This bothers me. THIS upsets me. SOMETHING needs to be done. Gun violence is on the rise. To be honest, it has been on the rise my entire life. I cannot remember a time where there was not a story in the news about some mass shooting or someone being shot or someone getting caught in the crossfire. I grew up in a world where it was not safe to go outside and play with your friends anymore. I grew up in a world where you could not even feel safe within the hallowed halls of your school anymore. Here's a statistic for you, exactly ONE year after the Sandy Hook shooting over 30,000 people had died gun-related deaths in the United States of America. One year. Need proof, there is a billboard that is counting each death. Here's a photo of it from December 13, 2013. Credit to the twitter user.
And through all of this, we cannot even pass a bill for more background checks when buying guns. What is wrong with this country that we let this much time pass and do absolutely nothing? By no means am I suggesting we fully ban firearms from civilians. I'm from Virginia, a southern state, and I understand the uses of certain types of guns for self defense and hunting and the like, but for the life of me I cannot figure out what a CIVILIAN needs with a military grade weapon or even some more powerful guns. Who is invading your property? Seriously, do you have militants using guerilla tactics to try and steal your precious recliner?
You may ask what prompted this post. Well, I found an article this morning that really makes me so angry. ThinkProgress posted an article called "There Has Been An Average of One School Shooting Every Other School Day This Year,"talking about the frequency of school shootings in the United States so far in 2014. Every. Other. School. Day. What are we doing? Why are we letting CHILDREN suffer?
Let me tell you the story of the world I grew up in. When I was 9 years old, Columbine happened. I did not really understand what happened back then, but that's when my friends and I stopped playing outside as much. It's when school started to look different. When I went to middle school and high school I moved to Southwestern Virginia where people value their guns pretty highly. I became friends with kids who were a lot like the Columbine shooters. Luckily, they never got bad enough to even consider taking the same path, but I knew those kids. They were my friends. The way to save them from that outcome was so easy. Just show them that someone cares. Anyone. Listen to them and it will do a world of good. While I lived in Southwestern Virginia, I lived about 45 minutes from Blacksburg. I was 16 when Henry Cho opened fire there killing 32 people. There was a time that day that they lost him and every school in my area went into lock down. My teachers let us have our cellphones out because so many alumni went to Tech that they wanted to know that they were okay too. That is my reality. That is the world I have lived in and those are just TWO incidents that have occurred. Between Columbine and Sandy Hook there were 31 mass shootings in the United States. That's between 1999 and 2012. 13 years. The number grows every year.
It is time to push back. To Do SOMETHING. Action needs to be taken. People have tried and failed so often and it's insane that we let this continue. 92% of Americans are in favor of background checks, yet for some reason we can't get that passed through Congress. We need to regulate the sale of guns. We need to improve on mental health care in this country. We need to do better. If not for ourselves, then for the next generation. A generation that doesn't know a world without school shootings every year. Because even when President Obama was addressing this in his State of the Union and demanding action be taken, a shooting was happening on a college campus in Tennessee. If this trend isn't turned back we will see a day when the happy days are the ones where there isn't a shooting and that will be the big news of the day.
Let me tell you the story of the world I grew up in. When I was 9 years old, Columbine happened. I did not really understand what happened back then, but that's when my friends and I stopped playing outside as much. It's when school started to look different. When I went to middle school and high school I moved to Southwestern Virginia where people value their guns pretty highly. I became friends with kids who were a lot like the Columbine shooters. Luckily, they never got bad enough to even consider taking the same path, but I knew those kids. They were my friends. The way to save them from that outcome was so easy. Just show them that someone cares. Anyone. Listen to them and it will do a world of good. While I lived in Southwestern Virginia, I lived about 45 minutes from Blacksburg. I was 16 when Henry Cho opened fire there killing 32 people. There was a time that day that they lost him and every school in my area went into lock down. My teachers let us have our cellphones out because so many alumni went to Tech that they wanted to know that they were okay too. That is my reality. That is the world I have lived in and those are just TWO incidents that have occurred. Between Columbine and Sandy Hook there were 31 mass shootings in the United States. That's between 1999 and 2012. 13 years. The number grows every year.
It is time to push back. To Do SOMETHING. Action needs to be taken. People have tried and failed so often and it's insane that we let this continue. 92% of Americans are in favor of background checks, yet for some reason we can't get that passed through Congress. We need to regulate the sale of guns. We need to improve on mental health care in this country. We need to do better. If not for ourselves, then for the next generation. A generation that doesn't know a world without school shootings every year. Because even when President Obama was addressing this in his State of the Union and demanding action be taken, a shooting was happening on a college campus in Tennessee. If this trend isn't turned back we will see a day when the happy days are the ones where there isn't a shooting and that will be the big news of the day.
SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE.
So why not now? Why not start it with us.
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