I fell asleep Saturday night looking forward to celebrating LGBTQ pride in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I awoke the next morning to a nightmare beyond reckoning – the cold-blooded murder of 49 individuals at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida.

This tragedy brings to question more than just our nation’s acceptance of the LGBTQ community; it calls to our minds questions about gun violence in this country.

Barbara Poma, owner of Pulse, expressed on the club’s website her devastation at the events of Sunday morning.

“Pulse, and the men and women who work there, have been my family for nearly 15 years,” Poma wrote. “From the beginning, Pulse has served as a place of love and acceptance for the LGBTQ community. I want to express my profound sadness and condolences to all who have lost loved ones. Please know that my grief and heart are with you.”

The unprocessed emotions in her sentiments – a raw rollercoaster of feelings – are shared on every level throughout the country and throughout the world.

It’s crucial to note, however, that this horrific assault on the LGBTQ community is but a single incident in the perpetual struggle for equality.

What caused this disastrous hate crime to be much worse than the countless macroaggressions and lone deaths suffered by LGBTQ individuals throughout the year?

“They are using guns, as they did in San Bernardino,” said presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton during an interview with CBS. “We’ve got to make it harder for them to do that, and we’ve got to keep weapons of war off our streets.”

The assailant, who was “armed with an AR-15-type assault rifle, a handgun and many rounds of ammunition” according to The New York Times, was able to carry out the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

There were additional reports from survivors of the attack that claimed the shooter had enough ammunition to kill more people and survive a shootout with police.

President Barack Obama, in his remarks to the press on Sunday, addressed the shooting in Orlando’s role in a national trend of gun violence.

“This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub,” Obama said. “And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well.”

Obama brings up a good point: if the nation sits idly by with a current policy that allows the slaughter of innocents, then we as a nation are exhibiting complacency in the death of guiltless people.

Furthermore, by doing nothing we’re acknowledging the loss of LGBTQ citizens across the globe yet doing absolutely nothing about it.

I understand the concerns of gun rights activists, members of the National Rifle Association and everyday Americans, that without guns an individual is arguably defenseless against an armed attacker.

It makes sense, really: if you’re going to fight fire with fire and win, then shouldn’t the ‘good’ fire trump the ‘bad’?

Though this sounds relatively ironclad in practice, the reality of the fact is that the argument doesn’t link to statistical evidence.

Newsweek reported “Over the period from 2007-2011, when roughly six million nonfatal violent crimes occurred each year, data from the National Crime Victimization Survey show that the victim did not defend with a gun in 99.2 percent of these incidents.”

Of those who potentially want to utilize guns as a means of viable protection against an armed assailant, less than .08 percent actually did.

There is a large misunderstanding when it comes to the use of extremely deadly weapons, but it’s going to take more than the president and a presidential nominee to change the way citizens acquire guns.

Tyler Delong is a senior communication major from Moses Lake. He can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of The Daily Evergreen or those of the Office of Student Media.