My heart went out to Owen.
Everything indicates that this was a killing that targeted LGBT people in an LGBT place because they were LGBT and therefore their deaths were justified.
I was at a gay night just last week. It's held in a basement bar with just one big staircase down - I assume there must be a fire exit but I've never noticed it and don't know where it is. It's a reasonable size, but because of the layout of the club, you can see pretty much the entire venue from the bottom of the stairs. If someone came down those stairs with the kind of weapon used in this attack, there'd be no escape and no where to hide. I can visualise just how it would happen. I can think of all the people who were there - old friends, acquaintances, my wonderful girlfriend - who would be dead if someone else wanted to do what this killer did. Peaceful people, loving people, hardworking funloving normal people, all dead.
There is still a deep pool of hatred for gay people. There will be people that heard that news and thought the killer was right, that the killing was justified, that the victims deserved it, that they brought it on themselves. We need to acknowledge that that hate for LGBT people is still there, and it's dangerous, it's killing people, and it needs to be fought.
I have a lot of respect for Owen, I agree with the point he was making and why he needed to make it and why he had to leave when it was downplayed, dismissed and denied.