A Speak Out and Repurpose duo.

The Marked Man – a repurposed drawing from 1971.

Writing for Quartz on January 31st Jenny Anderson wrote an article entitled The psychology of why 94 deaths from terrorism are scarier than 301,797 deaths from guns.  In it she references a paper by Linda Qui writing for Politifact in 2015 entitled Fact-checking a comparison of gun deaths and terrorism deaths  in which Ms Qui quotes figures gleaned from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System.  Looking at all deaths on US soil between 2005 and 2015, 71 were due to extremists attacks and the majority of 301,797 due to home grown gun violence.

The President of the United States wishes to make America safe by instituting an immigration process that will require extreme vetting for those seeking refuge for lives that have been shattered and broken by war and terror.

Looking at the figures quoted in the papers by Ms. Anderson and Ms. Qui one can only conclude that the only place for extreme vetting to make America safe is to vet those seeking to obtain weapons for their own personal use and which end up killing their fellow citizens in numbers that are simply staggering.

The President should be welcoming refugees to his country in the spirit so clearly spelled out in the words on the Statue of Liberty, and as a priority look to solve those home grown crimes of violence that are clearly due to a failure of gun control and for which he is now responsible.