Orlando is like a second home to me. I lived there for five years and I return there often to visit friends and familiar haunts. It’s a wonderful city that attracts visitors from around the world. Everyone is welcome there. Among my friends in Orlando are members of the thriving LGBT community that has contributed greatly to the business and cultural richness of the city. Therefore, it was with profound sadness that I’ve been reading the headlines reporting the mass shooting that occurred there early Sunday morning.
I don’t know what motivates one human-being to decide to pick-up an assault rifle and walk into a nightclub and shoot over 100 people, killing 50. International terrorism? Homophobia? Mental Illness? I’m sure we will get many expert opinions on the motives of the killer in the coming days. Sadly, these opinions won’t really help much. The many dead will remain lost to us forever, their loved one’s hearts shattered with grief, and the many wounded will struggle as they find their lives and bodies forever changed.
The killer is dead. There will be no arrest, not trial, no reckoning. Just speculation as to why it happened and the discomfort of knowing that in modern America we can be assured it will happen again and again.