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On 12 June 2016, a gunman took the lives of at least 50 people and injured another 53 at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The horrific attack was the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

As the world mourns this tragic loss of life, questions of how we make sense of an act of mass violence and hatred that targeted gay men and women remain.

and from the University of Sydney took part in a panel discussion on The Drum, broadcast on . During the program, they addressed the following five questions:

1.听听听 Is the Orlando shooting a hate crime?

鈥淚t鈥檚 Latina night at Pulse in Orlando. It鈥檚 a queer event, on a queer night during gay pride,鈥� Dr Neff told The Drum.

鈥淭here鈥檚 no question that this was a hate crime. This is an anti-gay hate crime.

鈥淚t鈥檚 important that we are very clear about that and don鈥檛 erase any of the different identities [of the individuals who were killed]. They were members of the LGBTIQ community who were killed as well as people of colour and at least eight were women.

鈥淚f Donald Trump can be called out for racism, then this can be called out for homophobia. Killing queer people is homophobic. Nobody stumbles into Pulse nightclub at 2am with an AK-15 for three hours and accidentally kills 50 people.鈥�

2.听听听 How can we talk about mental illness in relation to Orlando?

A psychiatrist and prominent health campaigner, told The Drum that there are very few mass shootings that can be explained by active mental illness.

Professor Hickie said the perpetrators of mass shootings are typicallymen who are marginalised, isolated and 鈥渙ften quite paranoid in their ordinary thinking, who live in a society that encourages both the hate aspect to mass shootings and then the availability of guns to act out their aggression.

鈥淲ith the American election campaign, which should be a great celebration of democracy, we see violence breaking out at rallies. This is where things have really come unstuck,鈥� Professor Hickie said. The normalisation of extreme violence should be of great concern, he said.

3.聽聽聽 Why recognising the anti-gay nature of the shooting matters?

In the hours following the shooting, politicians in Australia came聽聽for making statements that did not initially express sympathy for the LGBTIQ聽community.

Dr Christopher Neff told The Drum, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what [they] were thinking by not talking about this as a queer nightclub or an anti-queer attack, but they鈥檙e wrong.

鈥淭his is a time to recognise the lives that were lost, and these were queer lives.鈥�

4.聽聽聽 An issue of gun control or the mental health system?

鈥淢ental illness is a worldwide phenomenon,鈥� Professor Hickie said. 鈥淏ut there鈥檚 nothing like the degree of mass shooting in the US.

鈥淲e have incidents elsewhere in the world, like Port Arthur in Australia, but there鈥檚 nothing like the repeated episodes of mass shooting in the US, anywhere else in the world.鈥�

5.聽聽聽 What should a good policy response involve?

鈥淭here are lots of forms of violence,鈥� Dr Neff said. 鈥淲e saw the most extreme form of this at the Pulse nightclub.

鈥淗omophobia is violence. It drives youth to suicide and we need to be taking care of our youth: we need to have policies that treat all people equally.鈥�