Violence starts at border

Dear editor:

A shooting of a young man here, another there, a mother and child on another day, two here, three there — after a while, it just all flows together and we sort of become numb to it.

Everyone talks about stopping the violence but nobody seems to know how. I just read an online report that ranked metropolitan areas with the highest violent crime rates. The Little Rock area ranked No. 6, with Memphis ranked No. 1. We also know there is a tentacle that reaches all the way to the Spa City with far too much violence that breaks out here, also.

I don’t think it’s a surprise that drugs are at the heart of most of it. We see arrests virtually every day in this newspaper and what they often represent are not only violence but broken, wasted lives. We also know that most of these drugs, whether opiates or meth, come across our southern border. If you want to get drugs from there to the big cities north and east, it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Interstates 30 and 40 are the main corridors for transporting them to those destinations, and I’m sure they also make nice big deposits along the way in Little Rock and Memphis — thus, the inglorious rankings we have attained.

Walls will not stop it all but they do slow it down giving the border agents more time to react. You may have seen last week from a well-placed camera about a hundred illegals climbing a ladder over a wall. It didn’t stop them, but it slowed them so before they scattered agents arrived to round them up.

Walls work, and our border patrol is asking for about 150 miles of walls to plug some gaps. They know where the gaps are. You want to stop the violence here? It starts at our porous southern border.

Democrats claim they want to help minority communities; they’ve actually helped to make a mess of these communities. Many of these communities know illegals compete with locals for jobs which also hurts these legal citizens. With friends like Democrats, who needs enemies? Larry Bauer Hot Springs Village