It is really disheartening to note that the real tragedy of the Orlando massacre has been totally overlooked. We see this human disaster in terms of the sexual orientation of the victims, to the Isis affiliation of the shooter, and no one is yet to utter a word on the fact that once more we feel the pain of the dreaded firearm; the most destructive element on God's earth today.
It is often said that guns don't kill people, people do. But put a gun like an AR-15 assault rifle in the hands of a crazed, misguided young man and we see the result.
Fifty people struck down in one night; young people in the prime of their lives no doubt with hopes of a bright future, all snuffed out by a deadly weapon in the wrong hands.
What more will it take for our world leaders to come together and finally outlaw firearms. They serve absolutely no useful purpose to humanity. They do not serve to build anything, they do not inspire ideas for our development, nor do they solve problems.
Firearms are only capable of one thing and that is to destroy life.
Here in Trinidad we live in constant fear of becoming victims of the firearm, as daily our media reports another murder by the gun. Over 200 people killed for 2016, by the weapon of choice.
There is no disputing that murders will still take place even if there are no guns, but could you imagine a person like Omar Marteen, crazed as he might have been, entering the Pulse Nightclub armed with a cutlass and being able to kill fifty people at one time? I dare say he would not have made it past the door.
It is not the first time that the world had recoiled in horror at an event like this.
As it is recorded in US history, eleven such mass murders, the worst prior to Orlando being the Virgina Tech shooting where 32 persons died at the hands of Seung-Hui-Cho in 2007.
Certainly, we must be mindful that situations like these can only get baser as more sophisticated weapons surface all the time, and people with all manner of grievances try to solve their issues with the use of guns.
More than ever we must pay attention to these trends as we observe our police removing automatic weapons and hand grenades off our streets. Certainly, our islands are not immune to such brazen acts of violence.
So, while the LGBT community feels gravely offended by the response of our leaders and choose to look at this incident as an attack on the gay community, let us not fall into the trap of seeing this purely as a hate crime. It is another demonstration of our vulnerability to the ever increasing threats to life posed by the gun.
The Orlando memory will soon fade away, but the real tragedy will surely remain: firearms.
Garvin Cole
Tobago