Another mass killing with a firearm outside of the United States.  I recall, after the Orlando nightclub killing, that President Obama assured us that this did not happen outside of the United States. This one happened in Istanbul, which has been a center of Islamic civilization for over 500 years, at an exclusive night club.  Turkey has very restrictive gun control laws. From gunpolicy.org:

In Turkey, the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law.

In Turkey, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms and semi-automatic firearms

First reports indicate that the firearm used was a variant of the ubiquitous AK47 assault rifle. They are common in the region. Because the laws against private ownership are draconian, the rifle had to have been obtained on the black market.

A common supplier to the black market are the various militaries in the region. The U.S. has added its own share in recent years. Much of U.S. supplied weapons have been turned over to jihadis of one stripe or another.  From mirror.co.uk:

A desperate manhunt has been launched to find a terrorist who reportedly shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ before shooting dead 39 people in an Instanbul nightclub packed with New Year’s Eve partygoers.
A further 69 people were injured as the killer stormed the Reina nightclub in Istanbul armed with an AK-47 and began blasting people at will.

As many as 16 of those dead are thought to be foreign nationals but none are believed to be British

The horror began after New Year’s Eve early this morning when the gunman arrived outside the club in a yellow taxi.

He then shot dead a policeman stationed outside before storming in and opening fire with an assault rifle.

At least the Obama administration is not busy trying to find some way to connect this event to “workplace violence” or “homophobia”.

©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included. Link to Gun Watch

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38 COMMENTS

  1. At least the Obama administration is not busy trying to find some way to connect this event to “workplace violence” or “homophobia”.

    Give them some time. It’s still a holiday.

  2. Given their *exceeding* rarity in contemporary times, the chances of the guy using an actual AK-47 is slim.
    It would be refreshing to see the gun media to use “Kalashnikov rifle” or just “AK” instead of “AK47”.

  3. Well, according to one of our resident trolls this never happens anywhere but America. And then it happens thousands of times a day.

    • Correction: It never happens in any developed countries. That way they can say it doesn’t count in any country that it does happen in because that isn’t a developed country.

      • Yup. Everyone knows that France and Belgium are third world hellholes, rife with druglords and corruption.

        • Well, when all else fails, just say that if they didn’t have such strict gun control laws, it would happen EVEN MORE!

      • That must be where that old philosophical riddle, “If a 7.62 round shatters someone’s skull in an undeveloped country, does it make a sound?”, comes from.

  4. Given the abundance of AK-pattern weapons in that part of the world, this is about like saying “He got wet in the rain.”

  5. After hearing about this last night before bed, I had an odd dream where I had to defend myself in some sort of gun battle. Everyone knows how strange dreams are. Well anyway, I actually own an AK47 variant, an Arsenal SAM7R
    So in the dream, I went to shoot the bad guy and all that came out of my AK was WATER. In the dream I was so pissed. WATER!!

    • I’ve had similar dreams where either the bullet simply hit the floor like a dropped coin, or the trigger was do mechanically heavy that I could not use the gun.

        • @ jwm
          Yeah, but even then, I ALWAYS wake up before I stick it in. I really hate that!
          It seems that in a dream, guys can never win. 🙁

      • I had a dream the other night that I was fighting in Europe in WWII and I had an 03A3, but I kept missing and couldn’t work the bolt fast enough, and there were a bunch of German armored vehicles bearing down on us.
        I actually have had a bullet just poof out of the barrel and flop on the floor from a batch of Tulammo Gold 9mm. That crap is the worst.

      • A trigger too mechanically heavy to use? You weren’t dreaming. You’re just in the NYPD…

    • There is a video that touches on this on the intertubes but I can’t find it right now. My dreams are much more realistic and scary. I dreamt the other night I was clearing my AR and put two round through the wall of my house into the house next door. The cops were looking for me and I was freaking out.

  6. “He then shot dead a policeman stationed outside before storming in and opening fire with an assault rifle.”

    But nobody else needs a gun, of course. The police will protect you. Not much.

    I can never figure out why so many people want to be part of such a large, helpless crowd. In a war zone yet already.

  9. Nightclub killers prefer petrol here in Australia and in many other countries. So obviously those people are not “really dead”
    or somehow are totally ignored by the media.

    My favourite question to antis or people who think guns are bad is what is the second biggest massacre after the Port Authur shooting. No one ever mentions the two fires with 15 dead.

  11. “In Turkey civilians are not allowed to process semiautomatic weapons”…like Anus Akbar who assassinated the Russian the other week?!? I wonder if this is another inside job. Evil un-Moose-lim partyiers comes to mind…

  12. For future reference, the words “Islamic” and “civilization” do not belong in the same year, much less the same post.

  13. “In Turkey, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms and semi-automatic firearms”

    ‘Cause keeping guns out of the hands of ordinary citizens does WONDERS as far as stopping crime goes!

  14. Just like our nightclub shooting, the gunman takes out the lone cop guarding the facility. I’m kinda surprised by the poor police presence on NYE.

    And, the guy is able to shoot over seventy people, so we are looking at two mag changes, plus time to aim and shoot. I’m thinking his rampage lasted at least two minutes.

  15. What’s fascinating is how little buzz this story is getting. Mariah Carey’s lip syncing has gotten more ink. This is another shooting that doesn’t fit the narrative, so under the rug it goes.

  16. When I was in Turkey some 20 years ago, military and police everywhere heavily armed. We felt pretty safe. I don’t know what it is like now especially after the recent coup attempt. We did a lot of international traveling back then for work and pleasure. Based on what I saw then and what I see now, the world is a much less safe place. There was a time that if you were an American in a foreign country, you wanted to keep a low profile as you were the preferred target for kidnapping and murder. Now it doesn’t matter who you are. These murdering bastards don’t care. They just want to kill people. They don’t stop to ask what nationality or religion you are. They (ISIS and their like) must be exterminated.

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