GOP candidates ignoring biggest violence issue

Guns R Us?

It is no surprise that the Republican presidential candidates won't debate gun violence in the context of Homeland Security lest they become the political target of the National Rifle Association. Yet according to PolitiFacts over the past decade, there have been 71 deaths due to gun violence from terrorist incidents and 301,000 deaths related to gun violence not linked to terrorism.

So the Republicans are spending 99.9 percent of their time talking about domestic terrorist threats from ISIS, from Syrian refugees or more generally from Muslims wherever they reside, or less than 1 percent of the problem and practically no percent of their time on the 99.9 percent of the real problem that is domestic gun violence.

This country was founded on the principle that individual rights and freedoms, however exercised, must be linked to social responsibilities and to the public good. We have freedom of religion, for example, but not the right to impose religion on others.

However, the right of individuals to carry a gun, a rifle or assault weapon is based on a selective and highly self-serving interpretation of the Second Amendment, totally disconnected from its social purpose and exactly what the Founding Fathers never intended (remember the well-regulated militia part?).

The Second Amendment has been used to create an enormously expensive and dangerous entitlement program, one that costs thousands of lives and an estimated $6.8 billion per year (NYT). Perhaps the federal, state and local government budgets should include a line item for the cost of gun violence in their communities and in this nation. Or at least, the feds should subtract this cost from the estimate of the nation's gross national product. More gun violence should not be interpreted as a boost to the economy. Guns R Not US.

Larry Grossman

Longboat Key

This story was originally published January 8, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "GOP candidates ignoring biggest violence issue ."