Late Saturday night, police responded to a shooting at a gay nightclub called “Club Q” in Colorado Springs, Colo. According to reports, five people are dead and at least another 18 were injured.
It’s early enough that those numbers could change. Yet, before we even know all the facts, the left has already decided who is to blame: Republicans.
“Every GOP politician spewing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric bears responsibility for the Colorado Springs shooting,” claimed Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D-N.Y.) on Twitter. “Every GOP politician who says that guns aren’t the problem bears responsibility for the Colorado Springs shooting. Enough.”
Actually, I say enough with the finger-pointing. Leftists do this every time there’s an incident they can exploit for political gain. For example, in June 2016, a shooter killed 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. The media quickly sought to blame conservative Christians for the shooting, concluding that the shooter specifically targeted the Pulse nightclub because it was a gay nightclub.
This wasn’t true.
For starters, the shooter wasn’t even Christian; Omar Mateen was Muslim and had pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Nor was the shooting about anti-LGBT hate. As Vox reported in April of 2018, “There’s now conclusive evidence that the shooter wasn’t intending to target LGBTQ people at all.”
According to a report from the Huffington Post titled “Everyone Got The Pulse Massacre Story Completely Wrong,” also published the same month, “Mateen had never been to Pulse before, whether as a patron or to case the nightclub. Even prosecutors acknowledged in their closing statement that Pulse was not his original target; it was the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex.”
Despite this, the myth that the attack was a hate crime specifically targeting the LGBT community remains alive and well. There’s even a planned memorial and museum — yes, a museum — dedicated to perpetuating the lie that this was an LGBT hate crime.
Related: Why Is the Pulse Nightclub Shooting Getting a Museum?
Club Q issued a statement describing the Saturday shooting “hate attack.”
“Club Q is devastated by the senseless attack on our community. Our prays [sic] and thoughts are with all the victims and their families and friends. We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack,” the club posted to its Facebook page.
When people like Velasquez and countless others on social media try to blame Republicans for the shooting or immediately conclude it was a “hate crime,” they are part of the problem. According to the most recent report I can find, the suspect has been identified, but no motive has been determined yet by law enforcement.
There are reports that the shooter was also behind a 2021 bomb threat, for which he was charged with two counts of Felony Menacing and three counts of First-Degree Kidnapping. It is not known why, if this is the same person, he was out on the streets already, but his violent history would seem to point to mental health problems, not a political agenda.
So, let’s not forget that even The Huffington Post admitted “everyone got the Pulse massacre story completely wrong.” Maybe before people jump to conclusions about the shooter’s motives, we should wait for the details to be confirmed. Anything else is irresponsible.
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