Last week I talked about the events that led up to the June 12th massacre that happened in Orlando, and now that the dust has settled and new information has come in I think it's time I gave my final thoughts on this whole situation. Take a look at the background info that you've probably heard by now here.
Night of the shooting:
The Official Story goes as follows:
2:02 am- An off-duty cop sees Mateen carrying his weapons by the entrance. They exchange fire and the officer realizes he's outgunned and retreats to cover to call for backup.
Chaos ensues as Mateen makes his way into the building firing wildly into the ceiling, witnesses also state they saw officers running into the club at this point in time. Witnesses say they saw him firing both his rifle and handgun at the same time,mainly into the people who were lying down, and we know some of them survived multiple (presumably) point blank shots. Bouncer Imran Yousef also held the back exit door open by the storage room around this time as well, saving as many as 60 people. There was another, however, who held an exit by the dressing room shut.
2:04 am- Two back up officers arrive, but do not enter the club.
2:08 am- A team of five officers enter the club via window on the South side of the building to try and locate Mateen. They follow him to the bathroom area to the left hand side of the diagram but are told to stand down by commanders until SWAT arrived.
2:18 am- SWAT initiates full callout
2:35 am- Mateen makes a 50-second phone call to 911
2:48-3:24 am- Mateen makes three calls to the crisis negotiators in which he states, "There is a vehicle out there with some bombs" and that he had a vest like the kind they used in France. He also stated that, "In the next few days, you're going to see more of this type of action going on."
4:00 am- Mateen texts his wife saying he loves her.
4:21 am- Police remove an AC unit out from the dressing room allowing hostages to escape.
4:29 am- Hostages being rescued tell police that he was going to put four vests on the hostages within the next 15 minutes.
5:02 am- SWAT team prepares to breach through the bathroom wall using explosive charges and armored vehicles.
5:14 am- Shots fired.
5:15 am- Suspect reported down.
Conclusion:
From everything that we know about how that night played out and everything that led up to this point I think we can ultimately conclude that this is an incredible failing on the part of the FBI and our government to act. The FBI alone had him under investigation at least twice, and twice was unable to move forward with the investigation. OPD could have ended the three hour siege within minutes had they not been told to stand down until the SWAT team arrived, and now the house is trying, and failing, to push laws that even they admit wouldn't have stopped this incident. Coincidentally, It has also been admitted by police chief John Mina that the OPD may have contributed to some of the casualties during the final hours of the siege. Lets face it, Omar Mateen could not have killed/wounded 102 people with less than 160 rounds being fired into a crowd. Despite everything we've heard from the media, the .223 round isn't actually all that powerful. There is something incredibly off about that count and we'll probably need to see the ballistic reports from the victims as well as a count of the bullet holes in the structure to see if everything adds up.
The only people who could have stopped this were the individuals who knew something was wrong, and at least two people involved did and nothing came of it. I'm not even going to make the good guy with a gun argument because it's old and may actually not be applicable here; but I know if at least a handful of the three hundred or so people at Pulse that night decided to fight back and rush him, then maybe we would have heard a very different story. Too many people have put their faith in a state that may not be looking out for them like they truly believe. Too many people today have lost the will to fight back when faced with a situation like that, and that is absolutely something that needs to change.
And finally, it truly sickens me that liberals get more upset over mean comments about Muslims than they do the slaughter of the people they claimed to protect in the not-so-distant past. It is an absolute betrayal not only to the LGBT community, but to all the liberal Muslims who truly want to fix their religion. Because like it or not, Islam has some serious issues that need to be addressed before we even consider giving it a foothold in 'liberal' Western society.
