In the hours after the massacre at Pulse in Orlando on June 12, 2016, LGBT people worldwide gathered in silent horror. Omar Mateen had come into the only traditionally ‘safe’ gay space, a nightclub, to shoot 49 of us down in a senseless rampage. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in the US since 9/11, the deadliest mass shooting in American history – and the deadliest-ever assault against LGBTs.
The US is obsessed with terrorists, but indifferent to the tools they use most. In 2015, ISIS-inspired and white-nationalist gunmen shot and killed four people in Chattanooga, nine in Charleston, and 14 in San Bernardino. Yet the National Rifle Association and its puppets in Congress – locked with the gun manufacturers in a bloody chain of death – block even the most common-sense reforms, like universal background checks and bans on assault-style weapons. Our laws make it alarmingly easy for a mass shooter, that uniquely American character, to stockpile deadly weapons.