A lone gunman, identified as Omar Mateen, 29, of Port St. Lucie, Fla., without warning opened fire inside a popular gay nightclub in Orlando in the wee hours of Sunday morning as patrons were celebrating Pride Month. Mateen died in a gunfight with a SWAT team, but not before himself killing 50 patrons and wounding 53 others, many of them critically.

The massacre has shocked and outraged the nation and the world—and especially the LGBTQ community, which has been reporting an escalation in homophobia-related violence. The Orlando mass killings, however, are a new threshold in such violence, which is occurring in a carefully orchestrated climate, says Leid Stories.