Views shift since Pulse shootings

Six months after the Pulse massacre, more people view the shootings as primarily an attack on the LGBT community than they did in June — and many are worried that a Donald Trump presidency will mean less tolerance for gays nationwide.

Views on guns are a mixed bag. A majority still supports an assault weapons ban, but that support has dropped almost across the board since the weeks following the attacks. At the same time, more people than before think gun violence is a serious problem in the area.

The shifts in opinion since June were revealed in a Mason-Dixon poll conducted last week for the Orlando Sentinel, which asked the same questions as in a poll taken just two weeks after the June 12 shootings.

Asked what the motivation was for shooter Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people before being killed himself on the gay club’s Latin night, only 34 percent said it was primarily terrorism; that’s down from 50 percent in June.

In comparison, 29 percent said it was primarily an attack on the LGBT community, up from 19 percent in June.

“That was the most striking thing I saw,” said pollster Brad Coker. “In the immediate aftermath, there’s a tendency to connect it to something larger. But over time, a little more of a reality sets in and they see him as just another lone wolf like we’ve seen in other parts of the country.”

Another 21 percent said the attacks were a combination of terrorism, an attack on gays and on Hispanics, up from 13 percent in June.

Asked how they think Trump’s election will affect tolerance of the LGBT community, 37 percent of Central Floridians said they thought it would decrease nationwide, including 47 percent of women, 45 percent of people 18-34 and 44 percent of gays.

“In many different communities, people are scared — not only for what Trump’s administration would do, but the hate and fear that Trump has elicited from followers,” said Jason Lindsay, executive director of the Pride Fund to End Gun Violence, a group formed to rally the gay community around gun safety measures following the attacks. “He’s really stirred a hornet’s nest.”

Only 10 percent, in comparison, said tolerance would increase — but 46 percent said that it would just stay the same.

Trump said after the Pulse attack that “our nation stands together in solidarity with the members of Orlando’s LGBT community,” and said he was “fine” with same-sex marriage in November. But he also spoke at a controversial gathering of pastors opposed to same-sex marriage and backtracked on his original opposition to the transgender bathroom ban in North Carolina.

Still, Coker said, “Trump went after a lot of people, but he never really went after the LGBT community. He didn’t bring up gay marriage and he never really went after any issue important to the LGBT community.”

Central Floridians’ opinions on guns also changed in the six months since the shootings, which were committed using a semi-automatic rifle.

A majority in Central Florida, 52 percent, still backed a ban on assault rifles, according to the most recent poll. But the number of people opposed to a ban rose from 35 percent in June to 42 percent in December.

That shift was similar across all ages — especially 50-64 year olds, who saw a 10-point jump against a ban — and both sexes.

“There’s a normal wave of support following a tragedy,” Lindsay said. “What we see around the country is when we have gun tragedies like Pulse, support spikes in the immediate aftermath for increased gun control, but the further away you get from a specific event, the level of support goes back to normal.”

The dip in support for a ban, Coker said, may also reflect acknowledgment that such a measure is now almost politically impossible in a Republican-controlled Washington.

“The numbers probably reflect reality,” he said.

At the same time, more people than before felt that gun violence was a very serious or somewhat serious issue in Central Florida, jumping from 69 percent in June to 77 percent in December.

There was also a large swing in how safe whites and blacks feel following the attack.

In June, 31 percent of whites felt less safe after Pulse compared with 17 percent of African Americans. In December, the number of whites who felt less safe dropped to 27 percent, while the number of African Americans almost doubled to 33 percent.

Meanwhile, the amount of Central Floridians with more negative views of Muslims, while still substantial at 16 percent, was less than the 21 percent in June. That number also dropped across genders and ethnicities and age groups — especially those 65 and older, which saw a 9 percent drop in negative feelings and a 6 percent rise in those saying they had a more positive view of Muslims.

The poll of 625 residents of Orange, Osceola, Lake and Seminole counties was conducted Dec. 5-7. The margin of error was four percentage points.