Five peo­ple are dead and more than two dozen wound­ed after a gun­man wear­ing body armor and wield­ing an assault weapon entered a night­club in Col­orado Springs and opened fire, mass media report­ed today.

The hor­rif­ic attack, which author­i­ties are inves­ti­gat­ing, remind­ed many of the slaugh­ter at Orlan­do’s Pulse night­club in 2016, which remains the dead­liest inci­dent in the his­to­ry of vio­lence against LGBTQ+ peo­ple in the Unit­ed States and one of the worst mass shoot­ings in Amer­i­can history.

Accord­ing to the Den­ver Post: “Author­i­ties received a report of a shoot­ing at Club Q, 3430 N. Acad­e­my Blvd., at 11:57 PM [on Novem­ber 19th, 2022] and respond­ed with­in min­utes, said Lt. Pamela Cas­tro of the Col­orado Springs Police Depart­ment. The gun­man start­ed shoot­ing imme­di­ate­ly after enter­ing the club.”

“Emer­gency respon­ders direct­ed all units to respond to the club around mid­night, declar­ing it an active shoot­er sit­u­a­tion, accord­ing to archived record­ings of police radio traf­fic. The first offi­cer arrived on scene at mid­night and the sus­pect was detained at 12:02 AM, Cas­tro said. At least two patrons inside the club con­front­ed the sus­pect and stopped him, she said.”

The sus­pect has been iden­ti­fied and is in custody.

NPI is not nam­ing the indi­vid­ual in this post because we’d rather focus on the vic­tims of the attack than the perpetrator.

A sur­vivor told KRDO that “this was our only safe space in the Springs.”

“Where are we gonna go?” he asked.

“This is hor­rif­ic, sick­en­ing, and dev­as­tat­ing,” said Col­orado Gov­er­nor Jared Polis.

“My heart breaks for the fam­i­ly and friends of those lost, injured, and trau­ma­tized in this hor­rif­ic shoot­ing. I have spo­ken with May­or Suthers and made it clear that every state resource is avail­able to local law enforce­ment in Col­orado Springs.”

“We are eter­nal­ly grate­ful for the brave indi­vid­u­als who blocked the gun­man like­ly sav­ing lives in the process and for the first respon­ders who respond­ed swift­ly to this hor­rif­ic shoot­ing. Col­orado stands with our LGTBQ com­mu­ni­ty and every­one impact­ed by this tragedy as we mourn together.”

“While no motive in this attack is yet clear, we know that the LGBTQI+ com­mu­ni­ty has been sub­ject­ed to hor­rif­ic hate vio­lence in recent years,” said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in a state­ment dis­trib­uted by the White House on Sun­day morning.

“Gun vio­lence con­tin­ues to have a dev­as­tat­ing and par­tic­u­lar impact on LGBTQI+ com­mu­ni­ties across our nation and threats of vio­lence are increasing.”

“We saw it six years ago in Orlan­do, when our nation suf­fered the dead­liest attack affect­ing the LGBTQI+ com­mu­ni­ty in Amer­i­can history.

“We con­tin­ue to see it in the epi­dem­ic of vio­lence and mur­der against trans­gen­der women – espe­cial­ly trans­gen­der women of color.

“And trag­i­cal­ly, we saw it last night in this dev­as­tat­ing attack by a gun­man wield­ing a long rifle at an LGBTQI+ night­club in Col­orado Springs.”

“Places that are sup­posed to be safe spaces of accep­tance and cel­e­bra­tion should nev­er be turned into places of ter­ror and vio­lence. Yet it hap­pens far too often. We must dri­ve out the inequities that con­tribute to vio­lence against LGBTQI+ peo­ple. We can­not and must not tol­er­ate hate,” the Pres­i­dent said.

“Today, yet anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty in Amer­i­ca has been torn apart by gun vio­lence. More fam­i­lies left with an emp­ty chair at the table and hole in their lives that can­not be filled. When will we decide we’ve had enough? We must address the pub­lic health epi­dem­ic of gun vio­lence in all of its forms. Ear­li­er this year, I signed the most sig­nif­i­cant gun safe­ty law in near­ly three decades, in addi­tion to tak­ing oth­er his­toric actions. But we must do more. We need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America’s streets.”

“Today, Jill and I are pray­ing for the fam­i­lies of the five peo­ple killed in Col­orado Springs last night, and for those injured in this sense­less attack.”

Biden’s state­ment call­ing for an assault weapons ban is very wel­come and demon­strates a will­ing­ness and com­mit­ment to act rather than just offer­ing use­less “thoughts and prayers.” How­ev­er, due to Repub­li­can obstruc­tion­ism, get­ting an assault weapons ban through Con­gress would require either amend­ing or abol­ish­ing the Sen­ate fil­i­buster before the end of the cur­rent Con­gress, which is unlike­ly to hap­pen since Democ­rats don’t have fifty votes to change the rules.

The prospects for action at the state lev­el — at least in states with Demo­c­ra­t­ic tri­fec­tas — are bet­ter. Wash­ing­ton State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son is ask­ing the Leg­is­la­ture to pass an assault weapons ban and NPI’s research shows that a major­i­ty of like­ly 2022 vot­ers are strong­ly sup­port­ive. A non­par­ti­san, non­aligned con­sor­tium work­ing with Sur­veyUSA has ver­i­fied NPI’s find­ing.

Cal­i­for­nia, Con­necti­cut, Delaware, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, Hawai’i, Mary­land, Mass­a­chu­setts, New Jer­sey, and New York have banned assault weapons at the state lev­el. But Col­orado has not. Nor have Wash­ing­ton and Oregon.

All three states will remain Demo­c­ra­t­ic tri­fec­tas in 2023 and 2024 (Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nors + Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tures). Get­ting a ban passed must be a priority.