All you need to know about the Orlando shooting

In the latest series of the abuse of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of USA, 49 innocents have been murdered and 53 injured at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida on Saturday June 12 in the early hours. It was the deadliest terror attack to have happened to the citizens of America since the 9/11 terror attacks. The attacker had been identified as Omar Mateen, who was described as ‘calm and composed’ while carrying out this horrific act and claimed allegiance to ISIS.
What had happened was that the gunman carried with him an assault rifle and a pistol inside the nightclub which was hosting a “Latin Night” and began shooting the club’s patrons, after evading a police officer who opened fire on him on the streets. He had stopped once the rifle got jammed and took the survivors hostage. He’d then made a 911 call in which he expressed sympathy to the Boston Marathon bombers. What was extremely worrying was he was a “home-grown extremist” and was inspired by such material on the internet. The fact was that Omar had claimed allegiance to ISIS even though he was not directed by it. He was finally killed by the police after a tense three-hour battle.

Presidential candidates have also had their say on this matter. Donald Trump had predictably condoned Obama for not terming such attacks as “radical Islam”, leaving no doubt on his stance that “all Muslim immigrants pose potential threats to American security” while Hillary Clinton took a much broader view, and also stated that such immigration laws as proposed by Mr.Trump would be counterproductive and is offensive.
But attacks against the Unites States seem to have a common thread – one in which the culprits have condemned their foreign policy, whose consequences have heavily affected the people of not Syria alone but countries like Pakistan also with unnecessary drone strikes.

Never mind that this was an attack on the LGBT community, it was an attack on what America stands for – liberty and freedom to do as its citizens wish. It serves to remind us of a similar attack in Paris which undermined the very values of the place in which it took place just half a year back. Maybe this was what the terrorists had planned – to shake the very foundations upon which a country was built, so that a feeling of terror gets rooted within us. One should not abandon their beliefs in such situations as Barack Obama told during his address. It would be a victory to the terrorists otherwise.

The “gun culture” that America is famous for seems to have backfired. Most states in America don’t have compulsory background checks of the buyers which makes owning military grade weapons easier than it ought to be. Further, having such lethal weapons in their possession, gun owners act irresponsibly by not ensuring proper safety measures surrounding their usage are in place. Alas, all of this not only makes easier what such extremists set out to do, but has created situations of deaths which are purely accidental.

– Sriram Raghavan