I’m going to be honest – this week has hurt a lot of people I love dearly. There have been a lot of blows, and I’m out of spoons. I’ve lost the ability to pull punches.

I have seen too many people bring up the Pulse gunman’s race, faith, and mental health as a way to explain away his actions – as a means of ending the conversation and silencing the voices of those seeking change.  Nor is this the first shooting people have done this for.  It is an old and tired and hurtful means of saying that the hate and anger, the horrific acts committed come from something alien and foreign.  Their hate is not the same as our hate.  We are not alike.  We are not responsible.

But we are.  Their hate is our hate.  We are alike.  We are responsible.

Yes.  I’ve heard that he pledged support to ISIS – but he also targeted a gay club, during PRIDE.

He was previously investigated for ties to ISIS – but his own father saw the homophobia he exhibited recently, his anger and hate.

At this point, it sounds like he did claim to support ISIS – but I REFUSE to let that derail the discussion. I refuse to let a radical branch of Islam – a branch that feeds off fear, hate, and death – be a stand-in for all of Islam.  It is not.  It is so far from the teachings of true Islam as to be laughable.  So I will not let Islam take the blame here. I am tired of people saying “Well, Islam” and then letting that be the end of the discussion, letting that justify their own bigotry.

I will not let ISIS be the end of the discussion either.  It is the easy way out, a way to blame the other. It is a way to excuse our own shortcomings and failures.

The shooter was born and raised in America, and I’m guessing that the racism, bias, anger and fear he faced HERE in THIS COUNTRY helped lead him into extremism. Perhaps he pledged support to ISIS, but his acts were fostered and fed by our own country. And even if he was pledging support to ISIS, I will absolutely call this a hate crime. When you target a marginalized group, in their own space – a space where they feel safe, welcome, and free to be themselves – that is absolutely a hate crime. I believe to my very core that recent hate speech – the actual *encouragement* of hate speech in this country of late, particularly in relation to the Trump campaign, has created an environment that breeds acts like this.

We live in a place and time where voicing our racism, when saying “go back to Mexico” or “We’re going to build a wall” or “this judge is biased because of his Mexican heritage” or Trump using this attack to say his anti-Islam rhetoric is justified… We live in a world where this is the DAILY HATE that marginalized and oppressed groups live with. This is the incubator of racism and bigotry we’ve created.

Perhaps he pledged support to ISIS, but this was a hate crime, a homophobic act. And whether or not he pledged support to ISIS or the Westboro baptist church, that is irrelevant in the discussion of gun control. When we’re talking about whether and how to restrict who can purchase a gun, and under what circumstances, and after what steps… whether or not an act was one of terrorism is not the point we need to be focusing on.

Whether or not he specifically got the gun illegally is also just a straw-man argument. That gun was gained legally somewhere along the line (in this case, all guns were obtained legally by the shooter himself). And if we start limiting what guns are legally obtainable, that means the number and type of guns that are *illegally* obtainable will have a bottleneck too. Saying “but it wasn’t obtained legally anyways” to dismiss a call for gun control is not a contribution to the discussion.

So.  Did the victim’s race, faith, and mental health play a role in what happened?  I’m sure they did.  But I am also absolutely sure that it’s only because this country allowed them to.  And while discussing the whys of a crime like this are important, using such simple, single-word answers as an excuse to shut down a conversation is silencing the voices of those working toward change.  It is allowing atrocities like this to happen, again and again.

My thoughts are with the family and friends of those killed and injured.  My thoughts and prayers are with the gay and latino communities of Orlando.  But my thoughts and prayers are not enough.  My thoughts and prayers do not foster change.  And change is what we need.

We need stricter gun control.  Guns kill more Americans than AIDS, war, and illegal drug overdoses combined.  We’ve mass shootings at movie theaters, clubs, businesses, and schools.  But gun violence isn’t strictly limited to mass shootings – it’s reporters being shot on camera, husbands and wives, children finding a parent’s fire arm.  It’s gang violence, and people protecting their homes.  It’s police officers shooting and getting shot.  It’s a widespread acceptance that the ownership of guns – all guns, as many as you want – is a right.  This is a uniquely American problem.

We need stricter laws regarding threats made online, via spaces like Facebook and Twitter.  We need to stop doxxing.  We need to better educate our law enforcement and ourselves as to what the current laws surrounding such attacks might even be.  We need to feel safe when we choose to speak out.

We need to change the way we speak – and the way we allow others to speak – about certain groups.  We need to stop fostering hate and fear.  We need to realize that things like not allowing gay men to donate blood is a fear-based act, a discriminatory act, and it too helps foster the idea of other, provides space for fear.  We need to confront our own moments of xenophobia, racism, bigotry, and overcome them.  We need to realize that verbally attacking accomplished young undocumented high school graduates on their way to college is insanity. We need to realize that telling people whose skin is a different color to “go back home” is hateful and horrific.  We need to stop allowing the acts of one extreme sect influence our views of a quarter of the world’s population.  We need to stop using slurs, stop saying someone deserved what happened.  No.  We need to build each other up.  We need to see the extremism in our own thoughts.  Because it’s there.  All those examples I just gave?  Those are the acts and thoughts and words of extremists.  They are the acts and thoughts and words of Americans.

We need to be heard.  We need to vote, to research the down ballot, to speak out via letters to public officials, attending local political meetings, and taking part in petitions and protests.  We need to recognize our own privilege when we have it, and fight for those who do not have the same privilege, so that their voices can be heard too.

I’ve run out of words.  We need change.