These Countries That Condemned The Orlando Attack Are Terrible Towards LGBT People

[longknife]

Surprise! I posted a similar list yesterday and nobody put 2 and 2 together. It's alright to condemn what goes on here while allowing the same thing in their own countries.

Condolences have poured in from around the world since 49 people were killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando, including statements of support from governments (This Is How World Leaders Are Reacting To The Orlando Gay Nightclub Shooting) from across the globe.

More of the story @ These Countries That Condemned The Orlando Attack Are Terrible Towards LGBT People

 

[waltky]

Bring back the assault weapons ban...

Could New Gun Laws Closing 'Terror Loophole' Prevent Mass Shootings?
June 14, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Omar Mateen walked into Florida gun store earlier this month and legally purchased weapons he'd later use to kill 49 people in Orlando nightclub

He bragged to co-workers about having ties to terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and Islamic State. He talked about wanting to become a martyr. He was the subject of two separate FBI investigations. He beat his wife so badly that her family had to come to Florida and rescue her. There were seemingly endless red flags that could have popped up when Omar Mateen walked into a central Florida gun store earlier this month to purchase the weapons he would later use to kill 49 people and wound more than 50 others at a gay night club in Orlando in what is the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Red-necks look over a table of handguns for sale at a gun show in Kansas City, Missouri​

Yet Mateen, who pledged allegiance to Islamic State moments before the early Sunday shooting, was able to legally purchase the Sig Sauer MCX (a variation of the popular, military-style AR-15 rifle) and a Glock 17 handgun. The apparent ease with which Mateen secured the weapons used in the massacre has revived a debate over whether those with suspected extremist ties should be able to purchase firearms — increasingly the weapon of choice for those carrying out terrorist attacks in the U.S.

Infographic on AR-15 Gun​

Since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, 85 percent of people killed by terrorists in the U.S. were killed by guns, according to an analysis by the FiveThirtyEight website. That figure, which was based on data from the Global Terrorism Database, did not take into account the shooting in Orlando.

The victims of an attack at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.​

The reason terrorists are using guns is that they are "readily available, and they have a better ability to kill with precision," said Malcolm Nance, a former counterterrorism and intelligence officer, who now heads the Terror Asymmetrics Project (TAPSTRI). "All you have to do is close the doors, and everyone in front of you is going to be a victim," Nance said. "It doesn't take a political analyst or someone with counterterrorism experience to know that that could be the most highly charged type of attack in the United States."

'Terror loophole'

See also:

'Lone Wolves' Pose Huge Challenge in Fight Against Terrorism
June 14, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Despite all of the attention and resources that the United States and other countries have put into counterterrorism efforts, Sunday's mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, shows the threat from individual actors remains and is particularly difficult for governments to fight.

There are no indications at this point that the Orlando shooter had a direct connection to Islamic State, and FBI Director James Comey said Monday the agency believes he was radicalized through the internet. Eric Rosand, a senior foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, says the attack is an example of how Islamic State's message is being received by many young Muslims who have no coordination with the group but are angry, lost, and attracted to its vision of violence and destruction. "Countries have to deal with it essentially on their own," he told VOA. "They have to somehow come to terms with societies that are communities feeling marginalized, individuals feeling lost, and there's no mechanisms in place to actually prevent this, not adequate resources and innovation being directed towards the prevention aspect of the problem internally within each country."

The U.S. State Department said in a report earlier this month the number of terror attacks worldwide dropped 13 percent last year, while deaths fell by 14 percent. Amy Pate, research director at the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism, which prepared statistics for the report, says terrorist violence ebbs and flows over time but she does not see its total elimination as realistic. She told VOA what the world could see is fewer deadly attacks. "There was a point in time when terrorists actively avoided killing people," she said. "They wanted the publicity, but the negative publicity that came with deaths was something they tried to avoid. If you think of some of the European groups like the IRA or ETA, these are the modalities that they followed. They wanted attention but not a body count. So I think there is a way to walk back from what we’ve seen as this increase in mass lethality and mass casualty terrorism.”

Suspected Orlando shooter Omar Mateen​

Nearly two years ago, U.S. President Barack Obama declared a goal of eradicating Islamic State and set up a coalition to attack the group militarily and to disrupt its finances and its attraction for foreign fighters. There has been success in taking back territory the militants once held in Iraq and Syria, but the group still persists in large areas of those countries and has influence elsewhere. Rebecca Zimmerman, an analyst at the Rand Corporation, says the easiest part of eradicating Islamic State is attacking areas where the group tries to act like a state and exposes itself militarily. But she told VOA that while Islamic State has lost territory, it remains a "pernicious and difficult threat." "This is one of the difficult things about terrorism, it’s virtually impossible to know when you are done fighting it," she said. "How do you draw that line to say okay we won? What does that day look like, the day that you decide you won the war on terror? So yes, I can say that I think we’ve made progress in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve eroded the global threat of terrorism and it doesn’t mean that we’ve defeated the Islamic State."

Fighters from the Islamic State group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul, Iraq.​

Rosand said governments have focused on killing, capturing, arresting and prosecuting terrorists, but that when the fighting in Iraq and Syria one day ends, many countries will not be prepared to handle the thousands of militants who will return home. "There’s a recognition now that not enough energy and resources and thinking are going into the front end on prevention and the back end on reintegration," he said. "There’s a concerted effort on the international level to develop some best practices, to invest resources, to provide training to countries that are interested in developing programs."

Rosand identified the Netherlands and Denmark as two countries that have sophisticated programs already, albeit on a small scale, while Britain's response to the hundreds of people returning from Iraq and Syria is to put them in jail. "It’s not willing to take the risk of anything other than prosecution. And I think ultimately that’s a lot of the problem, is that we as a society are so risk averse in terms of this threat that there may not be a political appetite, a public appetite, for more risk taking in terms of policy making and that really limits options.”

'Lone Wolves' Pose Huge Challenge in Fight Against Terrorism