Learning from Orlando and Similar Massacres

[Dale00]

What have people learned or failed to learn from Orlando, San Bernardino, Sandy Hook and similarly terrible mass murders?
Sometimes wrong conclusions and insights have been drawn. Sometimes people voice well founded opinions on how to minimize future killings. This is a thread to post and discuss such ideas, hopefully without undue contentiousness.

I will try to get the ball rolling with this poignant opinion from the father of one of the Orlando victims.

Detroit native Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32, was among 49 people killed in Saturday night’s shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, according to the city of Orlando. His father, Mark Bando, responded to The Detroit News Monday with this letter....

“The website for the city of Orlando, FL has just added my son's name to the list of those killed at the Pulse nightclub shooting, so it has been confirmed.

His name was Christopher Andrew Leinonen, he went by the nickname of 'Drew' and he was gay, a fact I only learned about 5 years ago. ...

Chris' mother Christine Leinonen was a MSP state trooper from 1981 to 1990. We were not married when he was conceived and born and he was raised by her as a single parent and he had her last name. After working a decade with MSP, Christine quit and moved down to FL, where she attended law school and became an attorney....

Like his mother, Christopher was very idealistic about the human race, and he did not want to see the evil in the world or even to believe it existed. He used to laugh and joke and tell me I was paranoid, to carry a gun off duty, when I was a Detroit cop. He called me after September 11th, when his world view altered somewhat, after seeing planes fly into the World Trade Center. So he made the giant leap to believing there are evil people in the world, but not far enough to acquaint himself with firearms, or to get a permit to carry. If we'd spent the last 2 decades living in close proximity to each other, I have little doubt I'd have trained him to use a gun. After seeing the Paris massacre last year, I thought, "If only one of the intended victims in that large crowd had been armed, many lives could have been saved." I also thought, this couldn't happen in America, because surely, somebody in a large crowd like that would be armed, in the U.S. Wrong, history has repeated itself right here in the USA and my son and 51 others were slaughtered like helpless cattle, precisely because nobody in that club had a weapon to shoot back with.

Drew and his significant other Juan were both killed and I hope my son was taken quickly and without suffering. I hate to imagine some of the victims being terrorized for hours, because this armed killer was allowed to play God and exterminate them at will and in his own time schedule....

The killer was armed and his helpless victims were not, yet the anti gun politicians still want to disarm the populace, enabling these scenarios. It is likely such attacks will continue, until the victims start shooting back. That's the lesson I take from this, for what it's worth. When the shooting started Saturday night, I'll bet there wasn't a person in the club who wouldn't have traded everything he owned in the world, for a loaded gun....

Mark A. Bando

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...-father-christopher-leinonen-speaks/85850766/

 

[Sanford]

The killer was armed and his helpless victims were not, yet the anti gun politicians still want to disarm the populace, enabling these scenarios. It is likely such attacks will continue, until the victims start shooting back. That's the lesson I take from this, for what it's worth. When the shooting started Saturday night, I'll bet there wasn't a person in the club who wouldn't have traded everything he owned in the world, for a loaded gun....

My take: Since "Gun Free" businesses, venues, etc. make it impossible for individuals to protect themselves they should be responsible for providing adequate security and held liable for failure to do so if/when something like this event occurs. Something as simple as a firearm or even a taser under the bar could have put an early stop to this if there were anyone there who knew how and was willing to use it.

 

[Sanford]

I'll take it a step farther... where firearms are prohibited by law, then that law-making entity (federal, state, or local) should provide armed officers to protect unarmed citizens. Or at least provide funds for hiring armed security.

If it's the business owner's choice to prohibit firearms, then the owner should have to provide armed security.

Just my ...

I thought of that for a little bit as well and think that unless it's a government entity it should still be the business's responsibility. They can just add any additional cost to overhead. If they don't want to do that then they can lobby the government to get off the prohibited places list or else find another business to go into. Maybe their local Chamber of Commerce can help them with that. <cough>

 

[Sanford]

But expecting a government body to respond rationally is generally a pipe dream anyway. They'd probably just raise taxes.

'zactly. Letting the business (customers) suck it up might even change opinions of some people about the whole "gun free" notion.