Op-Ed: Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs follows six brutal years of Republican anti-LGBTQ rhetoric
On Monday, a local organization decided to mark Colorado Springs’s Pride celebration by shooting and killing six people (three of whom were gay or lesbian) with assault weapons and two of which were armed with legally purchased firearms. It is likely that more people will get murdered by this killer than from any other shooting in Colorado.
Now, after more than 13 years of anti-Gay rights violence in Colorado, is there anything left for people in Colorado to talk about?
The massacre began on the morning of May 20 and continued that evening. The alleged killer, Maurice Clemmons, allegedly walked into the Club Q bar in the early evening hours and fired all of his weapons, killing six people and injuring at least 16 others with bullets and explosives.
Colorado Springs resident Jared Lee Loughner was arrested on June 11 and is now being held without bond in the Boulder County jail pending a hearing on June 20 to determine if he has the mental capacity to stand trial on murder charges. His lawyers reportedly presented evidence in his case that Loughner has Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of autism. Loughner has also reportedly been arrested on several other charges in the US federal court system and is being held without bond in the US federal courthouse in Denver, Colorado.
Loughner, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, has been linked more with the massacre than his political ideology or violent record. According to the Washington Post:
Loughner was a U.S. Army Reserve officer, a computer programmer and a part-time volunteer at a veterans’ outreach center. He had a bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin.
Although his record showed that he had been in jail on misdemeanor drug and gun charges before, his wife told the Denver Post that he had never before been jailed and never before been in trouble for drugs or guns. His wife said he had also never been charged in connection with an attempted burglary.
According to the Denver Post, the couple has two teenage children. According to the Denver Post,
