The Complex Politics Behind the American Gay Bar Shooting

In the early hours of June 12, 2016, a shooting occurred at the Pulse gay bar, lasting for several hours and resulting in 50 dead and an equal number of people wounded. This was the most devastating shooting in American history. The bloodbath quickly became a focus of international discussion, especially regarding the series of profound contradictions that exist in American society and politics. In other words, this event was not just a simple, solitary instance of a shooting in a public space; it reflects America’s complicated domestic political thought as well as the international political setting. We can examine the complex politics behind the shooting from three angles.

The first angle is the tortuous contradiction between gun control and the right to bear arms in America. The tool the killer Omar Mateen used was a gun, and thus this tragic incident has again incited fierce debate in American society about gun control. Current President Barack Obama, the Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the Republican Party nominee Donald Trump all immediately voiced clear views on gun control. Obama remarked during a speech addressing the event, “This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be.” Hillary stated, “weapons of war have no place on our streets,” and even Trump eased his stance on gun control somewhat. However, while the pro-gun control crowd leads in public opinion, it is still difficult to say whether this event will alter the right to bear arms in America. In fact, it is not a coincidence that gun control and the right to bear arms are stuck in such an intractable struggle. Obama once hoped to save the people from this plight through gun control, and did take some action, but ultimately his efforts were to no avail.

According to relevant statistical data, from 2003 to 2014 there were over 310,000 cases of Americans killed in gun violence. In 2015, approximately 100,000 people were afflicted by non-criminal shootings. Moreover, Americans privately own roughly 300 million guns. One can imagine that were America to have strict gun control policies, the incident at Pulse would never have happened. The frequency of shootings is clearly an illness in American society, so why is implementing gun control so hard? There are a myriad factors at play here: the early American historical tradition of the militia, a fighting-fire-with-fire conception of justice, the freedom to use arms to resist the government, Constitutional guarantees, the efforts of the gun lobby, and the difficulties of collective social action. The pro-gun bloc bases its legal justification on the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, approved December 15, 1791, which reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” However, this liberal theory of gun ownership is meaningless in the face of the realities of bloodbaths. The grandest charge of authority is to protect the lives of the innocent, not emphasize the importance of guns, which may have been the goal over 200 years ago.

The second angle is the problems regarding the rights of homosexuals and the tolerance of society. Whether homosexuals do or do not have reasonable social rights, and how society ought to tolerate them — these are still quite difficult questions even in a place where attitudes regarding homosexuality are the most developed. The shooting took place at a gay bar, and the shooter’s target was the crowd of homosexuals. But news suggests that Mateen himself was a Muslim homosexual. Immediately, the homosexual nature of the event was revealed to all. The homosexuality that people speak of everyday is more accurately the LGBT population that includes many non-standard sexual orientations: lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people. Additionally, there are also intersex people who see themselves as LGBT. Respecting the sexual psychology of homosexuals, sympathizing with their social plight, affording them fair roles in society, and tolerating them — this has become politically correct in the United States and some other Western countries. Yet there remain many who detest homosexuality. As this shooting exposed the problems between homosexual rights and societal tolerance, it simultaneously reflected the clash between some Muslim immigrants in America and predominant Western values, the former of which have a fundamentally different view of political correctness. If it can be proven that Mateen was a Muslim homosexual, then his own conscience was the site of the acute battle between these values. Objectively speaking, American multiculturalism and diversity have not at all brought about a harmonious society.

The third angle is terrorist attacks and the international politics of U.S.-Islamic State group antagonism. America, the world’s mightiest hegemonic power, persistently falls into the midst of terrorist attacks that cannot be guarded against, revealing its Achilles’ heel. Obama stated that this shooting was “an act of terror and an act of hate,” and that “we’re all Americans, and we need to be looking after each other and protecting each other at all times in the face of this kind of terrible act.” A terror attack is not the same thing as terrorism per se, and it is not yet proven that this shooting was terrorist behavior. But judging from the circumstances of the cruel massacre, it was undoubtedly a terror attack, and moreover it was a terror attack that stemmed from deep-seated hatred. How can America, the lighthouse of Western democracy, be so deeply harmed by terrorist attacks from its domestic citizens? Perhaps it is not merely so simple as blaming it all on Muslim immigrants. In reality, native whites orchestrate most terrorist attacks in America. Typical examples include McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing, or the Charleston, North Carolina bloodbath in a black church committed by Dylan Roof, among others. Each of these instances of terror directed against strangers truly reflects an inherent societal danger. In terms of the present shooting, there is also the added layer of international politics — that is, the antagonistic relationship between the U.S. and the Islamic State group. Shortly before initiating the attack, Mateen dialed 911 and announced his loyalty to the Islamic State group, and in the process of the attack even shouted out “Allahu akbar!” Afterward, the media pointed out that the Islamic State group announced its responsibility for the attack via an encrypted cell phone app. The SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist organizations, offered a manuscript showing that the group announced the attack as being instigated by Islamic State group fighters. Such circumstances show the international political background behind the shooting, regardless of whether Mateen’s “jihadist spirit” was merely self-appointed. Of course, should we keep investigating, it would become clear that the Islamic State group is the abominable result of American post-Cold War policy in the Middle East, showing the risks of America’s guiding international political ideology.

In addition to the three perspectives above, the shooting at a gay bar in Orlando also carries with it even more political significance, especially in that it may influence the outcome of the American presidential election, as well as future policy on the Islamic State group and Muslim immigrants. After the shooting occurred, major American political figures, including President Obama and acting nominees Trump and Hillary, all scrambled to state their policy positions — the candidates hell-bent on winning all had to use this affair that all Americans were following to perform, and win even more votes. To take this shooting as a critical juncture to advance a ban on guns, promote social tolerance and the foundations of core American social values, and to strive for a better global counterterrorism atmosphere: such would be the best memorial for the dead.

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The author, Zhang Zhizhou, is professor of international relations at Beijing Language and Culture University, and a researcher at the China Going Global Collaborative Innovation Center.