Having suffered the trauma of 9/11 and several terror attacks, the US must understand that it needs gun control laws and a comprehensive blueprint for routing terrorism
The terror attack on an lGBT nightclub, Pulse, in Orlando, Florida, raises serious questions for the United States to ponder. The first — and the most obvious — relates to the country’s incredibly lax gun control laws. It is obvious that the mass murderer, Omar Mateen, could embark on his killing spree, which left 50 persons, including himself, dead and 53 wounded, because he could walk into a store and buy a Sig Sauer MCX assault rifle and a nine mm Glock handgun. Significantly, he could do so despite his being questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2013 and 2014. The first time was after he had made “inflammatory” comments to colleagues about having family connections with Al Qaeda and of his being a member of the Hezbollah. The interrogation in 2014 followed the discovery of his links with Moner Mohammad Abu Salha, an Americanjihadist who went to Syria and detonated a suicide bomb. The investigations were closed as they produced no cause for further action.
This itself is a telling commentary on the state of gun control management in the US. There is everything to be said for releasing a person against whom the charge of terrorist links cannot be proved. Equally, there is everything to be said for barring his or her access to guns, particularly of the mass slaughter variety. Such a restriction should have been put in place in the US — which has suffered the trauma of 9/11 and several Islamist terror attacks thereafter — long before the Orlando horror.
One of the most striking attacks was the one on December 2, 2015, when Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple, subsequently described as violent “homegrown extremists,” fired at a Government building in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 persons and seriously wounding 22. Both, who were subsequently killed in an encounter with law enforcing authorities, used 223-caliber semi-automatic rifles and nine mm caliber semi-automatic pistols. These were legally bought by a neighbour and friend but illegally transferred in their names and modified.
In an earlier incident, Nidal Hasan, a US Army major and a psychiatrist, and inspired by the Al Qaeda ideologue and terror-motivator, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone attack on November 30, 2011, killed 13 and wounded more than 30 persons at Fort Worth, a large US military establishment near Killeen, Texas. He bought the FN Five-seven semi-automatic pistol he used at a nearby gun shop.
The circumstances which turn a person terrorist is the subject of eternal debate; that the easy availability of weapons of mass slaughter — and even of individual killing — makes it easy for terrorists, is not. Any individual can see this barring the incurably bigoted. It is important to deal with the causes of terrorism and methods of identifying active and/or potential terrorists. As important is the one of dealing with them. In this case, Mateen should not have been allowed off the FBI’s radar. The argument that one cannot look for needles in a haystack is well taken. But there should be system for keeping an eye on those that have come to notice.
Such measures have to be a part of an over all system of coping with terrorism on the ground. The latter, in turn, must be a part of an overall strategy of comprehensively defeating terrorism both ideologically and operationally. The two processes are inseparably linked. The success of a terrorist state or organisation on the ground — particularly if it is seen as carrying everything before it — enhances its ideological glamour and appeal. In this case, the Islamic State, to which Mateen had sworn allegiance, has to be comprehensibly and demonstratively demolished on the ground. There is no alternative, just as there was no alternative to wiping out the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and the Japanese warlords. As in these cases, the ideological campaign against violent extremist Islam must continue.