A terrorist attack just occurred in London, killing seven. It's good to keep things in perspective, and it's even more important to always ask "why" and to listen silently to the answer so those who are asked are comfortable enough to answer honestly.
We have yet to truly ask why on terrorism; we are always interrupting and answering for those people, and have been ever since we invaded the Indian's homelands ("Fatherlands"), and stole freedom of African people. Today corporations and capitalism are stealing everyone's' freedom here and abroad.
These are all forms of extreme terrorism. It was terrorism when Bush-Cheney attacked innocent Iraqis with Nazi-like war whoops of "shock and awe." How shameful for our nation: not Muslim, but supposedly Christian!
As to perspective, imagine a horrible terrorist attack here somewhere, killing 300 people. What would this mean, divided among the whole country?
Since we have 300 million in the U.S., this would be one death per million people. There are a little over 3 million in the entire metro Minneapolis-St. Paul area; so proportionately three metro terrorist deaths. Six for all of Minnesota. That's a perspective.
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In the U.S., 30,000 are killed annually by guns.
How many gun violence deaths do we have in the metro? Children being shot? Police mistakenly, or yes, deliberately, shooting minority people? In comparison, the threat of terrorism is tiny indeed!
Ban all guns? No, but certainly do all we can to discourage, and disparage all violence, "domestic and foreign." Why do we permit the 1 percent NRA, the gun profiteers, to lead us around by the nose, when 80-90 percent of us want de-escalation? (I'm a past NRA member. I quit when they got goofy.)
Why do we follow the mentally unhealthy, or choose them to lead us? Are we all nuts?
A. Martin
Merrifield
