The NRA Gets Another Boner

     The ex-wife of the man who killed fifty people and wounded fifty-three others in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub last night, June 12, said he was mentally ill, "bipolar."  He was abusive towards her, and unstable; her family got her away from him.
     He reportedly saw two men in Miami kissing each other in public.  This was enough, supposedly, to set him on the course to acquiring, legally, more than 700 rounds of ammunition and driving two hours with his pistol and assault rifle to a specific spot, the Orlando gay nightclub.
     He sought to kill gays; thus, a hate crime.  He opened fire, and hours passed before a SWAT team resolved the issue by shooting him to death in a gun fight.  Approximately 320 people were in the club when he opened fire.  He terrorized, using maximum capacity clips lobbied for by the National Rifle Association, a group dedicated to disallowing all encroachments on "the right to bear arms" guaranteed by the Second Amendment.  God forbid ordinary citizens should be prevented from obtaining and using weapons of warfare against each other.  NRA lobbyists in Washington are, after all, not to be denied, for politicians' fear of losing elections.
     The guns-have-more-rights-than-people component of this latest massacre, "the worst in U.S. history," has been covered over by the killer's stated affinity for the cause of ISIS.  Whether or not he was in touch with that organization isn't yet known, but that hasn't stopped news outfits like Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN from titling the event in go-to-commercial banners, Terror in Orlando.
     That the nightclub's patrons were terrorized is beyond dispute.  That terrorists, motivated by the quest for political change, use violence against civilians as an important tool to accomplish their goals is well established in history.  Nation states and non-state armed outfits use terror for political aims.  Ordinary people with guns, shooting up a crowded location, terrorize in the sense of spreading fear and panic.  These same people do not necessarily have any affiliation with a non-state racket like ISIS or a nation state like Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, or Israel, all three of which use terror to exert control through the management of chaos, as guided by carefully aimed sophisticated weaponry that profits those who make it, with the expending of rounds, missiles, and bombs requiring the need for frequent replacement, thus profits.
     In this light, with the relationship of weapons, fear, money, it should be noted that the NRA and small arms manufacturers profit from gun massacres like the one last night and the Sandy Hook killings of children a few years ago that so sickened the soul of President Obama, to the extent he's done practically nothing to fight the grotesque overreach of the NRA.
     Nor will Orlando's tragedy move him to fight the NRA.  Terrorism, though, as it's commonly understood in the U.S. as a practice of foreign criminals, especially Muslim ones, has already seized news media attention, interviews with politicians, pundits, and "terror experts" focused on the Orlando incident as a possible (therefore likely, given how much airtime the idea receives) hit on American soil by ISIS, even though it took that group a while to express solidarity with it, and only after the killer's sympathy for ISIS was revealed in the news.
     It's too early to say what really motivated the man: religious fanaticism inspired by ISIS-approved ideologies, mental illness, a past life of violent tendencies, homophobia, or, as is also possible, all of these.
     He was, like Timothy McVeigh, an American citizen.  I saw on the news a selfie, taken by the killer himself, indulging in a common practice of the young.  The interview excerpt with the ex-wife showed her to be a sympathetic, articulate person, clearly devastated by her former husband's actions.  His father said his son was mentally ill.  He lived in Florida, a state run by a Republican governor, Rick Scott, who opposes gay marriage, who, when interviewed about the massacre on CNN, wouldn't acknowledge the killings had anything to do with homophobia, but used the automatic go-to, that it was "clearly" terrorism and nothing else.
     Donald Trump decided he could help by tweeting.  He insists that President Obama should "step down" for not using the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism."  Hillary Clinton, according to Trump, should quit the presidential race for the same reason.
     "I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack," Trump boasts, with no proof he could actually do that.  "We can't afford to be politically correct anymore."
     The following tweet demonstrates Trump's superiority complex, pride, and the pleasure he gets from acts of terrorism, since they increase his ratings:
     "What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning.  Our leadership is weak and ineffective.  I called it and asked for the [Muslim immigration] ban.  Must be tough."
     To correct the compulsive tweeter, he didn't "ask" for the ban on Muslims entering the United States.  He proposed it during a speech on December 7, 2015, using the symbolic anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the event that drew the U.S. into war with Japan, Germany, and Italy.  His "ban" was in response to the massacre carried out by the married couple in San Bernardino, California.  He's since called the ban "just a suggestion," although the original Trump campaign release read:

     "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."

     In the tweet above, he says he "called it and asked for the ban."  He implies his ban would've prevented what happened in Orlando.  The killer, as I point out above, was an American citizen: he was already here.  People with guns turning them on others and firing is something that occurs often in this country.  Trump himself spoke recently at an NRA meeting, affirming his support for an organization with a lobbying power comparable in its effectiveness to that of the oil industry.  A Trump presidency will not decrease gun deaths in the United States.   Rhetoric using the word "terrorism" will continue to thrive, used by Trump, Hillary Clinton, and all politicians seeking to maintain a war that's become necessary to an economy that requires disasters to thrive.
   
                                                                              Vic Neptune