At approximately 2:00AM Sunday morning, a gunman entered Pulse-a gay nightclub in Orlando-and opened fire with an assault rifle and a pistol. He killed 50 people, and left another 53 wounded. After the initial assault, the gunman held hostages inside the club until 5:00AM. Law enforcement officials, let by a SWAT team, then raided the club with an armored vehicle and explosives. The gunman-Omar Mateen-then engaged in a shootout with over a dozen law enforcement officers before being shot and killed. It is the worst mass shooting perpetrated by a single gunman in American history, with a larger death toll than San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, or Virginia Tech - it is simultaneously the most deadly hate crime committed against the LGBT community in the United States.
Mateen declared alliance with the Islamic State in a 911 call preceding the attack, and ISIS has declared that he was one of their operatives. However, there is no evidence of Mateen having any contact with ISIS. It is more likely that he was "self-radicalized", as was the case with the perpetrators of the shooting at San Bernardino. Mateen had previously been investigated by the FBI, and remained on at least one watch list - he had a history of racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and homophobic behavior. Regardless, he was able to legally purchase an assault weapon. President Obama, in his speech following the attack, focused on this aspect's role in facilitating acts of terror in the United States. "This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or a house of worship or a movie theater or a nightclub," the President stated. "We have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be. To actively do nothing is a decision as well." Obama continues to advocate for what he calls "common-sense gun laws," which, despite being supported by the majority of the population, have been stopped by lobby groups such as the NRA and their constituents.
Media coverage of the attack has centered largely on Mateen's supposed ties to ISIS and the threat of radical Islam. However, the gunman was born in New York-he was an American. American Muslim groups have condemned the shooting: Rasha Mubarak, the Orlando regional coordinator of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has stated, "The Muslim community joins our fellow Americans in repudiating anyone or any group that would claim to justify or excuse such an appalling act of violence." That Mateen committed mass murder during the holy month of Ramadan only further demonstrates his separation from the core values of Islam. The assault was far more the result of a culmination of three other factors: homophobia, racism (Sunday night was Latinx night at Pulse, and the majority of Mateen's victims were Hispanic) and extraordinarily lax gun laws. Public outcry against the latter has increased notably in the wake of the attack. Only time will tell whether this latest mass shooting will be the final straw in driving the creation of stricter gun laws in the United States.
