An Endeavor Worthy of a Great Nation
On Saturday morning, we witnessed the most deadly act of violence against the Jewish community in American history. As congregants of the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh were holding Shabbat morning services, including a bris to welcome a newborn child into their community, they became targets of horrific violence because of their religious beliefs. Eleven congregants were taken from their families and six other individuals were wounded, including four police officers who responded to the scene. My deepest condolences are with the families of the victims, and my prayers are with the survivors, Tree of Life congregants and members of both the Squirrel Hill and Pittsburgh Jewish communities, whose lives were forever changed by a hateful act of terror.
Tragically, the attack on the Tree of Life Congregation was part of a broader pattern. From the other synagogues and Jewish community centers that have been vandalized and have faced bomb threats, to the mass shootings at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and Pulse nightclub in Orlando, to the burning of a mosque in Texas and the killing of an Indian man in Kansas, hate-based attacks occur with regularity. And even when hate is not the primary motivation, gun violence is prevalent in American homes, neighborhoods and communities.
These acts of violence strike at the heart of our Nation, and it is up to public officials to take action. We cannot simply offer thoughts and prayers while lives are lost and families and communities are torn apart. America must not let hate define us. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” The president and members of Congress have an obligation to come together to light the way out of these dark times.
We must take action and fight for common-sense policies that will reduce the likelihood that these acts of violence will continue to occur. We must require universal background checks, ban military-style assault weapons and limit high-capacity magazines that allow hundreds of rounds to be fired in short order. We must keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people — suspected terrorists and individuals convicted of hate crimes, stalking and domestic and dating violence. We must provide funding, resources and safety gear for the police officers and other law enforcement officials who respond to these acts of violence — who run towards the danger rather than away from it. We must ensure that nonprofit organizations who face threats, including religious communities, have the resources needed to ensure the security of congregants and religious leaders.
These policies cannot prevent every act of violence or replace what has been lost at Tree of Life and in communities across the Nation. But we cannot simply surrender to a future where we continue to lose over 30,000 lives a year to gun violence. We owe it to the victims, survivors and families to keep working to reduce gun violence and fight the hateful extremism at the root of these acts of terror.
On September 12, 2001, our Nation came together in the face of unfathomable grief and fear and took action to help prevent another 9/11 from happening. We didn’t sit back and say there was nothing we could do to prevent future terrorist attacks. We established the Department of Homeland Security, we made major changes to our aviation security protocols and we improved our systems for gathering and sharing intelligence. We said an attack of that scale would never happen again, and 17 years later Americans are safer because we took decisive action. We must do the same for congregants in our houses of worship, students in our schools and all Americans in other venues as well.
This is an endeavor worthy of a great Nation.
