Following the tragic shootings in Paris last month many U.S. governors spoke out, banning Syrian refugees from their states. 31 states have stood out to say Syrian refugees are not welcome, Ohio being one. As a citizen of the Free World I am outraged at this stance taken by so many leaders. On top of this, following the San Bernardino attack Republican candidate, Donald Trump made a statement saying we should ban Muslims from entering the US. My question in all of this finger-pointing is, when will we realize the problem is already here? Unstrict gun laws are the problem. Profiling is the problem. Racism is the problem. We are the problem.
The world knows us as the home of the free. People come here for their fresh start. So why now are we denying people that privilege simply because they pray to someone different than us? Refusing to accept them and choosing to hate them brings us down to a level of hatred that our enemies understand. The San Bernardino attackers lived here and were legal citizens who self-radicalized and acted out with hate. Unfortunately, the reality of this is, it was inevitable. ISIS reaches out and gains more and more followers every day. Sometimes those followers are Muslim and are from the Middle East, but some of those followers are also people just like you. People who look like you, dress like you and possibly even know you. This is the twisted reality we live in.
This constant threat can be maintained and eventually defeated though. First, make it harder for the bad guys to get weapons. The NRA can preach about the second amendment all they want, but the fact is there is no reason someone should be able to legally purchase an assault rifle like the ones used in last week’s attacks. An automatic weapon crosses the line from trying to protect yourself to trying to harm others and we were painfully reminded of that at the cost of 14 lives last week. Yes, if someone really wants a gun like that they can find it somewhere, but we have a responsibility to make it harder.
Besides lax gun laws we have an unnecessary amount of hate in our country. It is 2015 but people still have to ask for justice like it is 1965. We can’t say we want to “Make America Great Again,” when it wasn’t that great to begin with. Sure we may have had better economic times at some point but we’ve always had a lingering hate that jumps from victim to victim. First, we had slaves, then we refused to accept the fact that those “slaves” weren’t slaves, they were people. Then, we couldn’t wrap our minds around the actual concept of love, no matter who shares it. Now, we’re back to shutting out entire races of people whose skin looks different, whose clothes are different or whose God is different.
America can’t be great until hate is expelled and we point the finger at ourselves for once. We must stop and control what we can control. We can control accessibility to guns and we can control how we look at people. We must stand as one to defeat hate.
Celia Lavoie
Reporter