The Orlando Shootings -- Ideology, Anti-LGBT Hate, and Deadly Weapons

The recent mass shooting in Orlando, Florida has led to another media frenzy, with a number of related topics being discussed and debated, though in many cases with very little real thought behind what is being said. Unsurprisingly, most Republicans, including their presumptive presidential nominee with the orange hair and repellant personality, have tried to make the shooting out to be entirely about “radical Islam” and in the case of DT(aka Donald Drumpf) about immigration as well. While purveyors of twisted Islamic fundamentalism like ISIS/Daesh or al Qaeda are certainly a menace, it is clearly an overstatement to claim that this one incident proves that they are the greatest threat the US faces, especially given the indications that the shooter’s direct ties to ISIS were rather flimsy at best. Before this shooting, more people had been killed in the US since 2001 by right wing extremists, including white supremacists and radical Christians, than by ones claiming to be Muslim jihadists, and we don’t hear Republicans talking about the threat from extreme right wingers or radical Christian fundamentalists. Should all right wing groups be put under strict surveillance because of Dylann Roof? Should all Christians be treated with suspicion because of Robert Dear? As for immigration, the shooter himself was native born, and statistically, an immigrant or a child of immigrants is not more likely to commit an act of this sort than a person whose ancestors came to the US many generations ago, so it’s equally absurd to use this one case to attack all immigrants and their children. What’s more, those of us who don’t live in simplistic worlds where everything is black and white realize that a lot of factors contribute to incidents like this, some of which have nothing to do with the shooter’s background, such as the easy availability of extremely dangerous weapons to violent people of all ideologies and ethnicities. What’s more, the fact that the targets of the attack were LGBT people arguably shows that he was motivated as much by the domestic political climate as the international one.

While some found it is easy to characterize the attack as a “terrorist attack” by a “radical Islamist”, that is at best a gross oversimplification, and in fact is very misleading if other factors are left out. It is true that the shooter himself tried to present it as being a terrorist attack on behalf of ISIS, and that he was a Muslim with a fundamentalist background. So to the extent that the shooter was motivated by his ideology and a genuine desire to aid ISIS in its war against the West (against everybody, really), then it was indeed a terrorist attack by a radical Islamist. But the evidence is that he was motivated by a number of things, some of which had nothing to do with ISIS. For one thing, it seems that he may not actually have been devoutly religious and may not even have known very much about the radical group he claimed to support. I’ve read that in his 911 call, aside from claiming allegiance to ISIS, he also claimed allegiance to Hezbollah. If so, that proves that he really was pretty clueless about the realities of Middle East politics, as Hezbollah is one of ISIS’s biggest enemies. Given that he was apparently mentally unstable and had a history of violence, it’s almost as if he was just randomly attaching himself to ISIS due to its notoriety, rather than any real dedication to its cause. In any case, the evidence indicates that unlike, for instance, the Charleston shootings, or the mass shooting in Norway some years back (both of which of course were committed by white males who were right wing extremists), this shooting was not solely and maybe not even mostly motivated by a definite, though twisted, political ideology.

One important fact that has to be kept in mind about the attack is that it targeted LGBT people, even though many Republicans managed to completely ignore this element of the attack in their reactions. Since the shooter seems to have been partly or even largely motivated by a hatred of gay people, this was unquestionably an anti-LGBT hate crime, whatever else it may have been. There are some indications that the shooter himself may have been secretly gay, in which case his inability to reconcile his true orientation with the homophobic ideology he had been raised under (his Afghan father, who immigrated to the US back when the Soviets were still in Afghanistan, is apparently a pro-Taliban fundamentalist) may been a major factor behind his mental problems and indeed may have been the biggest motivation for the attack. But while his own family background was that of an Islamic fundamentalist, it seems highly plausible that the anti-LGBT rhetoric that the right (mostly on the basis of a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity) has been spouting recently over issues such as same sex marriage and transgender rights reinforced his negative attitude toward LGBT people (and, if he really had tendencies in that direction himself, accentuated his self-hatred. While short of discovering specific evidence that he was influenced by such rhetoric it may be impossible to prove that he wouldn’t have committed the same crime if the attitude toward LGBT people outside of his own religious background had been one of universal tolerance and love, it is at least safe to say that some of the negative stuff that has been said about LGBT people by politicians and media figures on the right didn’t help. In any case, the fact that he deliberately targeted LGBT people in a climate where a significant number of prominent people have been making anti-LGBT remarks is as important to understanding the event as the fact that he made a confused claim to be acting on behalf of ISIS.

The uncertain degree to which the shooter was influenced directly or indirectly by religious fundamentalism (whether of the Islamic or Christian varieties) aside, in some ways this incident had as much in common with the mass murders in Aurora or Newton as with more obviously political shootings like those committed by people like Roof and Breivik. As noted above, those were committed by people with a clear though demented ideology. In this case, the perpetrator was considerably less coherent in his political beliefs, but seemingly suffered from mental issues, as did the shooters in Aurora and Newton. Also like those shooters he was able to easily obtain a weapon that is designed to kill large numbers in a very short period of time. The truth is, even a weapon such as a handgun is more likely to end up causing injury or death to its owner or someone close to them as it is to be actually used in defense, but it is possible to see how someone could rationalize purchasing one, or how those who get pleasure out of shooting animals from a safe distance might be able to rationalize purchase of a hunting rifle, but there is no even remotely reasonable rationalization for allowing ordinary people to buy weapons like the ones used in these shootings. Only paranoid fantasists with a very questionable grasp on reality could seriously think that they will ever need one for a Rambo-like stand against an army of attackers. Anything that can fire that many rounds in that short a period should not be available for sale to anybody, period. What’s more, people with a clear history of violence, including domestic violence (the ex-wife of the shooter in this case has said he abused her frequently, though my recollection is that she didn’t ever press charges against him), serious mental illnesses or ties to terrorist groups (and that should include the worst of the extreme right wing groups based in the US itself) should not be allowed to buy any guns at all. To prevent this, of course, every single gun sale has to involve a background check that must be passed before the gun can change hands. While neither of these steps can guarantee that shootings like the one in Orlando won’t happen again, they will certainly make them less frequent. What’s more, the second step (universal background checks) will noticeably reduce the vastly greater number of deaths resulting from domestic violence or suicide. What is certain is that toning down the anti-LGBT rhetoric and, even more, actually doing something to make it harder for dangerous people to buy dangerous weapons will go a lot farther toward making the US a safer place than handwringing about ISIS or hostile measures against Muslims or immigrants.