By Keith Townsend

Some time ago, during the years just before and just after the 9/11 attack, a number of students from Bosnia enrolled at West Rowan High School, where several of them were in my history classes. We were fortunate to have had them with us at West. Like all teenagers, they were full of life, sometimes unpredictable, but always interesting and fun. I often think of my former Bosnian students, especially in light of today’s political atmosphere. I believe that all were Muslims and they, along with members of their immediate families, were refugees who had escaped the most horrific European genocide since W. W. II. Serbian Christians had overrun their homes. In the town of Srebrenica, the Muslim men were rounded up and nearly 10,000 were executed in mid-July, 1995. The point here is not to indict Christians, since these killers were no more representative of my faith than the couple who went on the bloody rampage in San Bernadino were representative of the vast majority of Muslims. Refugees are, except in the most bizarre of circumstances, the victims, not the perpetrators of these murderous acts.

Representative Richard Hudson’s bill to essentially block the entry of Syrian refugees may be a sincere effort to increase our security, but I doubt it. The refugee process that the government now has in place requires that intelligence, law enforcement, and state department officials must vet each applicant’s personal history, as well as travel and immigration records. This usually takes between eighteen months and two years to complete.

However, the most obvious breach of security is of our own creation. CBS News reported on November 20^th, exactly a week after the Paris attacks, that thousands on the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list, which includes the “no-fly list”, have bought guns in the U.S. during the past decade. All of those sales were legal. Bills to close that loophole have been introduced in Congress each year for the past nine years, but they have all failed. You can be sure that most of the House members who voted to block the entrance of Syrian refugees also, at the behest of the NRA, voted to allow those on our nation’s terrorist watch list to continue to purchase weapons.

Unfortunately, the North Carolina state legislature, with the support of members from both parties, has overwhelmingly endorsed Governor McCrory’s call to deny Syrian refugees entrance into our state. This only goes to show that pandering to voters’ fears knows no political boundaries.

We have never been a people who felt it necessary to hide behind walls. Our ancestors were the ones who took the chance to find a better future by immigrating to a strange new land. It is a combination of courage and clear thinking, not fear, that will protect our freedom.

Keith Townsend is a retired history teacher who taught at West Rowan High School.