For all Americans, it is right and proper to stand with Orlando, and understand that the gay community there has, as have gays and lesbians worldwide, been the target of an unreasoning hatred and discrimination that continues to result in violent death.
While the widespread expressions of sympathy are certainly appropriate and well-meant, they do at their core very little to counter the larger issue- that hatred and violence in America is institutionalized, and that a hardcore of our citizenry, wrapping themselves in the Constitution, allow the public sales of weapons that serve no purpose than to kill our innocent fellows.
Xenophobic rhetoric does nothing but add to this climate of hate which, in this most recent incident, the gay and lesbian community has borne the brunt, but what of Sandy Hook? What of Virginia Tech? Terror was wrought by those whose unbalanced states of mind was given a means to an end by killing machines in the form of assault weapons easily obtained.
I grew up in a sporting family, where shotguns and rifles were around and used to hunt game. As a child, precedent to obtaining my first hunting license, I attended, along with my fellows, a hunter safety course prepared and sanctioned by the National Rifle Association. The takeaway from this course was- guns are lethal. There was no underlying political message, nothing to the effect that Americans have a sacred right to possess an assault rifle, an instrument of terror that, if used in its prescribed manner, could kill dozens of people with one sustained pull of the trigger.
What’s happened? Why do we now feel the political necessity to defend and continue without remorse to legally sanction the ease with which we are able to kill one another?
No one would deny the existence of enemies outside our borders, who, once inside, would seek to do harm. But that is beside the immediate point- what happened in Orlando, no matter how the story is spun, was mass murder committed with firearms purchased legally in this country.
The flags will soon be flown at full staff, the vigils will cease, and the gay freedom flag will be less prominent on social media. What will remain, though, unaffected by grief and mourning, is the ability to purchase assault rifles and the odds-on certainty of another Orlando.