A few months ago, after the massacre in Las Vegas, I wrote an article called “Let’s Talk About Guns.” It was a long article detailing why we need more gun control. For a few weeks, I was angry, frustrated, and incredibly sad at the loss of life. Then my mind, like everyone else’s, drifted to other things and gun violence moved to the back of my mind.
Yesterday, there was another school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and 17 people were killed. And again, here we are, going over every single detail of the event. The media is going over the text messages sent by the survivors to their families, videos are being shared on Twitter from the attack. Everyone is debating gun control on social media, analyzing the shooter, and praying for the victims and their families. But soon enough, it will move to the back of everyone’s minds until an inevitable massacre happens again.
When is it going to be enough to inspire action by our government?
These senseless acts of violence don’t have to be inevitable. At this point, I don’t understand why this has to keep happening. There should have been action after the first major school shooting, but there wasn’t. Not even the killing of elementary school children could push people into action, so at what point will change happen?
Regardless of your political views, we all know that there has to be some type of change. Nobody likes when anyone dies, especially children. Nobody wants our streets to be unsafe, and at this point, they are. Gun massacres happen anywhere, almost every day in the United States.
To me, stricter gun laws are the obvious answer — if people don’t have assault rifles, they won’t be able to use assault rifles and gun massacres will decrease. When this has happened even once in other countries, like the U.K. and Australia, their governments have enacted changes and gun violence is now almost nonexistent. However, many people don’t agree with that.
It’s okay if you don’t agree that gun control will fix this. But I think everyone can agree that something has to be done, and something needs to change. Whether you believe we need to target guns, mental illness, both, or something else, I think it’s important that we all fight for all the gun violence to end.
The United States has a problem that needs to be fixed, and it’s very far past the time to fix it. This time, we can’t let the discussion end and the topic of gun violence to go to the back of our minds after the massacre in Parkland has blown over. We shouldn’t let any of the violence blow over at all. This is the time when we all need to come together and find a solution. Enough is enough.