Readers React: Past mass killers have been white Christians. Why target only Muslims?

To the editor: When Muslim attackers in Boston, Paris, San Bernardino and Brussels shot or blew people up, there were immediate calls for, among other things, stopping all Muslim immigration to the U.S., surveilling mosques and patrolling Muslim neighborhoods. But when a white man in Norway killed 77 people (most of them teenagers), there was talk of only a deranged person. When a blond-haired, blue-eyed former soldier named Timothy McVeigh blew up an entire federal building, killing 168 people, nobody called for extra patrols of Christian neighborhoods and churches. (“Ignore Cruz and Trump — scapegoating Muslims is an un-American response to the Brussels attacks,” editorial, March 22)

When white Christian Americans shoot innocent people in movie theaters, shopping malls, schools, churches or healthcare clinics, nobody calls for special scrutiny of their churches or neighborhoods. Have we noticed how the National Rifle Assn. promptly calls for protecting gun rights after mass killings perpetrated by white people but remains quiet after killings by Muslims, evidently because doing so would imply Muslims deserve unfettered access to firearms too?

Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and all the other Republican also-rans: What’s your answer to this?

Bruce Barnbaum, Granite Falls, Wash.

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To the editor: Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) offers a strategy to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods as a way to prevent future terror attacks.

In order to “secure” these neighborhoods, I imagine that it would be necessary to define the perimeters of these neighborhoods, and maybe erecting some type of boundary — perhaps a fence or wall — would be helpful. That would make it easier to monitor the comings and goings of inhabitants and control the traffic of goods and services into the areas that Cruz would “patrol and secure.”

Also, if some trouble should arise in these areas and it becomes necessary to relocate the inhabitants, it would easier to round them up, put them onto trains and transport them to....

Oh, wait, I think this strategy has already been tried. It sounds familiar.

Laurie Jacobs, San Clemente

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To the editor: While President Obama is dancing the tango in Argentina and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is suggesting that waterboarding the captured terrorists would have solved the Brussels problem, we as citizens must consider what we can do in the immediate crisis.

Here is a suggestion: We could organize volunteer “Lincoln Brigades,” as they were called in the Spanish Civil War, to go to Molenbeek in Brussels right now and help an overtaxed and inept police force find and rout out the terrorist enclave there. Such a brigade should be international and composed primarily of citizens of Arabic-speaking countries, citizens who could speak to the community, perhaps gain its confidence and find those would-be terrorists in that area.

If, as has been reported, 400 fighters have been trained to attack Europe, it is time to stop squabbling and playing politics and instead do something. Forget tighter border controls — the enemy is already inside the Belgian gates and ready to strike again any day.

Marjorie Perloff, Pacific Palisades

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To the editor: Now that two brothers, both Belgian nationals, have been identified as the suicide bombers at the center of this week’s terrorist attacks in Brussels (one exploded a bomb at the airport, the other at a subway station), I wonder how long it will be before Trump calls for a moratorium on brothers entering the United States.

David Medrano, Alhambra

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