By: Alicia Chen

On June 25th, a 42-year-old man classified as having mental illness caused a mass shooting at a gay bar. Protestors walked the streets with rainbow flags, a sign of pride in the LGBTQ+ community. Police were questioning if the pride parade was the sole target of this shooting or if there were other motives.

On this day, 21 people were wounded and 2 people were dead because of this mass shooting. The gay bar was only one of the targeted locations. This shooting is classified as an example of Islamic terrorism. Eyewitnesses say that this man pulled a weapon out of his bag, forcing people to flee from the scene. When the police arrived, they found two guns on him, one of them being fully automatic.

An eyewitness said that he had stood on the shooter’s gun while the shooter was being tackled by four people. At the time, his gun was still on the ground. The eyewitness stated, “My thought then was to run and stand on it, so that no one would come.”

The suspect was classified as a Norwegian man of Iranian descent, known as Zanier Matapour. His lawyer, John Christopher Elden, says that there is no way to draw conclusions about the reason of this crime. Even though this might be true, the police still state that “There is reason to think that this may be a hate crime.”

As a result of all this, the pride parade that was scheduled soon after was cancelled. But at the service, Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Stoere, said that calling the pride parade off did not call off the fight “against discrimination, prejudice, and hate.”

The memorial was held at Oslo Cathedral to honor and remember the victims of this shooting. The Head of the Norwegian Protestant Church, Olav Tyfske Tveit said, “diversity is a gift, a richness, and many gay people have capacity for love that we do not,” he continued, “Bullets cannot kill love.”