I am so sick of hearing about all the negative things happening in our country and around the world. All I see when I turn on the news or go online are stories about the latest mass shooting, terrorist attack, or threat of nuclear war. Things are out of control and nothing is changing.
On October 1st, there was the Las Vegas shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival. A 64-year-old man opened fire at a crowd of 22,000 concert-goers from his hotel suite of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. This man killed 58 people and injured 546 before ending his life. This shooting is now the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual to happen in our country.
On Halloween day, there was a terrorist attack in Manhattan, which was the deadliest attack to happen since 9/11. A 29-year-old man killed 8 people and injured 12 by running down people on a bike path from his rental truck and shooting them. This attack had been planned for about a year after he was inspired by watching an ISIS video.
On November 5th, there was a mass shooting at First Baptist Church in Texas. A 26-year-old man killed 26 people, including children and a pregnant woman and her unborn child, and wounded 20. This is the largest mass shooting in state history in Texas. This is an especially disturbing event since the shooter should not have been able to legally purchase firearms since he was court marshaled for domestic violence and dishonorably discharged from the Air Force.
Notice how with each new shooting or terror attack, we often hear it has now become the deadliest in U.S. history or a certain state’s history. I truly don’t believe people who aren’t in the military or law enforcement should own assault weapons. I don’t understand what the need for normal citizens to have these weapons are. Despite this, even if these weapons were banned for civilians, I am sure people who want to commit mass shootings will find a way to get their hands on them or simply decide to kill people another way.
It’s not guns that are the problem, it’s people. It’s people with hatred in their hearts and who want to kill people who are the problem. There was once a time where people like that were considered to be possessed by evil spirits or the devil, but now we refer to them as “mentally ill” and “terrorists”.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about what these categories of people entail and who fits into them. The American Psychiatric Association defines mental illness as “all diagnosable mental disorders – health conditions involving significant changes in thinking, emotion, and/or behavior and distress and/or problems functioning in social, work, or family activities.” It’s important to remember that not everyone who has a mental illness is violent or a mass shooter.
Oxforddictionaries.com defines a terrorist as “a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”. A lot of people want to classify mass shooters as terrorists but the reason they aren’t is because of the lack of political aims, such as ties to ISIS or another extremity.
I’m just flat out sick of hearing about terrorist attacks and mass shootings. These things are going to keep happening though and I don’t know what the solution to stopping them is. Banning certain kinds of weapons could prevent people from obtaining them, but it won’t for criminals-and there is always bombs, knives, vehicles, etc. As long as people want to kill people, they will find a way.