Massacre in Orlando

The carnage at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, is the worst incident fatality-wise in American history. Fifty are dead and 53 injured, some of them perhaps mortally so. The killer was a 29-year-old American of Afghan parentage who had been on the FBI radar twice in the last five years. He bought at least one of the guns he used two days before the incident legally, and is alleged to have made a 911 call before the shooting started which claimed his affiliation to Islamic State (IS) — a claim that remains unfounded despite being quickly ‘owned’ by IS. By virtue of some very sketchy evidence, the incident is being labelled as “terrorist” rather than a hate crime and much is yet to be revealed. Whatever the motivations were and they remain far from clear, there is every possibility that the religion of the perpetrator may fan even more inimical feelings in the West against Muslims. One shouldn’t be surprised if this tragedy is used by Islamophobes to make things even more difficult for Muslims and immigrants living in the Western world. It took presidential candidate Donald Trump less than a day to use the incident to rail against immigrants coming into the US from the Middle East.



Another thing that is completely clear is that nothing is going to change in respect of gun regulation in America as a consequence of the Orlando shooting. The defining moment, the point at which America could have had a collective change of heart and mind about guns, was the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012. Twenty schoolchildren aged 6-7 and six adults were killed in that tragedy. That nothing changed as a result of that was an empowering moment for the powerful gun lobby that will be closing ranks even as these words are written. There is no grassroots movement lobbying for changes to gun legislation, and American legislatures have consistently voted against changes, including the mandatory background check that may have prevented the latest massacre, for decades. President Obama has now appeared 15 times in the course of his presidency to mourn the victims of gun violence, and has tagged his failure to be able to change anything during his tenure as his greatest sorrow. The massacre will inevitably impact the presidential electoral campaign. The dead will be buried. Some wounded will recover. The news cycle will move on, but nothing will have changed in America.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2016.

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