We need to stop focusing on the Trump’s made-up crises
One of the latest mass gun murders which have come to define our country occurred in Aurora, Illinois, near Chicago: a familiar scenario in which a man who was discharged by his employer chose to slaughter everyone from the company that he could before being gunned down by heroic police officers who were fired upon and hit as they rushed into danger to neutralize him.
Will we hear anything other than the usual, stale offer of thoughts and prayers from our president about this and other such incidents? Of course not. Rather than to propose that anything be done to stand in the way of homegrown American killers, Donald Trump tells us that our greatest fear should be of immigrants: the “drug dealers, rapists, and human traffickers” who are “invading” our nation in a made-up “national emergency”, a declaration which the president undercut which he told us he “didn’t have to do”.
In the wake of the massacre at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida a year ago, the president seemed moved, paying lip service to enacting gun legislation which would not save every life, but which would make it more difficult for the unhinged and homicidal to secure arsenals of weapons. He went so far as to mock members of Congress for being beholden to the National Rifle Association.
Soon thereafter, he met with NRA officials, who no doubt told him that it played a significant role in his election, that its members are watching, and that he should reverse course. Predictably, the flip-flop president acquiesced, thereafter becoming silent. Legislation to restrict firearm ownership was passed at the state level, even in gun-friendly Florida, but since the Parkland atrocity, no federal legislation has made it to the president’s desk.
The president spoke of “American carnage” in his inauguration speech, but he did not have in mind the mass gun killings which occurred in Parkland or Aurora. His boogie man is found in people of color who seek to immigrate to the United States whether illegally or through requesting asylum. Although the rate of crime committed by immigrants is less than that of native-born Americans, Trump highlights the relatively small number of tragic incidents that have been perpetrated by immigrants in an effort to tar all. If we continue to focus on made-up crises, we will continue to be a society of brutality, one in which law-abiding citizens are not safe anywhere.
Oren Spiegler
South Strabane Township