Editor,
The gun violence perpetrated in the US by radical Islamists is but a fraction of our overall gun violence. Just in the arena of murders that are drug-related, the toll is far greater. You think the gang bangers in our inner cities are not terrorists in every sense of the term, terrorizing the neighborhoods they live in? The murders they have committed all these decades have been far worse than any mass shooter of the jihadi kind.
So it is time for this country to establish policies more in line with this larger perspective and to take inventory of our own people, even as we preach violence abroad (destroying ISIL) as a solution to any act we may – however arbitrarily – label as “terrorism.”
While doing so, one trap we should definitely not fall into is the approach being advocated by Presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is a blatant supporter of the NRA while conveniently not mentioning the chain reaction of violence fueled by some of the largest manufacturers of guns in the world that are right here in our own nation. We should instead elect a President who will go gangbusters on the Second Amendment to our Constitution and seek a national referendum to change it so it is no longer an outdated impediment to peace within our own borders, then disarm all of these locked-n-loaded militia constituting the “Patriot” movement that are supporting Trump.
In this manner we will dissolve what the world sees as our hypocrisy in claiming to be engaged as a peacekeeper abroad when at the same time we have the highest murder rate stateside of any developed nation.
Arun Ahuja
UNM student
