Reply to How does the sexual preference of the Orlando shooter change the narrative?

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[quote=Anonymous]I think it adds a lot of nuance to the story, but I don't think it will matter to the people who are hell-bent on making it about either "Islamic terrorism" or gun violence.  This massacre is exactly the kind of situation where nuance in leadership is an asset...and there are absolutely no easy answers.  And there is a real question of how much it matters to understand the psychology of the perpetrator.

The narrative that's starting to make sense to me is that Omar Mateen was exploring his sexuality, but he lived in a family and culture where being gay is simply unacceptable.  Wanting to fit in, he started to turn to that culture more...and maybe started to feel a sense of belonging by identifying with the most radical elements of it.  Upon hearing the dog-whistle requests for lone-wolf action during Ramadan, and probably still feeling internally conflicted, he decided to carry out a massacre that he felt might earn him martyrdom and redeem his "sinful" behavior/feelings.  Being a "lone-wolf" without material ties to ISIL, it was the lax gun laws in this country that allowed him to so easily obtain the weapons he used for his attack.

To me, key problems here are:

- Marginalization of LGBTQ people in many religious communities, including Muslim ones.  Impossible to say whether he would have felt differently if American society at large were more accepting of LGBTQ people even if his Muslim community weren't...but that's not how things are so we will never know.  I think embracing tolerance, instead of further divisiveness, would help solve this problem.

- Easy access to information from ISIL leaders.  I think this is self-explanatory.  But I don't know the solution here, since I am not willing to accept the extent of the limitations on the First Amendment that would be required to prevent this.

- Easy access to weapons without sufficient constraints on who can buy them.  As a country, we already accept limitations to the Second Amendment (I don't see a lot of people clamoring for individual rights to own nuclear weapons even though the letter of the law says, "bear arms" not "guns").  So I think that maybe limiting the types of weapons, and certainly imposing better background checks and weapons tracking would help.  I'm conflicted in this case about the "no fly list" question, since that's a fairly broad list and I'm a pretty big fan of "due process".  I have far less problem with restricting the rights of convicted violent criminals or people who have a court-ordered restraining order against them to own guns...but Mateen, I believe, fell into neither category.

Finally, I'm coming around to maybe venues like night clubs should consider metal detectors.  I really hate the idea of a police state, and I would be really uncomfortable with metal detectors in all public places (e.g. Tyson's Mall), but maybe a night club is exactly the right place to have them.[/quote]

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