Last Sunday morning, Omar Mateen opened fire at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing at least 49 people and injuring 53 more.

During the attack, Mateen allegedly called 911 to pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State. Law enforcement arrived around 2am and after an almost three-hour standoff with dozens of hostages, at 5am “police opted to force entry into the club by using an explosive to breach the exterior cinder-block wall of a bathroom full of people near a bathroom” and rescued several hostages according to NPR.

Omar Mateen used the same military-style rifle, the AR-15, that Adam Lanza used to murder 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school in 2012. The AR-15 was also used at the Aurora theater shooting the same year and more recently at the San Bernardino terrorist attack according to NPR.

Rashmika Veturi (10) said, “There’s obviously a problem, the AR-15 and other assault rifles need to be banned. I believe the second amendment shouldn’t be taken away, but we need to control laws.”

Mateen was a licensed security officer and had a public firearm license since September 2011. He had been employed to the security contractor G4S since 2007.

G4S said, “Mateen was subject to detailed company screening when he was recruited in 2007 and re-screened in 2013 with no adverse findings” as well as subject to “checks by a U.S. law enforcement agency with no findings reported to G4S.”

  President Obama also commented on the shooting emphasizing that it does not appear Mateen was connected to an international terrorist group and stated “It’s important to emphasize that we’re still at the preliminary stages of the investigation, and there’s a lot more that we have to learn.  The one thing that we can say is that this is being treated as a terrorist investigation.  It appears that the shooter was inspired by various extremist information that was disseminated over the Internet.  All those materials are currently being searched, exploited so we will have a better sense of the pathway that the killer took in making the decision to launch this attack.”

  CBS reported that Mateen tried to spare black people. Patience Carter who was at Pulse nightclub during the shooting told CBS that Mateen asked “Are there any black people in here?” in the bathroom and went on to state “I don’t have a problem with black people, this is about my country. You guys suffered enough.”

  Andrew Gonzales (9) said, “Orlando went through a devastating tragedy, however we must look forward to what we must do to brighten our future for the younger generations.”