Orlando

Like so many Americans, I woke up last Sunday to horrifying news. Dozens of men and women, many from the Latino community, were dead at the hands of a gunman who was enraged that they dared gather and celebrate who they were. In the middle of Pride Month, America was thrown violently back into a time when going to a gay club was a radical, dangerous act. I never expected, in the year 2016, that the LGBT community in my beautiful home state would be the target of the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

Mass shootings shake us to our core and rock our communities. 40% of Americans know someone who has been killed by a gun — gun violence has touched someone you know. And this week, partners, parents, siblings, and friends from across America joined that 40%. As someone who has been there, it is a terrifying club to be a member of. I’ll never forget the sickening numbness that I felt when I learned that my friend, Gabby Giffords, and 18 others, had been shot outside a grocery story.

My heart breaks for the people who, unlike me, can’t say that their friends survived. Too many Americans are attending funerals this weekend. Too many people didn’t recover from the shooting that almost killed Gabby in Tuscon. Too many parents buried their children after Sandy Hook. A community mourned too many fellow parishioners after Charleston. Every time we pleaded for commonsense gun reform, and nothing changed.

President Obama said it perfectly this week, after meeting with the families in Florida:

“We can’t wipe away hatred and evil from every heart in this world. But we can stop some tragedies. We can save some lives. We can reduce the impact of a terrorist attack if we’re smart. And if we don’t act, we will keep seeing more massacres like this — because we’ll be choosing to allow them to happen. We will have said, we don’t care enough to do something about it.”

–President Obama

We have the power to stop the guns (often, as in the case of the Orlando shooter, obtained legally) that have killed 207 people in 133 mass shootings this year alone. We have the power to say that the gun safety laws we have on the books are not working.

• We must close the gun show loophole.
• We must require background checks for all gun purchases.
• We must take guns out of the hands of convicted stalkers and domestic abusers.
• We must prevent suspected terrorists from being able to buy a gun.

This has to end. I don’t want one more friend to feel the horror that I felt when I heard about Gabby. I don’t want one more parent to bury their child. We have the power to do something about it. We have the power of our vote.

There are less than five months between now and the day when America will have the opportunity to embrace hate and fear or to soundly reject it. This is what Donald Trump had to say on Sunday:

Orlando deserves so much more than that. LGBT Americans deserve to have their tragedy addressed. Latinos deserve a respectful response to their loss. And Muslim Americans must never be vilified for a terrorist’s perversions of their peaceful religion. Florida’s tragedy is not an opportunity to spike a football, or declare a political win, or to further a hateful agenda. A person who makes a tragedy about himself cannot be president. A person who returns hate with hate, who stokes fear in a time of crisis, is not fit to lead our country.

Our country needs to do better by those who just want to go to a club with their friends, to pray with their communities, to see a movie, to go to school. We need elected officials who will keep them safe. Trump’s response proved, once and for all, that he is not that person. I promise to do right by those we lost by giving my all to electing people who will stand up to bullies and make our communities safe.