In the after­math of the shoot­ing in Park­land, Fla., that left 17 dead, many Democ­rats in Con­gress are once again call­ing for gun con­trol, as they have for decades. But all too often, this con­cern for the unchecked spread of weapons ends at America’s shores.

A more holistic approach to dealing with the scourge of weapons and violence would not only make moral sense, it could contribute to a more robust—and effective—argument for instituting gun control measures.

Last week, top Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors, such as Claire McCaskill (D‑Mo.) and Bill Nel­son (D‑Fla.), expressed out­rage over the lack of action by Con­gress to stop gun vio­lence in Amer­i­ca. How­ev­er these same sen­a­tors vot­ed against an effort in 2017 to end the U.S. arm­ing of the Sau­di Ara­bi­an gov­ern­ment — a fla­grant human rights abuser that has killed more than 10,000 civil­ians in its three-year siege of Yemen. Vir­tu­al­ly all Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors also sup­port arm­ing Israel every year, a coun­try that rou­tine­ly bombs and sub­ju­gates the 4.5 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans under its charge — 46 per­cent of whom are chil­dren. The Unit­ed States con­sis­tent­ly ranks as the num­ber one arms deal­er in the world, with sup­port from Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats alike.

It’s not just Con­gress. Fol­low­ing the Park­land shoot­ing, for­mer CIA direc­tor John Bren­nan insist­ed on Twit­ter that ​“Con­gress needs to act now to pre­vent access to semi­au­to­mat­ic weapons that kill inno­cents.” Dur­ing his tenure in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, how­ev­er, Bren­nan con­sis­tent­ly lob­bied to step up the ship­ment of arms into Syria.

For­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma him­self held vio­lence abroad to a dif­fer­ent stan­dard than vio­lence at home. While he pub­licly teared up after the trag­ic shoot­ing at Sandy Hook ele­men­tary in New­town, Conn., he also over­saw the killing of between 384 and 807 civil­ians in drone strikes dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy, includ­ing a 16-year-old Amer­i­can citizen.

Some may insist that, when it comes to firearms, there are dif­fer­ent moral met­rics for civil­ian and mil­i­tary use. How­ev­er, the same argu­ment that gun con­trol advo­cates in the U.S. fre­quent­ly make — that flood­ing soci­ety with guns nec­es­sar­i­ly makes soci­ety more vio­lent — remains true on a glob­al scale. As we have seen time and time and time again, U.S. arms ship­ments to Libya and Syr­ia have ​“fall­en into the hands” of jihadists groups. Even set­ting aside the bil­lions of dol­lars in bombs and fight­er jets the Unit­ed States sells to human-rights abus­ing coun­tries, the flood­ing of arms into war­zones, regard­less of how noble the inten­tions may be, fre­quent­ly ends up fuel­ing groups the U.S. State Depart­ment itself deems ​“ter­ror­ists.”

Vio­lence at home and abroad is inex­tri­ca­bly linked. Niko­las Cruz, the Park­land shoot­er, was trained by the Army Junior Reserve Offi­cer Train­ing Corps (JROTC), a pseu­do-para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion for youth that serves as an onboard for the U.S. mil­i­tary. He also was a mem­ber of his school’s rifle team, which receives fund­ing from the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion and is spon­sored by the JROTC. Two sep­a­rate analy­ses—one by George Wash­ing­ton anthro­pol­o­gist Hugh Guster­son, the oth­er by jour­nal­ist Emi­ly Bell — found that rough­ly 34 per­cent of U.S. mass shoot­ers are mil­i­tary vet­er­ans, as com­pared with 14 per­cent of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, and that mil­i­tary ser­vice is an ​“impor­tant risk fac­tor” in future like­li­hood of com­mit­ting mass vio­lence. These stud­ies reveal a clear cor­re­la­tion between the role of the mil­i­tary in our soci­ety and mass shootings.

The Unit­ed States dropped 40,000 bombs in 2017 and 31,000 in 2016, killing thou­sands of peo­ple across the globe. Do we not have the resources and moral cap­i­tal to explore in tan­dem both vio­lence with­in our bor­ders and the vio­lence we export?

A more holis­tic approach to deal­ing with the scourge of weapons and vio­lence would not only make moral sense, it could con­tribute to a more robust — and effec­tive — argu­ment for insti­tut­ing gun con­trol mea­sures. Call­ing for restric­tions on gun access in Amer­i­ca would be more con­vinc­ing when paired with calls to stop the flow of U.S. arms to for­eign despots and sec­tar­i­an groups which use them to ter­ror­ize people.

Some in the media and Con­gress not only ignore this con­nec­tion but per­verse­ly imply that Amer­i­cans should chan­nel the vio­lence they would oth­er­wise engage in at home to for­eign war­zones. In the wake of the mas­sacre at the Pulse night­club in Orlan­do, Fla., Rep. Seth Moul­ton (D‑Mass.) tweet­ed out a pic­ture of him­self in Iraq car­ry­ing an assault rifle with the cap­tion, ​“I know assault rifles. I car­ried one in Iraq. They have no place on Amer­i­ca’s streets.” In the wake of the Park­land shoot­ing, Salon pub­lished an arti­cle with the head­line, ​“How about you join the Army if you want to shoot guns.” The impli­ca­tion being that shoot­ing peo­ple on behalf of the U.S. gov­ern­ment in far-away coun­tries is prefer­able to doing so here.

A third option of reduc­ing the fre­quen­cy of both domes­tic and for­eign vio­lence is rarely dis­cussed, much less enter­tained. For some lib­er­als, vio­lence com­mit­ted by the mil­i­tary over­seas is seen as inevitable — some­thing we sim­ply can­not stop, some­thing fac­tored in, and there­fore not a pri­or­i­ty. If this sounds famil­iar, it’s the same excuse the Right gives for why we should­n’t ban guns here at home. Lib­er­als should con­nect the vio­lence we export with that which we see in our com­mu­ni­ties — and make a con­sis­tent, com­pelling case to end both.