{"id":5203,"date":"2018-11-08T23:53:40","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T07:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=5203"},"modified":"2018-11-09T00:03:06","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T08:03:06","slug":"post1-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=5203","title":{"rendered":"“California Shooting Kills 12 at Country Music Bar, a Year After Las Vegas”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jose A. Del Real, Jennifer Medina and Tim Arango, Nov. 8, 2018<\/p>\n

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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. \u2014 Country music was blaring and beer was flowing. The Lakers game was on the television, and if revelers weren\u2019t line dancing they were playing pool. Then all of a sudden, into \u201cCollege Country Night!\u201d at the Borderline Bar & Grill stepped a man with a gun.<\/p>\n

Wearing dark clothing and a dark baseball cap, he set off smoke bombs to create confusion. He shot a security guard at the entrance and then opened fire into the crowd. Patrons dropped to the ground, dashed under tables, hid in the bathroom and ran for exits, stepping over bodies sprawled across the floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember looking back at one point to make sure he wasn\u2019t behind me,\u201d said Sarah DeSon, a 19-year-old college student.<\/p>\n

And as they raced for safety, many of them thought, Not again.<\/p>\n

Just last year, they had fled the same chaos \u2014 gunshots, bodies falling \u2014 in Las Vegas, at a country music festival where 58 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in modern American history. The Borderline, a popular hangout for country music fans, had become a place of solace for dozens of survivors of the Vegas massacre to come together for music, for healing and for remembering \u2014 \u201cto celebrate life,\u201d in the words of one.<\/p>\n

And now, at least some of them belong to a group that seems uniquely American: survivors of two mass shootings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the second time in about a year and a month that this has happened,\u201d Nicholas Champion, a fitness trainer from Southern California who posted a group photo on Facebook of Vegas survivors gathering at the Borderline in April, said in a television interview. \u201cI was at the Las Vegas Route 91 mass shooting as well as probably 50 or 60 others who were in the building at the same time as me tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

When a gunman opened fire at the Route 91 Festival in Las Vegas last year, Telemachus Orfanos somehow survived.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, though, he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was killed last night at Borderline,\u201d his mother, Susan Orfanos, said, speaking rapidly into the telephone. \u201cHe made it through Las Vegas, he came home. And he didn\u2019t come home last night, and the two words I want you to write are: Gun control. Right now \u2014 so that no one else goes through this. Can you do that? Can you do that for me? Gun control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Orfanos then hung up the telephone.<\/p>\n

The authorities said the gunman, Ian D. Long, 28, of Newbury Park, Calif., was found dead at the scene after killing 12 people including a sheriff\u2019s deputy, and being confronted by officers who had stormed the bar. Investigators said there was no clear motive. Mr. Long, a Marine Corps veteran who had served in Afghanistan, had apparently been wrestling with his own demons: officers responded to a disturbance at his home in April, and mental health specialists spoke to him about his military service after suspecting that he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But they decided he was not a danger to himself or others, and determined they could not force him to seek treatment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n