Post-Orlando: Focus on amending gun laws

For many reasons, the post-Orlando massacre developments in the United States have been different from previous acts of terror in the country involving Muslims. The massacre by Omar Mateen, 29, was the worst in US history when he alone gunned down 49 and injured 50 more in an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida at night after 2:00 am. Americans woke up the next morning with most of the gory details already on TV when it was also evident that the perpetrator was a Muslim.

But surprisingly there were some clearly discernible new trends in the way the US media covered the ghastly terror attack. The tendency in the past where the perpetrators were Muslims was to lay all the blame at the door of Islam. This was missing this time. President Obama, who went on air a few hours after the massacre with facts at hand, stated clearly that the attack was an act of terrorism where the perpetrator had no contact with ISIS or any other international terror groups espousing radical Islam. 

The President had another clear message for Americans, one that he has been making every time there has been a mass massacre in the country. He had done that after the Sandy Hook massacre when a white youth had killed 24 in a school of whom the majority were elementary school kids and San Bernardino incident last year where the killers were Muslims. This time, he was more forcefully than ever in underlining unequivocally that a lot of these terrorist massacres could have been very easily avoided had there been stricter and more logical and civilised gun laws in the United States. As facts about Omar Mateen were revealed, it was evident that he was under FBI investigation and was questioned twice by the same agency. Yet he was able to buy an assault weapon that is extremely deadly and very easy to use without any questions asked! He was able to enter the nightclub without any fear or without any check and gunned down his victims with unbelievable ease.

At the beginning of the investigation there was information in the media that Omar Mateen was a hater of the LGBT to establish his ideological links with ISIS that had killed many gays in territories being held by them. It was later revealed that he had frequented the LGBT nightclub where he committed his crime many times before and some regulars in that club even made suggestions that he was himself gay. He had not revealed any Islamic fundamentalist views and whatever views he had exposed on Radical Islam were out of total ignorance.

Thus he had pledged allegiance to ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah all at the same time, blissfully unaware and ignorant like most white Americans that these three terror organisations are locked in mutual fight worse than the one in the minds of Americans about ISIS. By his wife's admission, he was not even religious. He was also "racist towards blacks, Latinos and other minority communities." Finally, his mental state has figured as one of the plausible reasons that led him to commit the crime. In the past, the mental state of the perpetrator of terrorist attacks has never been considered as a cause of his action if he happened to be a Muslim. 

Against the restrained nature of media coverage of USA's worst terrorist act in the context of Radical Islam, Donald Trump went to media in his narcissistic fashion and claimed that Omar Mateen had carried out his prophecy about Islam and Muslims. He again reiterated his ban-Muslim call; this time stressing that henceforth no Muslim should be allowed immigration to the USA. The more he boasted about his prediction about Islam and Muslims with the Omar Mateen case, the more it was revealed that if anything, the perpetrator was a Muslim by name only who had no contacts with Radical Islamic terrorist groups and had very confused views of Radical Islam.

Instead with each passing day after the Orlando massacre, the focus shifted towards the unbelievable nature of gun laws in the USA under the stranglehold of the National Rifle Association (NRA) on the Republican Party. Repeatedly with President Obama taking the lead and Hillary Clinton echoing it, the focus shifted on the fact that under NRA's influence, the Republican-dominated Congress has no qualms in allowing those on FBI's terrorist watch list to buy assault weapons effortlessly where such individuals are not allowed anywhere in the country to fly airplanes. Thus they coined the phrase "no-fly, no buy" slogan that has now resonated in the hearts and the minds of the overwhelming majority of the people of the country as it has been unequivocally established that the terrorist attack in Orlando and earlier one in San Bernardino involving Muslims would not have taken if "no fly, no buy" rule was in place for buyers of assault weapons.

The view that is now emerging in the mainstream of US politics is that the Republican Party and the NRA has used Radical Islam to strengthen the argument for unrestricted gun laws. As a result, non-Muslim terrorists who have carried out the overwhelming majority of the terrorist acts in the country in recent times (last year only two of the over 350 terrorist acts in the country were carried out by Muslims!) found buying assault weapons as easy as buying any consumer items of the shelf in the market.

It was left to the one of the longest filibustering in US history by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy to drive this point home. He said that he could not let innocents be slaughtered anymore while the Senate remained unconcerned fearing the NRA in amending the country's gun laws. His nearly 14 hours' filibustering last week finally succeeded in softening the hearts of his Republican colleagues in the Republican-dominated Congress to agree to allow votes on two amendments to the existing gun laws that they refused to even discuss before let alone allow a vote. These amendments are, first, to ban individuals on the terrorist watch list from buying guns or the "no fly, no buy" demand, and second, to expand background checks for guns purchased on the Internet and gun shows.

An ISIS video released recently should put some more sense to the Republican Senators to adopt the amendments. The video addressed ISIS supporters not to expect any help from them or to go to ISIS territory to fight for the Caliphate. It asked them to exploit the US gun laws and kill and although it did not mention Omar Mateen's act or claim credit for it, it is a message that many mentally ill Omar Mateen's in the US could follow under the existing US gun laws.

This is a grave and dangerous message but one as easy as done to overcome. Senator Murphy's proposed amendment is all that would be required to deal with not just to stop acts like Mateen Omar's but also similar acts of terror that occur almost on a daily basis in the United States in the hands of non-Muslim terrorists. It defies common sense that no one considered this simplest way out and instead over-exaggerated the potential of ISIS to place the country in perpetual fear. ISIS never had that potential and never will have but un-amended US gun laws always had that potential established by Omar Mateen, a handful of Muslims and many hundreds and thousands of non-Muslim American terrorists. The answer to US fear of ISIS as established by the Orlando massacre is thus not in Islam or Radical Islam but in amending the US gun laws that as ISIS has found out are unbelievably friendly to their objective to strike terror in the hearts of most Americans with nothing but propaganda.

POSTSCRIPT: Donald Trump's weird statements after Orlando notwithstanding, the LGBT community in Orlando and the USA did not utter even one word of hatred for Muslims or Islam. Their message was one of love to overcome their tragedy. It was another Muslim, Imran Yusuf, whose experience in Afghanistan as a marine and heroism helped save 60-70 lives. He was working at the Orlando nightclub as a bouncer. 

The writer is a retired Ambassador. 

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