I spent last week at the annual Canadian Society for Chemistry Conference. As such, I was focused on my work and interests. I did not spend a lot of time watching the news or paying attention to the world outside of chemistry.
On Sunday, flying back from the conference, I walked into the Toronto Airport and saw displayed on a monitor: "Worst Mass Shooting in U.S. History."
There are so many ways that is wrong it is difficult to know where to begin.
How is it that our neighbours to the south have developed a culture in which there have been enough mass shootings that they can be characterized by their severity? Shouldn't all mass shootings be the worst thing that can happen? How can we have a scale of mass shootings?
How can there be so many that we are becoming culturally numb to the atrocity that is a mass killing?
I say "we" because these events are no longer simply an issue for one country and one people. They are happening around the globe as witnessed by the rampage in Paris not so long ago. No one is immune. Nowhere is safe.
It is easy to pass this particular act of violence off as terrorism. Indeed, Donald Trump already has, with a tweet reading: "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism. I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!"
But this particular attack appears to be more about homophobia than terror. If the preliminary reports are to be believed, the attacker in this case chose to act out of religious zealousness. It was an attack made in the name of ISIS but at a targeted population because of their sexual orientation.
In any case, the attacker had legally obtained the weapons and the ammunition. Nothing in the present U.S. laws prevented him from acquiring everything he needed to pull off the attack. No trigger bells were ringing in Homeland Security. No NSA surveillance warning of a dangerous terrorist cell.
The notion of "toughness & vigilance" plays good on the campaign trail but would it really have stopped this incident? Would it have saved all of those lives?
The essence of terrorism is that anyone can do it. It doesn't take an army. It doesn't take a supply chain. It doesn't even require a whole lot of training. It simply requires the will to rain mass destruction on the population in the name of some cause.
How can you stop that? No matter how tough you make the laws, in the end, the terrorist win.
The object of terror is to incite in the general population fear. It is to cause a country or a population or a group or whomever to live in terror. To live in fear for their lives every day because that is how the terrorists win.
If we allow the terrorists to change our lives, to change the way we behave towards each other, to alter our laws and close our borders, to live in suspicion of our neighbours and fear of anyone we don't know, then they win.
This attack shouldn't change who we are except to deepen our resolve to ensure we do not allow such attacks to destroy who we are as a people.
This attack should also remind us that who someone chooses to love is their business. Love is love. There is a shortage of it in the world and if two people can find happiness together, who are we to judge?
In Canada, we recognize this legally through laws allowing same sex marriages. It is strange that we have to "allow" such marriages. It is also strange that in a society where many couples - both homosexual and heterosexual - are eschewing the necessity of a public display of commitment in the form of a wedding and marriage certificate that this is still an issue.
Love is love. It shouldn't matter what anyone else is doing. How others lead their lives is not important. It is how we lead our own lives that matters. Finding someone to love is one of our basic urges. It is difficult enough that we should all respect the choices made by others.
The terror attack - the mass shooting, the mayhem in Orlando, whatever you want to call it - should never have happened. Too many people lost their lives for no reason other than the intolerance of one man.
But such attacks are increasingly common.
Maybe it is time to recognize the one rule found in all religions of the world: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Or maybe the more secular version is better: "Live and let live." I would only add "Love and let love."
