/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-wordpress-client-uploads/tbt/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/20181628/18536091.jpg "2016 AP YEAR END PHOTOS - Orlando Police officers direct family members away from a fatal shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on June 12, 2016. Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in the mass shooting. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)")
Politico's Marc Caputo:
Many lawmakers — particularly those who represent gay and minority communities — say Tallahassee's disparate responses to the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando aren't coincidental, and speak to the intersection of race, privilege, sexual orientation and the priorities of the GOP-led Legislature in the nation's third-largest state.
Put simply: The Parkland high school students hailed from a heavily white and affluent community. The Pulse victims didn't.
"The majority of the Pulse victims, the 49 people who lost their lives at Pulse, they were mostly LGBTQ people of color. Didn't their lives matter? Why wasn't the debate about gun safety important enough then?" asked state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando and gay-rights advocate. Smith said he "lost constituents in the Pulse nightclub shooting. I lost a friend. Some of my closest friends survived that shooting after multiple gunshot wounds that they sustained."
Full story here.
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