Very sorry to hear of the shooting in Orlando! I’m thinking of and praying for all the survivors and the family members facing the future without their loved ones! No matter what we see in the news, God is there …. He will meet people where they need it in their healing …. if they only ask for it. Somehow he will break into their grieving, maybe unbelieving hearts and show His face.
I wondered if anyone there tried to get the gun(s) away from the shooter or tried to stop him? I heard a survivor telling the media that at one time the guys gun jammed in the bathroom, and he was cursing, ‘damn it’! In the couple hours he was inside the club and hostage negotiators were working with him, he called a TV station, texted his wife ….. Wow, the opportunity to over-power him was missed!
This shooter seems to be a homegrown self radicalized gay Islamic terrorist, this wasn’t an attack by a deranged American youth. But when I listen to the usual reports of a shooting I often talk back to the TV in answer to certain reporters. When I hear them ask …. ‘what’s in the mind of that guy’, after some fellow shoots up an airport, mall or nightclub, I have to ‘mute’ or I’ll yell back. We’re living in an insane era when we have to listen to professionals ask that question over and over again and …. the same lament little later …. ‘if we knew why people shoot up a place, we’d know what to do to prevent it.’
Most of us with regular lives know that you prevent most murders by raising kids who know they’re valued and have a purpose in life. Many homes have dysfunction of some kind these days, many times multiple dysfunctions. It’s part of our national experience for us citizens to have gone thru healing from dysfunction at some time in our life. If we’re a parent or educator we know that if a teen isn’t valued at home and picks up ‘hate’ talk from family, video games, peers, then that child will many times grow up with a distorted view of himself and those around him, many times becoming a danger to self or others.
I heard the Orlando shooter’s father regularly came all the way from Florida to a studio mile from my home in So. California. He records rambling podcasts where he issues diatribes about affairs in the Pakistani and Afghani governments. He’s been heard to have conflicting views on the U.S., saying he’s glad he’s here but then to another he’s said things against the U.S. It’s not clear what the fathers role is in his home country, but he’s definitely playing some kind of role with the people, government over there. He also imagines himself a protector, leader of his people as his podcast showed him selling a blue T-shirt with his photo on it saying ‘Mateen for President’. A copy of an Iranian newspaper was outside the studio showing the father and son on the front page, with the story of the shooting. That dad was not one of the peaceful Muslims in our country but was clearly deeply politicized!
We’ve been told mass attacks should be expected ….. ISIS has said terrorism would be at our front door. It’s a huge effort for the FBI, CIA to keep track of people who are ‘time-bombs’ but if someone like Mateen is making threatening remarks to co-workers, maybe they should screen more fully and ask about the family or others he’s associated with, to get some idea of who they are dealing with and what could be coming down the road! The saying, ‘the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree’ has more to it than we may think? It’s meant to mean, ‘like father, like son’. Sen. Paul Ryan says it’s best to screen people not based on ‘religion’ but based on ‘security’!
Even tho these mass attacks are fairly rare in our regular daily life, we can’t live like we’ll never be confronted by a crime in our life. There are internet sites that show what a person can do if caught up in a violent crime. People shouldn’t refrain from talking about the dangers out there but they should also know there are things they can do to give them a sense of safety in violent times. There are simple things we can do to prevent exposure to a violent crime. Keep vigilant, learn self defense, report suspicious words or activity, stay away from risky behavior, keep your distance or wits around unstable, violent prone people.
What bothers me almost as much as the shootings is that hardly any friend or relative of mine talks about terrorist or criminal threats! Christian or not, why isn’t there more of a dialogue about terrorism, or mass shootings? We can understand an attack on someone who’s hurt a suspect, or a burglary gone wrong but mass attacks are a new phenomenon. I really like it when people speak calmly about this issue and discuss the signs of the times …. instead of being quiet! I think many are being brainwashed to think it will all just go away thru better government procedures, or that ‘terrorism will stop with my family’, but that’s just like a child sees things. The attack in Orlando was not aimed at LGBTQ people alone but to all of us in the U.S. We should take note of security measures in our daily life, but also remind ourselves of Biblical wisdom:
‘Do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. They will soon be cut down like the grass. ….Trust in the Lord, and do good: Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.’ Psalm 37:1-3
ery sorry