There is one mass shooting every day on average in America, according to The Washington Post. Las Vegas was just the tip of the iceberg.
The United States has six times as many rearm homicides as Canada does, according to information from United Nations data collected by The Guardian.
These are facts. This is not fake news.
America has a gun problem, and we need to address it.
How many senseless acts of violence will it take for our country to take action? How many times can we o er our “thoughts and prayers,” as our president did, and then the very next day forget what happened?
What happened in Las Vegas is horrendous for many reasons. Hundreds of families will never be mended because of this act of violence. Even more, though, is that it highlighted severe problems within our country in regard to rearms, much like previous mass shootings have.
These pointless killings are only getting more common and the death
counts higher, and we as a country need to take a step back and figure out how to work together to solve this immense issue that faces our people, unfortunately, almost everyday.
When Australia suffered a mass shooting in 1996, they passed legislation that reduced the number of mass shootings since then to zero. They took action without sacrificing the rights of the Australian people, many of which live in a wild outback region that more than warrants the ownership of a gun.
The Second Amendment was written at a time when guns took much longer to reload than they do today, and it was written for the purpose of fielding state militias as opposed to a national army. Well, we have national army now and we don’t have state militias. And regardless of the intention of the founding fathers, legislation contradicts the founding fathers’ intentions all the time. The founding fathers warned against political parties, and we’ve had them nearly since the beginning of the nation’s
history. The Constitution is designed to facilitate evolution of legislation as social issues and technology necessitates.
CNN has called the mass shooting in Las Vegas “the largest in U.S. history.” Is this what it takes to get people thinking about gun safety?
The complete prohibition of guns is not the solution since rearm use is ingrained in American culture. For many, the right to own guns is a right to feel safe and a right to eat (hunting). But what needs to be examined is the way in which we permit citizens to purchase guns and which they are allowed to buy. What needs to be examined is that there is never any actual discussion of this topics unless there is a major tragedy.
Now IS the time to be talking about gun violence. When there are res, we talk about re safety. When there are car accidents, we talk about automobile safety. How is this any different?
One person’s “right” to own a gun should not take precedence over another person’s right to not be shot.
