Another Black Flag day… and it happened at the Pulse night club, in Orlando, Florida, America…
49 happy people – no matter their race, gender or sexual preference – are gone now, possibly more over the following days. And all because one person disagrees with the lifestyle (possibly) and lack of Islamic faith (possibly) and decided to strike a blow in the name of ISIS (again, possibly) in the U.S. because of our western lifestyle. (UPDATE: June 13, 2015 – we definitely now know it was for ISIS/ISIL/IS)
We are all saddened and heartbroken that this happened.
What does this horrific event now mean for:
- Americans,
- Gays,
- Non-gays,
- The religious,
- The non-religious,
- The gun owners,
- Non-gun owners,
- Privacy (what’s left of it) and most of all
- Freedom
Just because ‘you’ are against gays and the non-religious and women who wear scanty clothing and anyone of a different religion from yourself; none of these things gives anyone the right or justification to kill anyone else.
It is completely wrong and not up to you to make that kind of choice.
So, what will this mean for the people of America? Are more people from the small list above going to become targets…?
As the weeks progress, will it mean an immediate and much more intense crackdown on all known and wannabe ISIS sympathizers across the country? American citizen or not?
Will this tragic event mean that it is time to finally get down to brass tacks to create and implement a national registry for automatic weapons (and any automatic hand guns – i.e. machine pistols)? Will this registry be created, even if the gun lobby and the NRA are against this kind of tracking – even if dozens of people were killed with an automatic weapon…
Will it mean a further erosion of privacy for Americans? Let’s hope that it does not erode too much more of our privacy and freedom that we hold dearly.
Are people finally going to come together (as they always seem to in any tragic situation) but this time, forcefully and united, demand actual enforcement of current laws or implementation of tougher laws on automatic weapons, along with that national registry for law enforcement to use before another tragic situation occurs as it did in Orlando?
This should have taken place after the Sandy Hook shootings…
What will transpire in the future after this shooting? Well, we – all of us – will need to come to grip with what will continue happening if nothing concrete is done about it NOW. And that could mean more mass shootings and maybe even robbing you of someone you know and love…
However, what could happen might be something meaningful. For example, having this automatic weapons’ registry means it could be cross indexed with anyone on a list such as the FBI’s list of ISIS sympathizers. We ‘will‘ need to collate as much data as possible in tracking down and stopping these individuals before they commit any kind of crime. This will mean even more usage of analytic tools such as Palantir, Analyst Notebook and the like to compile, analyze and spit out reports of likely candidates. It is clear that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are overwhelmed with the number of suspects to track and figure out who might do damage to the people of this country. We could also enlist the aid of something like IBM’s Watson to process the huge quantity of data that should be collected, collated and analyzed.
Now if this list were put together in a decent manner, using strategy and forethought, the list should well include, wherever possible, known associates (sympathizers or not) who most likely would buy the weapons if the shooter him/herself were unable to purchase the weapons – because of that list…
Just don’t try to start going around arresting all Muslims – because they, as everyone should know by now, are not all the same… O.K.???
The gun lobby, the NRA, members of Congress and many of the people in the U.S. will have to realize that we will need something like this registry to aid in preventing future shootings, such as their own family members.
Otherwise America, if we cannot create some kind of system where correlations can be made, nationally – we will see more and larger body counts of the dead from shootings that could have been prevented, if we tried better.
And yes, there will be many who completely pooh-poohs the idea of any kind of national registry for automatic weapons so they can buy 4, 5 or a dozen of those themselves without anyone tracking that information.
On the other hand, there will be a lot more who actually want something like a registry so they can have peace of mind that law enforcement knows who has automatic weapons in case anyone plans to (social media) or goes on a killing spree. Again!
I hope the gist of what I am trying to say comes across because I vacillated all day whether to write anything because of my raw state of mind. The next shooter(s) may not be an ISIS sympathizer but could be an ordinary American such as Dylann Roof who shot up the church in Charleston or any other individual angry over something trivial…
Finally, and obviously, I did but I am still so wound up due to all the needless deaths, all because of one person disagreeing (likely) with the western lifestyle… Sad and Angry…
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