Well, as our colleague Ben Bowles noted just a short time ago, that didn’t take long. A Muslim named Mohamed Omar Mateen, reportedly a wife-beater and gay-hater, reportedly with radical ties and under previous investigation by the FBI, goes into a gay nightclub and shoots it up, killing 50 people and gravely injuring 53, and the American left blames…the gun.
BREAKING: As I was composing this post, Twitter just erupted with a new report, citing multiple law enforcement agencies, that Mateen swore allegiance to ISIS prior to conducting his attack.
Omar Mateen called 911 just before club shooting, swore allegiance to Islamic State, multiple law enforcement officials say – NBC News
— Breaking News (@BreakingNews) June 12, 2016
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
But ignore that. Blame the gun. Or: why just blame the gun, when you can rope in uninvolved third parties whose policy views are different from yours?
That’s why we have Media Matters: to make sure those opportunities aren’t missed. As night follows the day, Media Matters weighed in first thing Sunday morning with a tortured attempt to blame…wait for it once more…the National Rifle Association.
But not because gun-rights advocacy. No, because Chris Cox and Wayne LaPierre, and their views on what the left calls “LGBT” issues.
The NRA made anti-LGBT attacks during their annual meeting just weeks ago. https://t.co/v5OR9ahlF7 pic.twitter.com/tO0ILfOdiP
— Media Matters (@mmfa) June 12, 2016
(H/t: Twitchy)
Sure. Shooting up a gay nightclub, while Muslim, an ISIS acolyte, and with a known history of domestic violence, would have nothing to do with, oh, say, the teachings of an imam who in March 2016 made the Florida news when he was invited to speak at an Islamic Center in Stanford. A number of Floridians objected to Dr. Farohk Sekaleshfar’s appearance in Sanford, given his outspoken views on Islam and homosexuality (emphasis original):
Sekaleshfar was blunt in [a prior] 2013 speech, admitting that under Islamic law, the punishment for homosexuality was death.
At the same time, he pointed out that it was the act that should be hated, not the person.
“Because the sinner is Allah’s creation,” he said. “You could never hate Allah’s creation.”
Even the punishment for the act of homosexuality is one of love, Sekaleshfar argued.
“We see the physical killing as something brutal, and this is the point when human hatred toward the act has to be done out of love,” he said in the 2013 talk. “You have to be happy for that person … we believe in an afterlife, we believe in an eternal life … and with this sentence, you will be forgiven and you won’t be accountable in the hereafter.”
In that way, “It’s for his own betterment that he leaves,” Sekaleshfar said.
“We have to have that compassion for people. With homosexuals, it’s the same,” he said. “Out of compassion, let’s get rid of them now.”
But forget all that. Omar Mateen was probably incited to kill dozens of gay men at a gay nightclub by what Chris Cox said about Caitlyn Jenner — at the NRA annual meeting, which was held in May in Louisville. Anyone want to actually bet that Mateen knew anything about what was said at the NRA annual meeting three weeks ago? Seriously, I’ll take your money.
Of course, the alternative theory of the terrorist act would be that the demonic spirits of anti-LGBT-ism, flowing through the NRA, randomly entered Omar Mateen’s AR-15 and dragged it, and Mateen, to the nightclub to start shooting people.
Don’t be in a big hurry to assume that’s not what happened. After all, you can apparently come under investigation by the FBI, possibly for radical Islamic ties, and still be eligible for a firearm license and a security guard license in the state of Florida. Whereas if you’re a wounded armed forces veteran who placed his affairs under someone else’s supervision for a period of time, the U.S. federal government will make sure you are never eligible for a firearms license again. The “rule of law” — 21st century version — at work for you.
There’s some inexplicable, occult stuff going on in this country. Maybe demonic spirits do run guns around like anti-LGBT drones and pull their triggers.
