The news broke Sunday morning that fifty people were gunned down inside the gay nightclub Pulse at around 2 a.m. In what looks to be a domestic terrorist attack, the gunman, now identified as Omar Mateen, opened fire on the unsuspecting crowd of dancers with an assault rifle, initially killing about 20, and critically wounding another 53. The incident then reportedly turned into a hostage situation, where police eventually gained control of the situation by storming the club and killing Mateen. Mateen’s father told reporters that he doesn’t believe that his son’s actions were motivated by religious ideology. NBC news reports that Mateen had both an active security guard license and a license to carry firearms.
When I heard of this situation the morning of, my heart immediately shattered at the devastation that will scar the Orlando community; survivors, the family members of loved ones injured or deceased, and the entire community of Orlando.
But as the headlines of a horrific mass shootings continues to appear on our TV and laptop screens about every few months, we are left to question whether or not everything is truly being done to prevent these atrocities. While it is still being debated whether the attack was an act of radical Islamic terrorism or a hate crime (or both), it still stands that our country, caught up in the rhetoric of the fa- right and far-left in today’s political climate, has rendered itself incapable of resolving issues such as gun safety policies without making every attempt to do so a battleground for party platforms.
Shortly after the news of the Orlando tragedy broke out, both Clinton, Trump, and countless other political leaders expressed their condolences over Twitter. Trump took the extra step of condemning President Obama in a tweet for not mentioning the words “radical Islamic terrorism” in his address to the nation even though at the time details were not fully known if the shooter was even Muslim. Regardless of the shooter’s religious affiliation, this does not speak for the ease with which he, an American citizen, attained an AR-15 type assault rifle within a few days.
Prejudice, whether incited by our friends, leaders, or relatives, continues to manifest itself in this horribly violent and persecutory wave of terror. And the only way to move past what happened in Orlando isn’t more “good guy” guns, isn’t hiding our sexual orientation, and isn’t slamming religious minorities with more hateful discourse. It's through shedding light on our problems in the U.S. caused by internalized fear and anger that even our legislators willfully partake in. But it's not just the corruption of Wall Street and Washington that’s bogging down this country’s ability to progress forward, it's the people who think they’re votes don’t matter and that the actions they have won’t somehow affect the broader public.
Most of us can recognize the fault within our system that isolates people and pushes them towards radical forms of retribution, but we must also see that the change needs to come from within our social groups. We lose sight of the fact that people who wreak havoc come from our own backyards, but now, in the face of tragedy, it's time to heal those affected by the shooting in Orlando and force our legislators to see that our lives are not an expendable part of the political game they are playing. Religion is not the enemy, and neither is ethnicity nor sexual orientation. It is fear; it's the internalized and irrational fear of something we don’t understand and that our authority figures, be they our parents, politicians or preachers, tell us we should fear. We are all capable of good, and we are all capable of great evil. The choice is ours to emulate the peace and love we wish to see in the world, and that's all we can really do.
