Leaders must confront white nationalism like gun violence
Americans who kill people often wield guns, especially if they are hoping to wipe out a large number of people as efficiently as possible. It is relatively easy for those of us who live in the United States to acquire the type of weapon that would enable a killer to fire dozens of rounds without pausing to reload. Many felt that we should revisit the laws that enable citizens to acquire such weapons so easily even before 31 people lost their lives the over the weekend in mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. However, the two men who committed those atrocities might not have been thwarted by any of the gun-control measures proposed in the wake of previous mass slayings.
But our failure to take meaningful action in response to such crimes is indefensibleas well as absurd. The Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear arms, not to acquire weapons of war on demand — with no questions asked, and without any sort of background check or waiting period.
And the only Americans who would describe such precautions as a form of tyranny are ones who refuse to recognize common sense, or any of the various Supreme Court rulings handed down over the years. There were nearly 40,000 gunrelated deaths in this country in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly two-thirds of them were suicides. In light of such statistics, I think background checks and red-flag laws are probably a good idea — as do
most Republicans, according to polls, as well as most Democrats.
In fact, President Donald Trump has indicated support for universal background checks and red-flag laws even prior to this weekend’s mass shootings. And congressional Republicans who were previously reluctant to take action to that effect may be more receptive to doing so, given that some of the blame for one of these shootings can be laid directly at Trump’s feet.
The Dayton shooter’s motives are opaque at this point; he was a white man, and the majority of his nine victims were black. But one of the people he killed was his own sister, and he seems to have identified with the political left.
In El Paso, the young white man who murdered 22 people , however, was from Collin County, meaning he traveled hundreds of miles to commit an act of domestic terrorism in El Paso, a city in which more than 80 percent of residents are Latino, and many are immigrants.
The El Paso shooter’s motives were plainly political, in other words, even before he was linked to a manifesto posted on the internet, some 20 minutes before the shooting began, vowing revenge for the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Trump himself has, as president, used the word “invasion,” while sounding the alarm about the crisis along our southern border. Similarly, he described immigrants from Mexico as “criminals” and “rapists” in his speech announcing his 2016 bid for the Republican presidential nomination. And he has, historically, refused to criticize the white supremacists who may have been emboldened by his rhetoric — or to describe white nationalism itself a national security threat.
However, white nationalism is a security threat. And although Trump is not the first Republican leader to refer to unauthorized immigration as an “invasion,” it’s not exactly a defense of the president to point out that Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick, for example, has also done so, over the years. Such rhetoric is hurtful, wrong and dehumanizing. And Republicans who have used it in the past — or who have turned a blind eye to any colleagues who may be doing so — should stop.
“If you are in a position of public trust and use hateful rhetoric about immigrants in the abstract, you are (at minimum) complicit in the violent acts your words inspire,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso, in a statement Sunday.
“If you continue to use that rhetoric after seeing the violence in El Paso, then as far as I’m concerned you are an accomplice to any future crime,” he continued.
El Paso has always been a singular city, in that it’s part of a bi-national community, along with Ciudad Juarez, in Mexico—and its geographic isolation from the rest of the major population centers in Texas may explain why it’s always had such a strong sense of community. El Paso has never experienced a mass shooting, but its residents are showing extraordinary grace and courage in the wake of these slayings.
What happened on Saturday was clearly an act of domestic terrorism. El Pasoans are in shock, as well as mourning, and they’re rightfully insisting that leaders on both sides of the aisle come together to confront white nationalism, as well as gun violence. Their state and national leaders should listen.