The Truth About Guns diagrams Orlando Pulse and shows how it was so easy for Omar Mateen to rack up his body count. The combination of a Gun-Free Zone, Limited Egress Points, and one guy who held the door shut made his massacre a lot easier. Also the fact the Obama’s Government decided to turn him loose despite ample evidence of his terrorist intentions.
It’s probably a good idea to always know how to get out of a crowded space quickly in the event of an emergency. It is probably a good bet that any large public gathering is a possible terror target. Except for NRA conventions and Gun Shows; those are probably safe. Wolves don’t like it when the sheep can shoot back.
Yes, thank you for bringing up the guy who held the door shut. He said he did it because he didn’t want the shooter to follow him, however, it seems like logic would dictate that if the shooter had followed him then he could have shot whatever barrier was there.
I would hope that if I were in that terrible circumstance that I would be a “helper” and not someone who, in essence, allowed others to die in order to save his own life.
If only one person in that club had had a weapon, perhaps (just perhaps) less people would have been slaughtered. ***sigh*** But then, I think that if someone had, and could have taken the guy down…THAT person would have been prosecuted for having the gun illegally. It has happened before.
I would add one more likely factor: Ignoring fire codes regarding occupation limits. From the video I saw that place was horribly overcrowded.
If only *the idea that* one person in that club had had a weapon, perhaps (just perhaps) he would not have chosen that club. ***sigh***
Bullies don’t like to be confronted.
Gun Free Zones = Unsafe Zone
2:02 a.m. He entered the club armed with an AR-15-type assault rifle, a handgun and many rounds of ammunition, and opened fire, said Chief John Mina of the Orlando Police Department.
An off-duty officer working for the nightclub responded and engaged in a gun battle with the gunman near one of the entrances
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/12/us/what-happened-at-the-orlando-nightclub-shooting.html
Yes, TnnsNe1, you are correct. If the shooter had thought that perhaps one person could be armed, then he might not have done it.
The people in that club (just down the street from where I work, actually) were fish in a barrel because he knew that they would be law abiding citizens, minding their own business and NOT armed.
Rusty, the long gun used was a Sig-Sauer MCX, not an AR 15. Neither is an assault rifle. Assault rifles are fully automatic or burst fire. The off duty cop is the reason the shooter ran to the bathrooms after he had done the major part of his shooting.
Juan
Here is from the Assault Weapons post by V
My bad. Again some clearer semantics
In appearance and in spirit, the MCX is a battle weapon. In gun industry parlance, however, the MCX is a “modern sporting rifle.” So, too, are the AR-15–style rifles—manufactured by DPMS and Smith & Wesson, respectively—that Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik used when they shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December; the Bushmaster AR-15–style rifle used by Adam Lanza when he murdered 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012; and the Smith & Wesson AR-15 variant that James Holmes used, along with other weapons, to kill 12 in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012. The term modern sporting rifle, evoking outdoorsy competition and good, clean fun, sounds incongruous when applied to weapons like these, unless you are prepared to argue that man is the most dangerous game. So what in the world is a modern sporting rifle? And why is the term used to refer to weapons such as the Sig MCX and the AR-15?
Modern sporting rifle is a euphemism that the gun industry created in 2009 to describe modular semi-automatic rifles. The phrase is an artful attempt to recast weapons such as the MCX and the AR-15 (and its variants) as all-American toys. Never mind “quiet and deadly” and “close-quarters battle”: Modern sporting rifle conjures up images of aristocrats riding with their hounds, vacationers knocking clays out of the sky, and ruddy-faced athletes enjoying their autumns in Carhartt jackets and mud-spattered ATVs. The term is a genius act of marketing, meant to bring these deadly weapons into the mainstream and keep them there. It’s also disingenuous hokum that exists to cloud debate, like calling a used car “pre-owned.”
The AR-15–style rifle is the best-known modern sporting rifle. It has been around since the late 1950s, when the ArmaLite Corporation first developed the AR-15 as a civilian version of the M16 automatic rifle. (Today, the trademark for AR-15 is held by Colt. The term AR-15–style rifle refers to the weapon’s countless variants.) From 1994 to 2004, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban prohibited the sale of the Colt AR-15 and other AR-15 variants. When the ban expired, AR-15s went back on the U.S. market and have been a great boon to the firearms industry ever since.
(It’s important to note that the Sig MCX is not technically an AR-15 variant. The guts of the Sig MCX are different from those of the standard AR-15 platform—Sean Utley at Tactical Life writes that the Sig MCX uses a gas piston system to cycle the action, whereas the standard AR-15 uses direct impingement. But the Sig MCX shares parts and design elements in common with AR-15–style rifles. The two might not technically be related, but they are certainly neighbors, and both fall comfortably into the modern sporting rifle category.)
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2016/06/the_sig_sauer_mcx_used_in_orlando_is_a_modern_sporting_rifle_not_an_assault.html#
Comment by rusty — June 14, 2016 @ 8:44 pm – June 14, 2016
Unfortunately too-many public places have fire-exits that open-into narrow alleys that have wire-fence gates at the street that “someone” decides need to be padlocked to keep thieves from breaking-in from a concealed-space — and to prevent people letting their friends in through a “back door” by-passing security and the cover-charge. Then, they have an emergency and people use the fire-exit and are trapped in the alley by the padlocked-gate. Sadly they’re frequently dead-traps if the fire department can’t cut the “illegal” padlock in-time, or people get injured in the panicked-crush at the gate. Worse some “genius” chains-and-padlocks the exit from the inside trapping people at the door.
Unfortunately, many dance clubs were initially-designed and approved as restaurants, not as clubs, so they don’t have enough exits for the larger dance-floor crowds — and they are designed for fire/smoke emergencies, not the panic and lethal lines-of-fire of a Jihadist shooter inside the club.
In the tragic 1973 Upstairs Lounge fire in New Orleans the entry-stairs were fire-bombed killing 32 gay patrons. In 2014, 750 gay patrons at the Neighbors bar in Seattle WA narrowly-escaped when a interior stairwell was firebombed. Lots of urban bars have only one door leading to the street, with upstairs or basement bar areas with no secondary exits.
When you go out this weekend — please look to where the exits are — and if they blocked, chained or blocked-off. …You might be in for a fright. Complain to the management, and take your business elsewhere if necessary!!
Chris Murphy (D.-Conn.) : his parents must have hated him so much, they likely abandoned him to the same commies who raised the village idiot playing golf in the White House between two tax payer-funded $$$ gun shipments to CIA-trained “moderare rebels” overseas
…
Murphy: “… ask yourself, what can you do to make sure that Orlando, or Sandy Hook, never ever happens again?”
…
Well, certainly not denying the law abiding citizens their right to be armed for lawful defense in public venues, Mr. my-marxist-formatting-was-a-complete-success genius.
That’s freaking weird, folks. Did you know?
After the mexican drug cartels, the colombian ones, the parisian Bataclan’s killing team, the Ukrainian rebels, the “moderate” syrian ones, the US mass killing shooters up to Orlando’s days ago, now it’s also the canadian mafia, -a, who seemingly didn’t get the memo from our genius lib-regressives that it’s just not super duper cool to slaughter people en masse “for whatever reason” (except for US Kongress-planned nation-building effort abroad, of course)
https://news.vice.com/article/the-bloody-montreal-mafia-war-to-replace-vito-rizzuto
Darn. What were the odds?
And Takei is threatening the NRA not to mess with the gay community. o_O
Yeah George, because if one of their feelers get hurt, they might be a gay jihadi and shoot up a club they frequent.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/14/george-takei-warns-nra-you-dont-want-to-mess-with-/
Actually Rusty, the only people using assault rifles in mass shootings in the US are the police. They use M4’s and other fully automatic weapons.
Though not as well known as publicly traded U.S. rivals Smith & Wesson Corp SWHC.N and Sturm Ruger & Co (RGR.N), privately held Sig Sauer produces firearms used by federal agents, U.S. Navy SEALs and police departments throughout the United States, and similar models for sale to the consumer mass market
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0Z12EA
#13 – Rusty, dear, this link is for you:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/06/16/six-in-10-of-you-will-share-this-link-without-reading-it-according-to-a-new-and-depressing-study/
*Drops mic*
Regards,
Peter H.
Dear Peter,
You might want to wipe the lube off your hand,
Before you handle the mic
Just saying!
To be fair, he’s having problems finding the ‘vibrate’ selector-switch.
/dead @ #15/16
Though some folks feel that things would have been better if guns were allowed in nightclubs, I think that the combination of firearms and alcohol, and with it possible questionable judgement, makes the idea of a weapon free zone very sensible in such a setting. An alternative worth considering would be to have professional and vetted bouncers/security with firearms at nightclubs (advertising enhanced security would be a selling point to attendees), though that might also add to the average cost of that particular nightclub experience.
Dear Rusty:
Why don’t you go to Saudi Arabia and have your friends drop a wall on you? Take al-Cray-da with you for good measure.
Regards,
Peter H.
#18… Almost all of the mass shootings have taken place in Gun Free Zones. It is not that a good gun with a gun will stop a massacre, it is the deterrent of the possibility of a good guy with a gun would prevent a massacre.
The Aurora shooter drove by several theaters that did not proclaim “Gun Free Zone” to find on that did.
The SC shooter’s original target was a college, on his way by the school he noticed an armed guard. He found a church label “Gun Free Zone”. That sign has been removed.
There are indications that the San Bernardino went to the event ahead of time to make a person he knew might be carrying was not at the event. The shooter saw the guy wasn’t there and returned. The people are bullies and cowards, they don’t want to be confronted until they have committed their evil acts of violence.
8- How many gays would be willing to go over a fence in an alley like you said? You could get everyone’s shirts together to put over the barbed wire & go instead of waiting like “mother may I”
When I was in the military another medic and I were in the motor pool when an ungrounded fuel truck exploded in the next units area tossing the fuel guy over 50′. The other medic tried to climb the barbed wire fence between and it just fell down, I kept my head and unlocked one of our tracked ambulances to grab aid bags.
11.And Takei is threatening the NRA not to mess with the gay community. o_O
A democrat president put him personally into an internment camp, what would he do against real men?
12″the only people using assault rifles in mass shootings in the US are the police.”
MS-13 illegal alien gang bangers along with cartel members use auto weapons.
Do you mean the automatic weapons supplied by the Obama Administration’s Justice Department to the cartels?
And notify the local fire marshall. Nine times out of ten all of these restrictions violate safety codes. Bars are notorious for flaunting tax and safety codes. But they seem to come into compliance pretty quickly when the department of revenue or the fire marshal puts their own lock and chain on the outside doors.
Re the moron that held the door shut: I hope the po-po is giving him a rectal exam he won’t forget and I hope they put him on the no-fly list since, if something happens on the ground, the idiot would probably block the wing exits.
Looking at the club layout, the place looks like a fire trap. How many times over the years have people died in clubs during a fire because there were too few exits and/or the exits were locked?
Come on club owners, a maniac with a gun isn’t the only hazard.
I like your points Ted B (#8–looking for exits and taking business elsewhere if necessary); Cas (#18–added armed security); and RSG (#23–reporting unsafe set-ups to the fire marshals).
I wondered how the Jihasist got past the security guard. Sadly, there’s a possibility that some were victims of “friendly fire” by either the initial police responding, or the SWAT Team.
So there was no-one armed INSIDE the club…other then the Jihadist…when the melee started
I wondered this from the very start. I’ve never been to a bar or club (other than the neighborhood variety) in a college-sized town & up where there wasn’t someone at the door at all hours of operation. Some are more velvet-ropey than others, but in no case would anyone simply walk in with a rifle and/or carrying another gun, even if it was hunting season and they were dressed in camo and safety orange. One of the victims was a slightly older woman who recently moved back to Orlando to care for her mother and grandmother and her occupation was listed as a bouncer at the bar. So perhaps he shot her first and moved on from there.
In any case, I’m not sure how many security personnel it would have taken to stop him before he had hostages; there was an off-duty cop who later engaged him, but it may not have mattered. He had cased the place out and/or was a frequent customer, so he knew what the procedures were and took advantage of them.
Most customers — there were between 200 and 300 there for a special Latin Night — keep drinking and dancing. They have no idea that a gunfight has broken out between Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard from Fort Pierce, and an off-duty Orlando cop working security.
“The bullets went to the sound of the music, bang-bang,” said Chris Hanson, a Miami resident working at an Orlando summer camp making his first visit to Pulse.
The policeman is armed, but Mateen has a semi-automatic assault rifle and a pistol and the cop is badly outgunned. Bodies start to fall.
2:02 a.m.
The Orlando Police Department issues an All Call Major Alert — all officers who can respond should do so. Within moments, more cops pour into the club’s main dance-floor area, returning fire. By now, customers are fleeing to the back, seeking refuge in the smaller Adonis Lounge or in an outdoor patio area.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article84076637.html#storylink=cpy
I have a ccl (we call it chp in La) and while there are a some places places that are designated gun free zones, my gun stays concealed; nobody know I have it on my person. The only places I won’t carry are federal and state buildings. Guns are not allowed in bars, but we don’t go to bars so not a problem. Oddly enough, our church (Episcopal) is not a gun free zone, but we have armed security in the form of off duty police details so I don’t feel the need to have it there. I never really thought I would have, much less carry a handgun, but hurricane Katrina changed all that. My fervent hope is I never have to fire it except at the gun range.
Do we know who the “underage” drinker was? Coincidence or part of the plan? Seems very convenient.
tHAT SORT OF THING HAPPENS ALL THE TIME, AND AS A OFF-DUTY leo HE WOULD HAVE INVESTIGATED PARTICULARILY AS THE CLUB WAS ALREADY AT “lAST cALL”.
With club already at “Last Call” lots of clubs shift their security outside to prevent fights and such as people leave, and to check on the drunks. Typically people leaving the club become the security-concern, not people entering. Many club don’t allow people in once Last Call was announced. If the Jihadist had cased the club in the past, with his security-background he would have noted this.
This is a very interesting question; it certainly would be a good M.O. for someone who wanted to replicate the attack technique.
This is pretty much what I was thinking. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that is exactly why he chose the time of day he did. Despite the carnage and the horrificness of the incident, it could have been a lot worse. They may or may not have been over the occupancy limit at the time of the incident, but I’ll bet there were a lot more people hanging around the building if not inside the club earlier in the evening. But it would have been more difficult to pull off the attack during that time frame, as well.