Late on Saturday, a gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub, leaving five people dead and 18 injured. This was the nation’s latest mass shooting in a year in which extremists have stepped up their anti-gay rhetoric.
At 11:57 p.m., according to Lt. Pamela Castro of the Colorado Springs Police Department, there was a shooting at Club Q.
Castro reported that one suspect had been hurt and was receiving medical attention. She claimed it was unclear right away whether police had shot the assailant. She stated that the FBI was on the scene and supporting the investigation.
The police department tweeted that a news conference would be held at their operations center at 8 a.m.
According to its website, the gay and lesbian nightclub Club Q hosts a “Drag Diva Drag Show” every Saturday.
In addition to the drag show that was advertised on the website, Club Q’s Facebook page stated that there would also be a “punk and alternative concert” that would be followed by a birthday dance party, and that a “all ages brunch” would start at noon on Sunday.
Club Q wrote on its Facebook page, “Club Q is devastated by the senseless attack on our community. It expressed its condolences to the victims and their families and thanked the brave patrons whose quick actions brought the shooter to justice and put an end to the hate crime.
The U.S. Air Force Academy is located in Colorado Springs, a 480,000-person city located about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Denver. American evangelicalism’s center of gravity has traditionally been in this metropolis. Colorado Springs is home to Focus on the Family, a well-known evangelical Christian organization.
Authorities claim that a man opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in the city in November 2015 because he intended to wage “war” on the facility because it provided abortions, leaving three people dead and eight injured.
Although the reason for the shooting on Saturday was not immediately clear, it brought to mind the 49-person murder that took place at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016. Additionally, it happened in a state where there have been a number of infamous mass killings, including those at Columbine High School, a movie theater in a Denver suburb in 2012, and a supermarket in Boulder in 2013.
In Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, 31 Patriot Front members were detained in June and charged with planning a disturbance at a Pride celebration. Experts cautioned that radical organizations would interpret anti-gay language as a call to arms.
In keeping with similar teachings from a Texas fundamentalist pastor, a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his small Boise church the previous month that homosexual, lesbian, and transgender persons should be executed by the government.
The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S. shows that as of Nov. 19, there had been 523 mass killings since 2006, totaling 2,727 fatalities.
