The worst mass shooting in America in a long time, this event is undoubtedly one that many communities will never forget. Researchers and police are still looking into the reasons behind this horrific crime, but there are a few discovered connections that I would like to point out.

Like many shootings that take place on a daily basis in the US, this was an act of hate and affliction that the individual had tried to bury for way too long. Omar Mateen was married with his second wife at the time of the shooting, yet he was recognized by members of the Pulse club and a popular gay dating app(s). This suggests that, while he has had a personal connection with the gay, and possibly LGBT, community for some time, he has tried to lead a normal life with his wife and child. Whether he was trying to hide his true sexuality from his family or trying to deny it himself, Mateen attacked a place where an LGBT individual like him would supposedly find solace. This is what confuses me the most at this point.

Though it has been revealed that Mateen called 911 and pledged his alliance to ISIS shortly before the shooting, this piece does not add up… at all. Though his abusive history (towards his ex-wife) and his suicidal tendencies do clearly suggest that he had something sinister going on inside him, I feel that his pledge to ISIS was both last-minute and unprecedented. His LGBT tendencies and chaotic personal life lead me to believe that this was an act that he tried to cover up with something more… ‘relatable’, something more external.

What makes me so mad is that America should have these kinds of shootings as one of their top safety priorities in every part of the country right now. If you look into the details of this shooting, it wasn’t another “no one could have predicted this” situation. Police and presumably some people close to him all had reasons to suspect that he was going to act on whatever grudge he was holding sometime in the coming future. His wife, for instance, went with Mateen to buy the gun he used to kill 49 people and consciously knew about the attack. Yet, no one acted until it was too late. Like always.

America is so good at informing the whole wide world of every single thing that goes on in the great country of theirs, investing every penny into perfecting their news sites, getting the best journalists and writers and whatnot, but more often than not do they help prevent these situations from happening. Everyone may as well be sitting on the ambulances, police stations, or even their homes, listening intently to the radio to wait for another shooting to happen before running to the crime scene.

This shooting, as lethal, horrific and hateful as it was, was similar to other shootings that have occurred in America. We’re talking about people that were raised from childhood to adulthood, like every normal human being on Earth. The decades and centuries of studying the human brain and behavior are all to understand and predict what kind of individuals we will grow up to be, and – correct me if I’m wrong – there are also countless of individuals studying modern human beings and their terrorist tendencies.

An act of crime so hateful like this one is not unprecedented, and specialists and people in general should start focusing their energy on preventing these crimes from happening before they even allow these criminals to purchase, legally, the very lethal weapons they used to kill dozens of innocent individuals.