Zohara Meyerhoff Hieronimus The Baltimore Sun, May 2, 2015. The tragic deaths of Freddie Gray in Maryland, Michael Brown of Missouri, and Walter Scott in South Carolina are representative of America’s institutionalized violence, grounded in our modern era drug war.

The American drug war began with President Richard Nixon’s 1971 declaration of war, calling drug use “public enemy No.1,” followed two years later by the creation of the Drug Enforcement Agency. It was easier then for law enforcement to both legally and illegally arrest our citizens without fearing for their own lives, because there were fewer guns on the streets. Today there are 250 million to 300 million guns in our community, one for almost every American.