump fire, a trained shooter supposedly can achieve a rate of 700 rounds per minute. And so Florida is now the site of America’s worst mass shooting, with 49 innocent people dead and 53 others wounded, many grievously, at an Orlando night club named Pulse. Mateen appears to have been the most dangerous type of terrorist — homegrown, out of sight of any border control, virtually undetectable. And yet, there were warnings. His employer, a British-based security firm whose clients include the U.S. government, reportedly was told, according to The New York Times, that he spoke racial, ethnic and sexist slurs and talked about killing people. The FBI looked into him twice. Whether there was negligence is an appropriate question for investigation. The bigger question, though, is how many more Americans must die en masse, in nightclubs and restaurants and movie theaters and churches and schools, in as few seconds as it takes to read the sentence, before we learn to prohibit the sale and possession of such weapons of mass destruction? How many more terrorists will we arm? Predictably, of course, Donald Trump right away scapegoated the entire Muslim community, asserting without a shred of evidence that someone must have known what Mateen intended. In fact, most of the victims of mass shootings in the United States — 621 dead, 594 injured since 1982, according to Mother Jones — were killed by non-Muslims. Do we blame Christianity for Charleston, Virginia Tech, or for Newtown, Aurora, and Columbine? Or for the bombings and shootings, some fatal, at abortion clinics? Radicalism exists in nearly every religious faith and is the enemy of them all. Right after the San Bernardino massacre, the Senate voted 45-54 against prohibiting persons on the terrorism watch list from buying firearms. If the list is faulty, as some senators objected, it should be fixed. But as of now, there can be no confidence that someone on that list won’t be the next mass murderer. We’ll hear the gun lobby, doubtlessly, argue yet again that the best defense — the only defense — against the consequences of its insane demands is for everyone to have guns everywhere. Now suppose that half the people in that crowded, dimly lighted club had weapons when the shooting began. Think about it. Many more than 49 innocent people would be dead. Even when highly trained police stormed the scene, they couldn’t be sure that Mateen would be the only fatality. Someone posted to Facebook the other day that the NRA is America’s ISIS. Not so. The NRA does not set out to massacre innocent people. But the NRA and its associates in the gun lobby are indeed the allies of ISIS and of every other terrorist individual or organization, whatever its roots, where hatred is harbored against Americans because of their faiths, their origins, their race, or their nationality, or where mental illness inspires inchoate rage. And we — you and I, fellow citizens, are also terrorism’s allies, however unwilling or unwitting me may believe we are. We are terrorism’s allies so long as we submit to electing people to public office who are so stupid, selfish and cowardly that they would rather enact the insanities of the gun lobby than take reasonable and necessary steps to avert mass murder. There is no sound reason why any private citizen needs semi-automatic weapons, especially not AR-15s. Their possession and sale should be criminalized, except perhaps for gun clubs where the weapons would not be allowed off the premises. For a fraction of what the TSA is costing, we could buy back every such weapon and pay the owners a bonus for their troubles. The Second Amendment, of which the Supreme Court and the gun lobby have such a distorted view, was written in an age when no firearm on earth could be discharged more than three or four times a minute. Time and technology have rendered the gun lobby’s interpretation functionally obsolete. How many more Americans must be slaughtered before we, and our politicians, face that fact? ___ Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper now known as the Tampa Bay Times. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
As the shootings unfolded, a horror for one mother via text
Mina Justice was sound asleep when she received the first text from her son, Eddie Justice, who was in the gay nightclub when a gunman opened fire, leaving 50 dead and more than 50 wounded. This is the conversation she had over text message with her 30-year-old son: “Mommy I love you,” the first message said. It was 2:06 a.m. “In club they shooting.” Mina Justice tried calling her 30-year-old son. No answer. Alarmed and half awake, she tapped out a response. “U ok” At 2:07 a.m., he wrote: “Trapp in bathroom.” Justice asked what club, and he responded: “Pulse. Downtown. Call police.” Then at 2:08: “I’m gonna die.” Now wide awake, Justice dialed 911. She sent a flurry of texts over the next several minutes. “I’m calling them now. U still in there Answer our damn phone Call them Call me.” The 911 dispatcher wanted her to stay on the line. She wondered what kind of danger her son was in. He was normally a homebody who liked to eat and work out. He liked to make everyone laugh. He worked as an accountant and lived in a condo in downtown Orlando. “Lives in a sky house, like the Jeffersons,” she would say. “He lives rich.” She knew he was gay and at a club – and all the complications that might entail. Fear surged through her as she waited for his next message. At 2:39 a.m., he responded: “Call them mommy Now.” He wrote that he was in the bathroom. “He’s coming I’m gonna die.” Justice asked her son if anyone was hurt and which bathroom he was in. “Lots. Yes,” he responded at 2:42 a.m. When he didn’t text back, she sent several more messages. Was he with police? “Text me please,” she wrote. “No,” he wrote four minutes later. “Still here in bathroom. He has us. They need to come get us.” At 2:49 a.m., she told him the police were there and to let her know when he saw them. “Hurry,” he wrote. “He’s in the bathroom with us.” She asked, “Is the man in the bathroom wit u?” At 2:50 a.m.: “He’s a terror.” Then, a final text from her son a minute later: “Yes.” More than 15 hours after that text, Justice still hasn’t heard from her son. She and a dozen family and friends are at a hotel that has become a staging area for relatives awaiting news. Any news. “His name has not come up yet and that’s scary. It’s just …” she paused and patted her heart. “It’s just, I got this feeling. I got a bad feeling.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Friends, family remember victims of Florida shooting
A gunman wielding an assault-type rifle and a handgun opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday, killing at least 50 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Here are stories of some of the victims. ___ Edward Sotomayor, 34, was a caring, energetic man known for wearing a silly top hat on cruises, according to David Sotomayor, who said the two discovered they were cousins after meeting at Orlando’s annual Gay Days festival around a decade ago. David Sotomayor, who lives in Chicago, told The Associated Press Sunday that Edward worked for a company that held gay cruises and often traveled to promote the company’s events. “He was just always part of the fun,” David Sotomayor said. The two texted regularly and kept in touch, last seeing each other earlier this year at a filming of the television reality show “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” David Sotomayor said. David Sotomayor is a drag queen who appeared on a season of the show using the name “Jade.” He said Edward Sotomayor supported him and often sent him Facebook messages. They last exchanged messages late last week. “You never think that’s going to be the last time you speak to him,” David Sotomayor said. “It’s just heartbreaking to know it just can happen anytime.” ___ Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22, told his cousin Robert Guerrero he was gay about two years ago, but he was worried about how the rest of his family would react. He did not tell them until just before the beginning of this year. And when he did? “They were very accepting,” said Guerrero, 19. “As long as he was happy, they were OK with it.” On Sunday morning, after learning that so many people had died at a gay nightclub, Pulse, that his cousin had gone to once in a while, Guerrero started to become concerned. Later in the day, his fears were realized when the family learned that Guerrero was identified as one of the victims. Robert Guerrero said his cousin worked as a telemarketer and in recent months he started attending college at the University of Central Florida. Guerrero said his cousin didn’t quite know what he wanted to study, but he was happy to be in school. And he was happy in a relationship with a person his relatives came to regard as a member of the family, Guerrero said. “He was always this amazing person (and) he was like a big brother to me,” he said of his cousin. “He was never the type to go out to parties, would rather stay home and care for his niece and nephew.” ___ Stanley Almodovar III’s mother had prepared a tomato-and-cheese dip for him to eat when he came home from his night out. Instead, Rosalie Ramos was awakened by a call at 2 a.m. Sunday telling her something had happened. Ramos told the Orlando Sentinel her son, a 23-year-old pharmacy technician, posted a Snapchat video of himself singing and laughing on his way to Pulse nightclub. “I wish I had that (video) to remember him forever,” she told the newspaper. A friend, Hazel Ramirez, told The Washington Post she also saw a video from Almodovar on Snapchat and learned Sunday afternoon what had happened. Ramirez described Almodovar as “kind, but sassy,” and someone who was comfortable with his own sexual identity. “He was so proud of who he was,” she told the Post. “He would do his makeup better than anyone else. It was so easy to be myself with him. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Planned Donald Trump speech to pivot from Hillary Clinton to terror, immigration following Orlando attack
Following the nation’s most deadly mass shooting that left 50 dead at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Donald Trump said Sunday he will change the subject of a planned Monday speech to address “this terrorist attack, immigration, and national security.” Trump had originally planned to use the speech to present a litany of attacks against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. According to senior Trump campaign staff, the presumptive GOP nominee was going to serve up a “charge sheet” against Clinton, including broadside attacks on her infamous private email server, her handling of the Benghazi consulate attack, and allegations for the former Secretary of State tried to silence women who may have been involved with her husband, former President Bill Clinton. While Republican consultants and party leaders have advised Trump to avoid the more personally tinged attacks, most of which date back decades, events have forced Trump to abandon the speech altogether. Trump said in a statement Sunday he will instead continue a favored line of argument: the need to “get tough” on what he called radical Islamic terrorism and stem the tide of immigration from Muslim-majority countries. Earlier in the day Trump said he “appreciated the congratulations” from supporters who said he was right to make Islamic terrorism a central focus of his campaign, and claimed credit for predicting more attacks would afflict the nation. “What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough,” Trump tweeted on Sunday. In the statement, Trump fixated on the attacker’s Muslim and Middle Eastern origins, rather than his anti-gay views or his use of a legally purchased AR-15 assault rifle in the deadly dance club siege. “The terrorist, Omar Mir Saddique Mateen, is the son of an immigrant from Afghanistan who openly published his support for the Afghanistani Taliban and even tried to run for President of Afghanistan,” said Trump. “According to Pew, 99 percent of people in Afghanistan support oppressive Sharia Law.” Trump brandished those facts as evidence in favor of his notorious plan to ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States. “We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States,” said Trump. “Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term – and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing. “If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen — and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can’t afford to be politically correct anymore,” Trump continued. Trump made no specific reference to the apparent anti-LGBT motivation behind the shooter’s attack. Trump will give his revamped remarks on Monday at New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, NH.
