Tragedies at Hands of Illegal Immigrants
All deaths are tragic. My sympathy is to the friends and families. I write this blog entry not to emphasize the immigration fight, but to point out the two faced nature of the Republican’s who yell say her name. These same politicians are quick to deflect blame on guns each time a mass shooting occurs.
Immigration is a Real Problem.
It needs both Republicans and Democrats to change the laws. The Republicans failed to pass border reform in the Senate after Donald Trump indicated it was not in Republican interest to pass this legislation while Joe Biden was President. This is unacceptable behavior. To me the line in “The American President” poses an appropriate question. “How can you claim to love America, but not love Americans?”
America at its best draws it strength from our differences and not our sameness. Immigration is a problem. Immigrants are not the problem. The current system of handling immigrants at the border is the problem. Politicians who stand in the way of solutions make the problem worse not better.
We need new immigration laws. Our laws need to be clear to enable the proper treating and in many instances integration into our society for people who come to our borders. Just blanket turning away people in need is not what we as a nation should want to be about.
Young people who grew into adulthood and live peacefully in our country need a path to citizenship not an uncertain future.
But if Immigration is a problem, so is gun violence.
The Gun Violence Archive provides a list of mass shootings in the United States. From March 16 to April 5th there have been 27 mass shootings in this country. In a mass shooting, 4 or more individuals are injured. These incidents included 22 deaths.
This is a much bigger problem than immigrant violence. Where is the outrage? The gun lobby and conservative republicans ask our leaders to not act emotionally after each and every incident. So many of our fellow citizens have suffered tragedy from gun violence.
Gun laws need to be more strict.
Politicians get to pick and choose their battles. A gun was used in the case of Ruby Garcia. Gun violence is a huge problem in this country. The NRA is a strong lobby which needs to be silenced. We need stronger gun laws, not tomorrow, but yesterday.
Those laws should include:
- Limiting the size of magazines.
- Let’s ban the most lethal ammunition.
- Military grade weapons have no business on our streets or for sport.
- Let’s recognize that guns don’t belong everywhere. Performance venues currently don’t allow firearms. Airports and planes are firearm free zones. Let’s expand the zones which are firearm free to all spaces where crowds are present, such as city streets.
In short it needs to be harder to get a gun and that gun needs to have less capability.
So when you go to vote this fall…
Think about who will solve the problems in appropriate ways. Who will truly protect the rights of women, the rights of people of all races, all religions, and all sexual orientation? The answer is obviously the Democrats. The goal is a society where all law abiding people are treated equally.
It is clear to me. The Republican agenda leads us away from this goal. The Democratic agenda progresses down that path. Let us as a country not regress.
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