How do you stop a bad guy with a gun? Don't give him one.

As new details still emerge about the mass shooting in Orlando and the shooter, Omar Mateen, the nation has become enraptured with their thoughts and opinions about the atrocious event. This isolated yet carnage event has managed to encapsulate a myriad of political issues and polemic controversies like no other mass shooting has in the past.

The targeted location, Pulse, a gay night club, chosen apparently because the shooter was set-off by witnessing two men kissing weeks ago, reported by his father. The shooter, an American born to Afghan parents, was the center of two FBI investigations for apparent sympathies to terrorist organizations, and still able to legally purchase an assault rifle and semi-automatic pistol, later confessing his allegiance to ISIS and offering praise to the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon Bombers. Mateen’s ex-wife also detailed her short and violent marriage to the shooter, commenting on his mental instability during their time together.

While these factors are immensely important in trying to understand this incomprehensible tragedy – homophobia in America, homegrown terrorism, and mental illness – they should not cloud the most crucial aspect of this story, the lax availability of guns. None of those other aspects played as much of a crucial role in the mass killing as the legally purchased firearm.

 No one needs to understand this more than Donald Trump and the rest of the Republicans, who have chosen to focus on the shooter’s tenuous connection to the Islamic State. Despite pleading an alliance to the terrorist group in the last hours of his life, the Right seems overly convinced that this attack is far deeper than that, and believe the only suitable response is an all-out military effort in a war against ISIS. Yet there is currently very little evidence that this was an attack coordinated with the terrorist group, and more importantly, Mateen legally acquired his firearms because of lax gun regulations, again having nothing to do with ISIS.

The larger point is the public’s attention must remain on the violent and the increasingly fatal consequences of allowing a gun culture to exist. No matter the amount of love, acceptance and tolerance preached, the only real preventive measure that could have been taken to prevent this tragedy from happening is tougher gun laws. A mentally unstable person with a history of domestic violence and terrorist sympathies should not have been able to purchase a gun, an assault rifle no less. Until these measures are put into place, the next senseless tragedy is just around the corner.