On June 12, 2016, a lone gunman, Omar Mateen, committed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, killing 49 people and wounding 58 others at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Mateen was subsequently killed by police. The shooting was classified as a hate crime, as most of the patrons of the Pulse nightclub were members of the LGBT community. It was also classified as an act of terrorism based on a claim of allegiance to the Islamic State that Mateen made during the shooting, although Mateen was born and raised in the United States and had no known formal ties to any terrorist organization.
Since the Pulse nightclub massacre, Congress has not taken any action to prevent future mass shootings or to stop the epidemic of gun violence that claims more than 90 lives on an average day in the United States. Please contact your elected representatives at the state and federal levels to demand stringent gun control laws comparable to the laws that have long been in place in every other high income democratic country of the world – countries in which mass shootings are rare or non-existent and in which overall rates of firearm related deaths are much lower than in the United States. See Dr. Durston’s June 11 President’s Message for more talking points. Click on this link for contact information for your elected representatives.