In the aftermath of the Orlando, Florida, shooting Sunday, we’re compiling essential coverage on the massacre and its repercussions. We’ll continue to collect the best work explaining the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. If you have something you think we should include, tweet us @reveal or find us on Facebook.
The victims
The Orlando Sentinel has posted in-depth profiles of the shooting victims.
Since he was a boy, Anthony Luis Laureano Disla loved to dance. Early Sunday morning, Laureano Disla, 25, was dancing and laughing with his friends at the Pulse nightclub, when a gunman stormed in. Laureano Disla was shot several times and died.
Doctors at Orlando Regional Medical Center describe treating the waves of injured.
“It was singularly the worst day of my career and the best day of my career, and it was probably the same for every person standing here,” Dr. Chadwick P. Smith said. “We quickly got about five patients, and that was a lot for us, and we thought maybe that was going to be it,” said Dr. Kathryn Bondani. “And then they started lining up in the hallway.”
Inside the attack
The Washington Post breaks down the sequence of events during the shooting.
Around 2 a.m, the shooter walked past the front entrance into the main dance floor, according to a witness. He turned toward the bar area and started shooting. According to police reports, an off-duty officer engaged in a firefight with the shooter.
Survivor Angel Colon describes his account inside the nightclub to BuzzFeed.
“I thought, That’s it, I’m dead,” he said. Mateen aimed for Colon’s head but shot his hand and his hip. Colon said he remained still and played dead until Mateen turned his attention elsewhere.
The Tampa Bay Times chronicles the shooting as it unfolded in four hours of terror.
In Pulse’s back room, Joe Galligan, 24, was drinking a Long Island iced tea and talking to friends. Then he heard gunshots. “Everyone in the room thought it was a speaker blowing out in the other room,” he said. “But it didn’t take very long to realize what it actually was. So the next thing I know, everyone was just on the ground.”
Details emerge about the shooter
The FBI investigates Mateen’s previous patronage of Pulse nightclub.
Mateen’s wife tried to talk him out of the attack, according to NBC News.
Mateen’s wife, Noor Zahi Salman, told the FBI she was with him when he bought ammunition and a holster, several officials familiar with the case said. She told the FBI that she once drove him to the gay nightclub, Pulse, because he wanted to scope it out.
The Tampa Bay Times looks into Mateen’s family history.
After college, Mateen got a job as a prison guard at Martin Correctional Institute in neighboring Martin County, but lasted less than six months in the job, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. He was then hired as a guard for G4S Security Solutions. At the time of the shooting, he held an active state security guard license and a permit to carry a concealed weapon.
The political aftermath of the attack
The Intercept notes that both presidential candidates propose ramping up attacks on ISIS, even though there is no direct evidence that Mateen was directed by the terror group.
Both candidates neglected to consider that no operational links between ISIS and the alleged Orlando shooter have been discovered. While Mateen
pledged allegiance to ISIS shortly before the attacks, he had reportedly
previously claimed connections to two groups that oppose ISIS: the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah and al-Qaida.
Vox asks if a terror attack “could sweep Donald Trump into the White House.”
“Crisis situations evoke feelings of distress, anxiety, and hopelessness, which draw citizens to leaders who promise to deliver better times,” Jennifer Merolla and her co-authors
have written. “Charismatic leaders surface in times of crisis because they are seen as saviors and are perceived to have a unique ability to improve a critical situation.”
Vox highlights a recent town hall exchange between President Barack Obama and a gun shop owner in Elkhart, Indiana, where Obama describes how lax gun laws could lead to a situation like Orlando.
Obama said: “What I have said is precisely what you suggested, which is: Why don’t we treat this like every other thing that we use? I just came from a meeting today in the situation room in which I got people who we know have been on ISIL websites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens, and we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun. This is somebody who is a known ISIL sympathizer. And if he wants to walk into a gun store or a gun show right now and buy as much – as many weapons and ammo as he can, nothing’s prohibiting him from doing that, even though the FBI knows who that person is.”
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community struggles to respond to the tragedy, as reported by BuzzFeed.
The Orlando attack has caused dueling reactions among LGBT rights advocates, with sometimes conflicting impulses even within an individual leader’s own thinking. They call for increased vigilance, but some also maintain that the rise of Islamist extremists doesn’t necessarily pose any particular threat to LGBT people.
Politico examines the debate around access to high-powered firearms and the AR-15, in particular.
Gun control activists despise the weapon because it gives an individual the power to inflict mass casualties as quickly, reliably and accurately as anything else on the civilian market – which is exactly the same reason gun rights extremists revere this rifle. Those who envision themselves fighting for freedom against an oppressive government don’t want to be outgunned.
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