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  • 2016-06-15 (xsd:date)
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  • Orlando Mass Shooting Math Doesn't Add Up (en)
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  • Rumors and conjecture fly after every mass shooting, mostly involving speculation that the shootings were faked (or what conspiracy theorists call false flag operations), with the end goal of taking away American guns. The theories are fed by the inaccuracies that can surface during breaking news reporting due to the fluidity of the situation or human error, but which are inevitably taken as evidence of a grand conspiracy. The Facebook page RAW Conservative was one of the first to get in on the conspiracy theories after the Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016, with the following post holding that it simply was not physically possible for a single gunman to have fired as many shots as claimed in the time allotted: This deconstruction of the facts of the shooting would be more convincing if almost all of its aspects weren't contradicted by more cogent reporting about the details of the shooting. For starters, the gunman, Omar Mateen, wasn't armed with an AR-15; he brought a .223 SIG Sauer MCX semiautomatic rifle with him to the Orlando nightclub, as well as a handgun (reportedly a 9mm Glock semiautomatic model). Although the SIG Sauer MCX rifle is often outfitted with a magazine that holds 30 rounds, higher-capacity magazines are legal in Florida and reasonably easy to buy online. Other add-ons for the MCX — which is favored for its modularity, firing speed, controllability, and its ease of use — are also readily available. Additionally, Mateen didn't fire anything close to 1,000 rounds of .223 ammunition, as claimed. News accounts reported that the total number of rounds expended at the Pulse nightclub by Mateen and police combined was only 202, not upwards of a thousand, and thus Mateen would have needed far fewer reloads than assumed: Finally, Omar Mateen didn't engage in a gun battle with 9 police officers that lasted nearly an hour. Shortly after opening fire at the club, Mateen was confronted by an armed security guard and police and retreated to a bathroom, where he holed up for nearly three hours and made phone calls while police attempted to negotiate with him. When police finally breached a wall of bathroom, Mateen emerged from the hole they created and was quickly shot and killed: All of the math of the Orlando nightclub shooting holds up; it only fails to total accurately when, as was the case here, all the wrong numbers are input into the equation. (en)
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