I’ve been doing that thing again where I read the news and feel a rant building…

You must have been under a rock not have read about the mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub on Sunday.

My friend told me that perhaps this wasn’t my issue to rant about, not my country, not my people. I actually agree with her to an extent, so I had decided to take the if you have nothing nice to say route. Then I read another Facebook status and another twitter feed and another news article. Then I got fed up. Honestly what the hell am I reading here? If I read the words “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” one more time I think I might puke. The fact is that it is guns that kill people. I don’t need to own an automatic assault rifle, guess what, neither do you or your next door neighbour. Take a look at the statistics, there were 372 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2015, killing 475 and wounding 1,870. A mass shooting being defined as an incident where 4 or more people are killed or wounded. 372, in a year with 365 days. If that doesn’t give you a reason to pause and wonder whether the US needs to address its gun control laws then I’m at a loss as to what will. How many more people have to die? How many more don’t get to come home from school, the cinema, the mall or a nightclub?
People I consider to be genuinely educated functioning members of society are writing things like “This is what happens when you turn against God.” Seriously? I don’t believe I ever read anything in the Bible that would justify the senseless killing of 50 people because they happen to love or have sex with someone with the same genitals as themselves. Nothing has ever moved me to believe that my God would want this to happen. If you believe your God accepts people being murdered for their sexual orientation then might I suggest you have another go at reading your bible, you appear to have missed rather large parts of it. Like wise if your religion tells you that you have nothing to condemn in Sunday nights atrocity it might be time to find a new one.
I’m pretty sick of reading things that appear to be trying to lessen what happened in Orlando. Lets blame ISIS, lets blame a mad man, it’s the fault of Islam, not ours, never ours. Lets blame anyone except ourselves and things we accept every day. It makes me angry and sad that we still live in a world where the first thing I read wasn’t that 50 people had died but 50 gay people died, like being gay is different, like it’s a reason for dying in a nightclub.
We have to start standing up, we have to say stop making excuses. There is no reasoning behind an act like this, there is no justification and we need to stop trying to find one. We need to make it harder for this to happen again. Gun controls, tightening of ownership laws, the ban of all automatic weapons. This is what needs to happen and it needs to happen now. While the NRA are shouting about the right to bare arms (do you all really believe there is a bad man round every corner or that the British might invade?) there are people mourning their loved ones in yet another act of gun violence. How does someone look at the numbers of dead and still believe its every mans right to a gun?
The people of the US have a right to be proud of their founding fathers and what they stood for but I can not accept that what you have today is what they would have wanted.