Page 1 Roundup (03/23)

The Daily News asks the billion-dollar question: How can we stop this? Yet for some reason, several of my fellow liberals' reaction -- just as it is whenever there's a terrorist attack -- is to smugly proudly post something like this:

Huh? Gun nuts are a serious issue for Americans and fundamental Islamists are a serious issue for Muslims -- and when they cross over they're a problem for everyone. We are bound to have more gun nuts because America worships guns. They are bound to have more radical Islamists because they worship in Islam. What's the big news here? Just because America is full of gun nuts doesn't mean radical extremists aren't also a problem. What needs to be honestly addressed is why Muslims are being radicalized to kill in the name of "religion" in a way that other faiths are not. (One Planned Parenthood shooter every 10 years does not a jihadist movement make; most of them are white, but they aren't being driven by radical Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism.) I'm an atheist and have no use for any of these religions, so I'm not the right person to figure it out. But I don't see how reminding us that America has a gun problem -- which me and everyone else with a brain has been SCREAMING FOR YEARS -- addresses what happened in Brussels and Paris and London and Madrid and New York and Washington and San Bernardino and Turkey and Egypt and so on and so on. Yet time and time again, my experience is that certain people -- who are so brave to speak up so long as they can do it anonymously -- assume because I'm worried about something that rarely hits close to home I must only be bringing it up because I'm racist. Huh? Because my family wasn't shot at the airport yesterday in Belgium I shouldn't care about it? That, to me, sounds like a Republican line of thinking -- only caring about something when it affects me personally. (Never mind the fact that 9/11 did touch my life personally, but that is truly beside the point.) I've never been shot by a gun but I'm very vocal that I think guns should be outlawed -- why shouldn't I be concerned about this? I don't get it.