It’s time to fight terror at home

“Okay America, it’s time to completely level the points of interest, bomb the fuck out of them” touts one of my Facebook friends in response to the San Bernardino shootings.

It’s vitriolic speech, certainly misguided, but embodies an empathizable rage and a justifiable call to action. Americans often feel this way after a Muslim-extremist inspired attack happens, but are ironically complacent to mass shootings which happen on average more than once a day.

Americans should rally to fight terrorism, but let’s not discriminate against a threat that knows no boundaries.

Terrorism is both a domestic and international problem.

While murders caused by extremist radicalization mobilize our war machine, everyday mass-murders in our homes, schools and cities are somehow uninspiring of action. Why are we so quick to rally against a foreign enemy yet seem paralyzed in changing a system which enables the murder of thousands of Americans every year?

Is it moral to lead the War on Terror abroad by reciprocating the same mass violence we endure at home, without even thinking of how to actively engage the terror of gun violence at home?

The American credo is “liberty and justice for all,” but in frenzy to dish justice abroad, we fail to act on a bigger threat to our own liberty of life — domestic terrorism. Many more Americans are killed by domestic terrorism in the form of mass gun violence than by foreign threats.

The problem is that we don’t call daily mass gun violence terrorism, unless it is perpetrated by someone perceived as “foreign.”

It’s time to stop sugar-coating the state of our gun violence epidemic. Let’s call it as it is — a terrorist is one who kills mass numbers of innocent Americans regardless of the specifics of his or her ideology, race, nationality or political affiliation.

It’s time to expand the scope of our War on Terror to include gun violence at home.

More than justice, we as Americans deserve liberty. Our government should not only seek to bring terrorism to justice abroad, but preserve American liberty to life by taking measures to prevent terrorism from happening in our backyards.

This means gun control policy.

Americans are forced to deal with 11 times more death due to gun violence than citizens of countries of our economic caliber. Hasn’t it become obvious that we are doing something wrong, when in 2015 more than one mass shooting a day occurred on average?

While politicians, strategists, and military leaders debate our best course of action abroad, we the people need to make our stand against domestic terrorism — it’s time to get guns out of the hands of people who kill Americans.

When fear that the next mass shooting could be in your town is more real than it has been ever before, it becomes obvious that gun control has to be just as an important part of the War on Terror as are our foreign policy objectives.

Lead by example

If we wish to continue to lead the world and if we want to combat terrorism abroad, we have a moral imperative to lead by example and disarm terrorists on our own soil.

Where can we start? In my opinion, we can start by making more rigorous background checks, and have a federal standard to close loopholes caused by disparities in gun laws between states. Effective gun control doesn’t prevent Americans from bearing arms, it prevents terrorists from ease of access to guns which they enjoy today.

Let’s begin to treat the epidemic of gun violence as domestic terrorism and combat it as a part of our War on Terror. We’ve been zealous to root-out terrorism abroad since 9/11, but 2016 is the year to stop enabling it at home.