In response to BG: shooter is messed up Mormon kid, so probably not the Air Force evangelical explanation.
Has an insurrectionist elected-politician grandpa though.
I'm stunned by the fact that people were actually (apparently) able to overpower him. Amazing guts.
Yeah. The Atlantic, I guess because someone had the article written and was waiting for a hook, put up a piece suggesting that fighting back may be better than trying to escape in some circumstances.
In church there was a collect for Transgender Week of Remembrance, honoring those who lost their lives to violence and prejudice. Ironic it would happen this week.
4: I think in some of the (sometimes terrible, sometimes misguided, sometimes traumatizing) "active shooter" trainings they do, they emphasize Flee, Hide, Fight Back as the three tactics you can use. Actually I think I may also have seen that in the Amtrak safety videos that DHS makes you watch in the train waiting room.
I always saw the "throw a stapler at the guy with an AK-47!" thing as ludicrous, but I guess there is genuinely some point where the attacker is poorly armed and/or distracted enough, and the victims are numerous enough, that you can pull it off. Amazing work.
Ah, the Atlantic piece is by former Obama homeland security [sic] official Juliette Kayyem. She's generally on the side of good, but pretty mainstream law enforcement and traditionalist in her thinking.
That article is a much more confused mishmash than I would have expected based on her generally sound Twitter threads. (Sound meaning that even when I don't agree with them, I can follow the logical consistency.)
6: I remember those being described (in my workplace training) as the three options from first resort to last. E.g., if he's gotten through the door and there's no closet, then you fight back, because what have you got to lose.
7: Maybe I was wrong about it being written in advance. I was assuming.
In church there was a collect for Transgender Week of Remembrance, honoring those who lost their lives to violence and prejudice. Ironic it would happen this week.
Indeed, today is Trans Day of Remembrance (as well as our first wedding anniversary). The local LGBTQ community does an event where people read out the names of all the trans people who have died around the world in the past year. I think lots of places do this but I'm not sure. We've gone in the past when it was in person and watched the livestream this time. Hundreds of people, mostly but not exclusively in Latin America, almost all murder or suicide. The people reading the names always get choked up and have to pause between each one. It's a powerful event.
Terrible news - well done to whoever it was who managed to stop the shooting before it got even worse. 30 casualties with a long weapon and then they grabbed him sounds like they grabbed him while he was changing magazines, which makes sense.
I was struck by one bit of the article: Colorado Springs has a population of about 500,000 - bigger than Edinburgh! - and Club Q was, until very recently, the only gay bar in the entire city.
Sorry, didn't link to the article. I meant the CNN writeup. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/20/us/colorado-springs-shooting-gay-nightclub/index.html
Yesterday was TDoR, it is widely observed, and the timing of the shooting might not be coincidental. Club Q was preparing for an event the following day.
11: Colorado Springs is much more conservative than other cities in the state; my sister and mom, who live there, connect it to there not being a university campus, just an Air Force academy. I've visited a few times and the landscape is gorgeous but it's not a place you'd expect to find gay bars thick on the ground.
I have an acquaintance who's the only trans person in a nearby Colorado town of 4,000 and she's a tough cookie but good heavens. She recently got assaulted by some guy and was just at his arraignment watching from behind a one-way mirror.
I literally can't cry properly over this because my frontal sinuses are currently so fucked up.
Lourdes, skip this one, but I cried at this interview with the vet who stopped the shooter. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/us/colorado-springs-shooting-club-q-hero.html?smid=url-share
I got this on the wrong thread, but I am in awe of the guy's sheer Dad Energy. He went along to support his daughter's friend who was performing! That's a pretty great dad!
(What he did to the shooter was also impressive, but if you want the literally gory details you can click through)
not being a university campus, just an Air Force academy
"Colorado's second largest city [...] has built itself a reputation as a playground for white, pro-gun, pro-life Evangelical Christians. It is also home to one army base, two air force bases, and an air force academy. Colorado Springs featured in the documentary film Jesus Camp, where evangelical Christian children were taught to engage in anti-abortion protests."
17: "Against the backdrop of paranoia and fear about drag shows as luring grounds for exploitation, here you have Rich Fierro, a straight veteran at the club with his wife and kids to take in a drag show. Indeed, poke into Fierro's story and you have a representative of the other America almost too on point and novelistic to be believed. Fierro and wife Jess are the co-owners of the Atrevida brewery, where Jess Fierro is master brewer. The brewery's motto is 'Diversity, It's on tap.' One of the brews on sale is Dolores Huerta Mexican Lager. You get the idea. If you commissioned a screenwriter to draw up a character to represent the diverse, tolerant, complicated America Blue State America wants itself to be you'd probably need to create a character something like Rich Fierro."
18: I think we can rule out USAF involvement; the shooter hit a number of his intended targets.
Now confirmed it was a trans woman who assisted Fierro by heel-stomping the shooter into submission.
My sister's husband out there is a trauma surgeon and apparently had a long day tending to victims who were getting stabilized yesterday.
And there's been another one in Chesapeake VA. Six dead.
Also, the sun rose this morning.