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Fifty people died killed and another 53 were injured after a lone gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, this weekend.
29-year-old Omar Mateen called 911 to pledge allegiance to Isis before entering the Pulse nightclub at around 2am and firing indiscriminately before a hostage situation developed. He was killed when police stormed the premises.
The incident is the worst mass shooting in US history. Florida has declared a state of emergency.
Full details of what happened are yet to emerge, as is a coherent picture of the shooter and his motives - but that did not stop several news outlets from reporting the incident as motivated by Islamic extremism before any identities or motives were confirmed by police:
Mateen's family are from Afghanistan but are US citizens. His father has spoken to the media, saying that he believes his son was motivated by homophobia rather than religion.
But by now people are bracing themselves for what has become the usual barrage of hatred directed at Muslims following attacks like this.
American actor John Fugelsang took to his Twitter account to point out that any anger over these killings directed towards Muslims is misplaced, however.
Mateen, despite being interviewed by the FBI twice in the past few years for suspected extremist links and at one time being placed on a terror watch list, went out and bought the assault rifle and handgun he used in the horrific attack 12 days ago.
The purchases were 100 per cent legal.
If the legal loopholes which give would-be criminals easy access to guns were closed, people intent on hurting others would have to try a lot harder to commit crimes:
After the deaths of 10 people and the wounding of seven in a mass shooting in Roseland, Oregon, in 2015, president Barack Obama asked the media to compare how many American citizens have been killed in acts of terrorism and how many through gun violence in the last decade.
Sadly, this incident is a cross over between the two - but the numbers prove guns are much more of a threat than terrorists to the safety of US civilians.
More from The Independent: Orlando nightclub shooting: Around 20 dead after 'terror attack' at Florida gay club Pulse
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