When Orlando shooting brings terror, guns to my backyard

Editor’s Note: Mark O’Mara is a CNN legal analyst and a criminal defense attorney. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

So this is what it feels like when it comes to your backyard. Literally. My house is about four blocks from the Pulse nightclub and even though I’ve been trained to look at and analyze horrible situations dispassionately for the past 30 years, when blood is actually spilled in the streets that I drive over every day, it is different.

Mark O'Mara

Without knowing all the details of what has happened yet, I am immensely sad, angry, frustrated and in despair.

I want to go hold and help those devastated by this tragedy — that is what this moment calls for.

And while another part of me, one that unsettles me, suddenly has a slightly better understanding of the vengeful feelings some have at times like this, it is clear why it is so important for all those affected to remember that revenge is not the response we should give into. That would actually further the plans of those who want to do us harm.

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Those initial angry reactions – emotional, visceral — are not what this country, a nation that observes the rule of law, is about. Our lawful system of justice is what separates us from the murderous zealotry perpetrated by a few distorted individuals in our midst. In fact, I also know that, if the shooter had survived, it’s a good chance that I would be one of the attorneys he called and my oath tells me I should offer him representation.

At the same time, this man struck a very painful gut punch to a city that I love and yet another one to a country that I love and am worried about.

I have written and spoken many times on issues of gun violence in America. I always start by saying that I am a gun owner and I have a concealed weapons permit. That said, we simply cannot ignore the reality that there are those among us who will abuse that right and do so with dangerous assault weapons.

Parents wait for news after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday, February 14. At least 17 people were killed at the school, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said. The suspect, 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz, is in custody, the sheriff said. The sheriff said he was expelled for unspecified disciplinary reasons.

Investigators at the scene of a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday, November 5, 2017. A man opened fire inside the small community church, killing at least 25 people and an unborn child. The gunman, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, was found dead in his vehicle. He was shot in the leg and torso by an armed citizen, and he had a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, authorities said.

A couple huddles after shots rang out at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday, October 1, 2017. At least 58 people were killed and almost 500 were injured when a gunman opened fire on the crowd. Police said the gunman, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, fired from the Mandalay Bay hotel, several hundred feet southwest of the concert grounds. He was found dead in his hotel room, and authorities believe he killed himself and that he acted alone. It is the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

Police direct family members away from the scene of a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire inside the club, killing at least 49 people and injuring more than 50. Police fatally shot Mateen during an operation to free hostages that officials say he was holding at the club.

In December 2015, two shooters killed 14 people and injured 21 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, where employees with the county health department were attending a holiday event. The shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, were later killed in a shootout with authorities. The pair were found to be radicalized extremists who planned the shootings as a terror attack, investigators said.

Police search students outside Umpqua Community College after a deadly shooting at the school in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2015. Nine people were killed and at least nine were injured, police said. The gunman, Chris Harper-Mercer, committed suicide after exchanging gunfire with officers, a sheriff said.

A man kneels across the street from the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, following a shooting in June 2015. Police say the suspect, Dylann Roof, opened fire inside the church, killing nine people. According to police, Roof confessed and told investigators he wanted to start a race war. He was eventually convicted of murder and hate crimes, and a jury recommended the death penalty.

Police officers walk on a rooftop at the Washington Navy Yard after a shooting rampage in the nation's capital in September 2013. At least 12 people and suspect Aaron Alexis were killed, according to authorities.

Connecticut State Police evacuate Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. Adam Lanza opened fire in the school, killing 20 children and six adults before killing himself. Police said he also shot and killed his mother in her Newtown home.

James Holmes pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a July 2012 shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Twelve people were killed and dozens were wounded when Holmes opened fire during the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises." He was sentenced to 12 life terms plus thousands of years in prison.

A military jury convicted Army Maj. Nidal Hasan of 13 counts of premeditated murder for a November 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas. Thirteen people died and 32 were injured.

Jiverly Wong shot and killed 13 people at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, before turning the gun on himself in April 2009, police said. Four other people were injured at the immigration center shooting. Wong had been taking English classes at the center.

Pallbearers carry a casket of one of Michael McLendon's 10 victims. McLendon shot and killed his mother in her Kingston, Alabama, home, before shooting his aunt, uncle, grandparents and five more people. He shot and killed himself in Samson, Alabama, in March 2009.

Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho went on a shooting spree on the school's campus in April 2007. Cho killed two people at the West Ambler Johnston dormitory and, after chaining the doors closed, killed another 30 at Norris Hall, home to the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department. He wounded an additional 17 people before killing himself.

Mark Barton walked into two Atlanta trading firms and fired shots in July 1999, leaving nine dead and 13 wounded, police said. Hours later, police found Barton at a gas station in Acworth, Georgia, where he pulled a gun and killed himself. The day before, Barton had bludgeoned his wife and his two children in their Stockbridge, Georgia, apartment, police said.

Eric Harris, left, and Dylan Klebold brought guns and bombs to Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April 1999. The students gunned down 13 and wounded 23 before killing themselves.

In October 1991, George Hennard crashed his pickup through the plate-glass window of Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, before shooting 23 people and committing suicide.

James Huberty shot and killed 21 people, including children, at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, in July 1984. A police sharpshooter killed Huberty an hour after the rampage began.

Prison guard George Banks is led through the Luzerne County courthouse in 1985. Banks killed 13 people, including five of his children, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in September 1982. He was sentenced to death in 1993 and received a stay of execution in 2004. His death sentence was overturned in 2010.

Officers in Austin, Texas, carry victims across the University of Texas campus after Charles Joseph Whitman opened fire from the school's tower, killing 16 people and wounding 30 in 1966. Police officers shot and killed Whitman, who had killed his mother and wife earlier in the day.

Howard Unruh, a World War II veteran, shot and killed 13 of his neighbors in Camden, New Jersey, in 1949. Unruh barricaded himself in his house after the shooting. Police overpowered him the next day. He was ruled criminally insane and committed to a state mental institution.

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The weapon that was used in this case can discharge several hundred death-inducing shots per minute. The immense firepower of that weapon has allowed this to become the most deadly terrorist attack since 9/11. As a country, we must take a moment to pause and contemplate whether an unbridled protection of our Second Amendment rights is appropriate in this day and age.

There is simply no rational reason to believe that we have to supply citizens with assault weapons. Any paranoid belief that such weaponry would be necessary in a government-induced Armageddon simply pales in comparison to the undeniable reality of what we might do – are doing – to each other with such weapons.

While I acknowledge that any terrorist wannabe can get necessary supplies for a bomb at a hardware or fertilizer store, I’m simply suggesting that we cut off one of the heads of this terror-bent Medusa.

To cut off their access to guns is not an ultimate solution in and of itself; unfortunately there’s not going to be one of those. But it is a way to make it more difficult for those who want to harm us to do so.

The alternative is the immensely sad one that we are now living: a world where we are used to gearing up news crews and trauma counselors at the drop of a hat, for the next major tragedy.

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I’m furious that we will only be devastated by this for a short time, and that we all know there will be another. I’m worried that those who mean us so much harm are winning. The life we live, one of a subtle awareness that the next one is coming, is exactly what our enemies want.

It is time to rally around what is good with America, and it is most important now, in this time of horrific tragedy, to maintain the principle that we will not be dragged down to the level of those who are the worst among us.

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