What is indisputable is that Mateen specifically targeted the L.G.B.T. community in one of its safest spaces, and did so on a specific night — “Latin night” — and that must remain at the forefront of our inquiry as details emerge and motives are assigned.

While our society surely does not treat L.G.B.T. people as barbarically as some others, disdain is still present in the belief that identities that are not strictly hetero-normative are immoral, corrosive and corruptive, and violate the laws of nature and the commands of God. Until we rid our society of this rigid and wrongheaded thinking, we apply pressure on citizens not to walk openly and lovingly in their own truths, and we give cover to the darkest possible objections from people like Mateen.

In addition, we must carefully consider, once again, how easy it is for people of ill intent to obtain deadly weapons. Even if you believe strongly in the Second Amendment, and are intimate with gun culture (as I am), there is still no reason for a citizen to own an assault rifle unless he is planning an assault. None! You don’t hunt deer with assault rifles. You don’t keep the vermin out of the garden with assault rifles. These military-style guns are specifically designed for the rapid killing of human beings. Let’s assign the weapons of war to the battlefield.

Furthermore, we must re-examine how we can restrict suspected terrorists’ access to guns, at least the deadliest ones. As CNN reported this week: “People on the United States’ terrorist watch list passed background checks and have been allowed to purchase firearms 91 percent of the time in 2015, updated federal data shows.” Mateen wasn’t on this list, so his purchases wouldn’t have been restricted anyway, but still this number should scare us profoundly.

Mass shootings are only a fraction of our gun violence epidemic. Around 33,000 people die each year in gun-related deaths in this country, many in small-number homicides that have becomes a sort of ambient horror to which we are growing worrisomely numb, and many others are suicides or unintentional deaths, which include a disturbing number of children.

This norm of ours simply isn’t normal. Too many of us are making a conscious — and unconscionable! — decision to do nothing or to not do more. There is so much blood on our hands that no amount of Second Amendment rationalizing can wash them clean. To paraphrase Macbeth, our hands would stain the sea scarlet and turn the green one red.

Lastly, we must remember that our foreign policy — whether bombing Muslims or banning them — has consequences. Seeking to diminish one threat can inflame another. Wars and reckless rhetoric are governed by the laws of unintended consequences, so we must tread carefully.