It is hard to make sense of what transpired last weekend when Omar Mateen bulled his way into the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and started shooting. By the time he was dead, he had perpetrated the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. It is difficult to comprehend savagery of this scale; it is even more difficult to understand why, if the past is any precedent, it will have no effect on U.S. gun control laws.
A week after the horror, there are still more questions than answers about the shooter and his motivations. What is known is that Mateen entered the club with a handgun and a high-powered assault rifle just before it closed on Sunday morning; over the next three hours he murdered 49 people and wounded more than 50 others, before he was killed by police when they stormed the building just as he appeared to be preparing to strap bombs onto some of his hostages.
During the incident, Mateen called a local TV news station and the emergency number 911 to declare his support for the Islamic State radicals. Whether he was in fact a member or supporter of the group is uncertain; he is said to have searched online for IS videos and propaganda in the weeks before the massacre. During the massacre, he told one of the hostages that he wanted the United States "to stop bombing my country." (Mateen was born in the U.S. of Afghan parents.) Law enforcement officials now believe the attack was IS-inspired, but not IS-directed.