I was unsure about whether or not to do this post but it is something very close to my heart and I feel it is too important not to talk about. I want to add in a quick disclaimer that these are my own personal opinions gathered from the information I've read about the situation.
I want to write this post from three angles, the first being religion.
The shooter, Mateen, although the CIA found no links between him and ISIL swore allegiance to the organisation in a 911 call during the attacks and said he was committing this atrocious crime because of American bombing campaigns in Iraq.
I am of the opinion that an entire religion should not be deemed as dangerous because of the actions of a few extremists, even though these actions are horrendous. I'm sure you've read this a million times before but just as all Christians are not KKK members, not all Muslims are terrorists.
In fact, I find it a bit sad that a man who was so torn between his religion and his sexuality resulted in committing the worst mass shooting in modern US History. I have also said for a long time that religion is often a dated and old-fashioned mindset (again, not true for all who practice religion) and although I can understand how helpful and meaningful it is for some, I do believe it needs to be brought forward into modern times and beliefs.
Secondly, I want to discuss American gun laws. Any law-abiding citizen is allowed to own or carry a gun in the US. I understand the argument that some people are completely trustworthy with guns and should be allowed them. But after reading certain statistics it only seems logical to me that if the means of these mass shootings were taken away, the catastrophic amount of casualties would not exist. In all wars that have been fought by America since 1776, there have been 1.4 Million casualties. In household deaths caused by guns in America, there have been 1.4 million deaths since 1968. The same amount of Americans who died fighting in WWII is the same amount who have died by household firearms since 2001.
In the US, the most deaths caused by firearms are as a result of suicide, and so you also have to wonder that if US citizens could not access guns so easily, would there be such a volume of suicides? There's nothing much more I can actually say other than if Americans don't have such an easy access to firearms, then not as many people will be killed as a result of them.
Finally, I want to discuss what I believe to be the most important issue in this horrendous situation. The LGBTQIA community. For over 100 people to be killed and injured just because they were born with a certain type of sexuality is disgusting and so deeply upsetting. When will people understand that this is not a choice? That it is completely normal? That we need to move into the 21st Century and accept people for their contributions to the world, for their personalities and the energy they project to other people. This links back to my point about religion - for us to still not accept everyone in the LGBTQIA community because it should be a born-man loving a born-woman is such an old fashioned point. One of Mateen's 20+ lovers has come forward and said that the shootings were caused because he discovered one of his partners was HIV positive. Maybe if we spent less time practising hatred towards a huge community of people and more time educating children from day one that it is okay to not be straight, they would learn more about practising safe sex and protecting themselves from things like HIV and shootings like this would not happen.
We have identified homosexual behaviour in over 400 species of animals, homophobia only exists in one.
#WeAreOrlando.
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