The Orlando gay club shooting was a hoax.

My opponent has listed several criteria that proves a false flag, including a high profile event, changing stories, ulterior motives, a convenient scapegoat, etc. However not all events that have these factors qualify as false flags. I can think of innumerable examples, but let's start with the OJ Simpson trial. The murder of Nicole Simpson was a high profile event with changing stories, ulterior motives, a convenient scapegoat, etc. yet that was not a false flag. President Bill Clinton's multiple affairs reveal high profile events with changing stories, questionable motives, a connection to politicians, the media promoting a specific narrative, etc. and again that was not a false flag. So just because an event has some elements of a false flag, doesn't mean that a false flag exists. Pro has the burden of proving that this incident, specifically, is a false flag beyond that criteria. My opponent has said that the "bouncer" Luis Barbano is an actor; however, Barbano was not the bouncer. Adam Gruler, an Orlando police officer working security for Pulse nightclub that night, traded gunshots with the gunman near the club"s entrance [1]. The fact that patron Luis Barbano is an actor is not relevant or credible, considering many young people in thriving cities are hopeful actors. More importantly, Pro was only able to cite a single actor out of the hundreds of patrons. This actor (nor any other) has come forward to suggest any conspiracy. It's not surprising that there was conflicting information that emerged immediately after the attack. This is common in today's society because social media is increasingly used to report the news. This means untrained, non-professional people are sharing information without knowing how to properly fact check or vet sources. A number of social media items were rapidly spread in the shooting's aftermath, ranging from mostly true to entirely false. Pro has not proven that the false information that was being spread was intentionally being spread to promote misinformation. According to Snopes, rumors of that stripe reflect a number of reactions to tragic acts of violence, helping to dissipate fear by providing citizens with a sense of security from being "in the know." On the shooter, Pro acknowledges that Omar Mateen was making several calls to 911 and media stations while shooting. This has already lost Pro the entire debate considering he acknowledges that the massacre took place, and therefore could not be a hoax. But let's assume Pro is saying that by "hoax" he means false flag operation. He's suggested that it would not be possible for Mateen to be as successful as he was. However "If confronted with danger during egress, most occupants will flee with little regard for where their flight takes them. In nightclubs in particular, this is dangerous because of poor lighting, potential slip or trip hazards, and the dense crowds common to the occupancy type. Nightclubs are also very distracting environments which makes it more difficult for occupants to detect emergencies in the first place" [2]. "The preliminary eyewitness accounts seem to indicate the shooter entered the club and opened fire somewhere on the main dance floor targeting the bar. One common thread between most of the eyewitness accounts and videos is that many patrons of the club didn"t realize anything was happening at first due to the club"s distracting environment... Once the crowd realizes there is shooting though, people panic. On top of the poor lighting, every fallen victim is a trip hazard for the fleeing survivors. This is another case where most of the crowd can not attempt to incapacitate the shooter simply due to crowd movement; if you"re in the middle of the crowd, you"re moving with it" [2]. It takes just just a few seconds to swap magazines. Manuals for similar weapons state an effective firing rate of 45 rounds per minute, but if he was just spraying around and didn"t care about accuracy, he could have been shooting considerably faster than that. There is allegedly audio where you can hear Mateen shoot 24 rounds in 9 seconds [3]. [1] http://www.factcheck.org... [2] https://www.quora.com... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com...