By Growing up, we’ve all become far too friendly with the phrase “gun violence” and yet somehow, our society has crumbled and allowed guns to have a bigger voice than our words have. The freedom to own a gun has broken down our society, and now, we live in a world where almost every week, we hear news of a gun-related crime. This is inhumane, and most certainly not fair to the lives we lose and the families that get torn apart because gun control isn’t being implemented.
Most recently, on the 8th of February 2020, Thailand had their largest mass shooting perpetrated by a single gunman. He murdered 29 people and injured a dozen more. This act of horror was committed by a soldier, so the question is, who can we trust?
There have also been a number of mass shootings in America, such as the mass shooting in a college bar in Thousand Oaks, California, where we lost 12 souls. One of the victims was Tamera Mowry Housley’s 18-year-old niece, Alaina Housley. The co-host of daytime talkshow, “The Host,” said, “I think the moment we focus on trying to find commonality instead of differences in the beginning, that’s where we can start with looking at human decency”.
[New Zealand’s] Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern executed immediate changes to their gun laws after a mass shooting occurred on the 15th of March 2019 at two different mosques in Christchurch.
The Housley family have started an organization called “Alaina’s Voice” which is dedicated to trying to stop the media from giving shooters the infamy they crave and is hoping to affect change in gun control legislation. However, in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern executed immediate changes to their gun laws after a mass shooting occurred on the 15th of March 2019 at two different mosques in Christchurch. In the space of 18 minutes, the gunman killed 50 people and injured several others in what can only be described as a horrific ordeal.
In America alone, it has been reported by investigative magazine Mother Jones, that there have been more than 90 mass shooting since 1982. That’s an estimated two to three shootings every year. 2019 alone exceeded the number of mass shooting in 2018.
Can you even imagine that someone can walk into a store and buy a gun just as easily as a laptop?
A gun safety organization named Everytown Research found that an average of 100 Americans were killed by guns every single day, whether it was suicide, homicide, or gang related. To no one’s surprise, this statistic has since risen, including an incident that claimed 177 lives during a 2020’s New Year’s Day celebration.
How have we let this escalate so quickly? So many lives are lost and the cost of a gun, according to BBC News, is just $200. That’s the equivalent of a Google Chrome laptop. Can you even imagine that someone can walk into a store and buy a gun just as easily as a laptop?
It’s time to put the guns down and pick up legislation against gun violence to fight for better policies on gun control.
I know people have fears and feel like having a gun is a security blanket. I understand that some feel a gun reassures them that they can protect themselves and their loved ones from harm. I get that. However, the prevalence of firearms implements nothing but more fear and in the wrong hands, it will be fired even if you never intended to use it.
It is time to make a change. It is time to rally and fight against gun violence because if change doesn’t happen now, then more and more lives will be senselessly lost.
It’s time to put the guns down and pick up legislation against gun violence to fight for better policies on gun control.
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