Police said the initial phone call about the shooting came just before midnight,and the suspect was apprehended within minutes.

The shooting brought back memories of the 2016 massacre at thePulse gay nightclub in Orlando,Florida,which resulted in the deaths of 49 people. And it occurred in a state that has experienced several notorious mass killings,including at Columbine High School in 1999,a movie theatre in suburban Denver in 2012 and at a Boulder supermarket last year.

It was the sixth mass killing this month and came in a year when the nation was shaken by the deaths of 21 people in a school shooting in Uvalde,Texas.

Attorney-General Merrick Garland was briefed on the shooting,Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said. The FBI was assisting but said the police department was leading the investigation.

President Joe Biden said that while the motive for the shootings was not yet clear,“we know that the LGBTQI+ community has been subjected to horrific hate violence in recent years.”

“Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence. Yet it happens far too often,” he said. “We must drive out the inequities that contribute to violence against LGBTQI+ people. We cannot and must not tolerate hate.”

Ryan Johnson,who lives near Club Q and was there last month,said it was one of only two night spots for the LGBTQ community in conservative-leaning Colorado Springs. “It’s kind of the go-to for pride,” the 26-year-old said,describing it as a medium-sized club.

When he got home early Sunday,he saw police cars crowding the streets.

“It just feels crazy,you hear about it and you don’t think it’ll happen and then it happens,” said Johnson. “You come to Colorado and feel safer than other parts of the country and then this happens.”

Robert Nichols,35,said he searched frantically on Sunday for a friend who had told him she would be at the club and hadn’t returned his calls. He said that led to some “anxiety-inducing” hours before seeing the friend’s car outside her home and deciding she was OK.

Although a motive wasn’t yet clear,nor were the gender identities of the victims,the incident came as anti-gay rhetoric has intensified by extremists.

“Club Q is devastated by the senseless attack on our community,” Club Q posted on its Facebook page. It said its prayers were with victims and families,adding:“We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.”

The CEO of a national LGBTQ-rights organisation,Kevin Jennings of Lambda Legal,reacted with a plea for tighter restrictions on guns.

“America’s toxic mix of bigotry and absurdly easy access to firearms means that such events are all too common and LGBTQ+ people,BIPOC communities,the Jewish community and other vulnerable populations pay the price again and again for our political leadership’s failure to act,” he said in a statement. “We must stand together to demand meaningful action before yet another tragedy strikes our nation.”

The shooting came during Transgender Awareness Week and hours before Sunday’s International Transgender Day of Remembrance,when events around the world are held to mourn and remember transgender people lost to violence. The Colorado Springs shooting was sure to bring special resonance to those events.

Club Q is a gay and lesbian nightclub that features a “Drag Diva Drag Show” on Saturdays,according to its website. In addition to the drag show,Club Q’s Facebook page said planned entertainment included a “punk and alternative show” preceding a birthday dance party,with a Sunday “all ages brunch”.

“You can draw a straight line from the false and vile rhetoric about LGBTQ people spread by extremists and amplified across social media,to the nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year,to the dozens of attacks on our community like this one,” Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s president and CEO,Sarah Kate Ellis,said in a statement published by theDenver Post.

Colorado Springs is a city of about 480,000 located about 112 kilometres south of Denver that is home to the US Air Force Academy,as well as Focus on the Family,a prominent evangelical Christian ministry.

In November 2015,three people were killed and eight wounded at a Planned Parenthood clinic in the city when authorities say a man opened fire because he wanted to wage “war” on the clinic because it performed abortions.

In June,31 members of the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front were arrested in Coeur d’Alene,Idaho,and charged with conspiracy to riot at a Pride event. Experts warned that extremist groups could see anti-gay rhetoric as a call to action.

The previous month,a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his small Boise congregation that gay,lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government,which lined up with similar sermons from a Texas fundamentalist pastor.

There have been 523 mass killings since 2006 resulting in 2727 deaths as of November 19,according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the US.

AP and Reuters

Our Breaking News Alertwillnotify you of significant breaking news when it happens.Get it here.