(Washington, DC, 8/5/2019) – The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a coalition of several leading national and local organizations and institutions, expresses its heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed, injured, and terrorized in this weekend’s tragic and senseless mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
USCMO offers its condolences and support also to this nation and all our fellow Americans utterly traumatized, yet again, by the now institutionalized horror of publicly espoused and politically condoned group hate acted out through mass gun violence.
There can no longer be any vestige of doubt that America is now enmeshed and succumbing to one of the darkest civil crises in the history of nations – the arbitrary killings of mass numbers of vulnerable innocents explicitly marked for death by the bigoted, racist, hate speech of power-hungry politicians and rabid partisans in a society steeped in supremacist beliefs and awash in ever more easily available, high-powered weapons and devices specifically designed for no other purpose than to mechanize killing in large numbers.
President Donald Trump must bear responsibility for activating people such as the El Paso shooter, whose rhetoric of “invasion” of America across the Mexican border, which he stated as a justification for his mass murder, perfectly mirrors the president’s own constant, vile anti-immigrant political and campaign rhetoric.
Further, President Trump’s continued barrage of provocatively irresponsible words this morning – shamefully and heartlessly seeking to link meaningless gun legislation with “desperately needed immigration reform” – desecrates the memories of those murdered, adds insult to the deeply injured hearts of their grieving loved ones and this nation, and dehumanizes the victims in particular and the Hispanic community in general, and virtually lays blame on the dead, their families, and the people.
Shamelessly, President Trump explicitly blamed the media for the shootings, with a near threat that such horrific mass gun killings would continue in this nation if their coverage of him did not become favorable. “Fake news has contributed greatly to the anger and rage that has built up over many years. News coverage has got to start being fair.”
As one observer pointed out, “The president’s tweet today and the racist creed the shooter posted overlap to the point that they’re hard to distinguish with the names removed.” The shooter’s manifesto said: “Some people will blame the president …. and blame Trump’s rhetoric. The media is infamous for fake news.”
In an important statement on these shootings, the president of the American Psychological Association said: “The combination of easy access to assault weapons and hateful rhetoric is toxic. Psychological science has demonstrated that social contagion – the spread of thoughts, emotions and behaviors from person to person and among larger groups – is real, and may well be a factor … in the El Paso shooting.”
The racist, hate-filled, intolerant rhetoric of our president, politicians, and partisans must cease. The first and primary responsibility of the president, senate, and congress of the United States, as well as our state governors and legislatures, is the protection of the people, their property, and their security in the public sphere.
Our elected representatives are obligated to muster the political courage and find the nonpartisan integrity to enact laws that execute their main duty to the people to provide for their natural right to public safety; and our judiciary needs to explicitly set forth the primacy of this civil right in its articulation of justice and to reestablish the precedence of the original intent of the protections enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights.
We must stem the lethal tide of the super-availability of high-powered weapons and devices that give deeply antisocial individuals, racists, and supremacist groups the instant ability to transform their rage or distorted societal motives into wholesale, mechanized death at the touch of a trigger.
The lethal combination of politically infused, racist hate-speech and gun violence is shredding the integrity of our society.
This is unacceptable, and its remedy cannot be left to politicians beholden to lobbies, manufacturers, beneficiary corporations, or uncompromising constituencies.
To this end, USCMO reiterates its call for gun reform:
- Prohibit the possession and sale of all automatic and semi-automatic weapons through uniform laws on both the federal and state levels, with no exception.
- Impose a federal ban on the importation of all automatic and semi-automatic weapons.
- Create a federally funded gun buy-back program for all types of guns, financed through a one-time taxation.
- Set legal ammunition limits for individuals and associations.
- Establish stringent background checks that include criminal records and relevant social media searches.
- Institute significant time delays for all firearm purchases.
- Mandate that federal, state, and municipal agencies involved in gun procurement purchase life-saving “smart guns” and related technologies to encourage their development and market presence.
We strongly call for an end to the culture of racialization and intolerance that has poisoned our politics and contaminated our civic life.
We call for the creation of enforceable mechanisms that bring to due account public officials and partisan agitators who stigmatize groups and communities and subject them to physical harm, social injury, and insidious psychological damage.
Finally, again, we call for sweeping gun legislation to save countless lives and prevent the devastation of literally tens of thousands of family members, loved ones, neighbors and community connections, and to save American society from a chilling terror that has truly seeped into the souls and psychologies of the people.
###
