OPINION: Congress Must Act on Gun Control

2232.

That’s the number of children, up to age 17, who died or were injured from gun violence from 2001-2022, according to Pew Research Center (Gramlich). Regular people, like me and you, were looking to get an education, but their lives took a drastic turn due to the actions of some sick, sick people.

14 high school students. 3 adults. 17 injuries.

That’s the death toll from just one high school shooting in Parkland, Florida. These children were the same age as us. A mentally unstable, extremist shooter came into a building of high school students at 2:19 pm and within 4 minutes, with a semi-automatic assault rifle, had ended the lives of innocent people (Wikipedia). All because he was allowed to carry that type of weapon.

Sante Fe. Red Lake. Virginia Tech. Sandy Hook. And the list goes on and on. WHEN WILL ENOUGH BE ENOUGH? When will the bloodshed of innocent students in schools around the nation end? When will Congress finally decide to take action? Have we not seen enough?

Today I wanted to write on gun violence in America, specifically in schools, and the lack of legislative action and gun control laws towards preventing mass shootings. For example, when purchasing a gun in the US, the gun verification process is a measly 2 steps. Now compare this number to Japan’s whopping 13 STEPS. According to a graph on npr.org, there were 0.04 gun deaths per 100,000 people in Japan during 2017. In the same year there were 4.43 gun deaths per 100,000 people in the United States. The statistics simply speak for themselves (Mohtany). When people have to go through a more extensive series of steps to acquire a gun, it ensures a lesser chance that the gun falls into unsafe hands.

According to a Quinnipiac poll, 97% of gun owners support universal background checks before a gun purchase (Mohtany). Then what’s the problem? A lack of bipartisanship. Today, Republicans are four times more likely than Democrats to say that gun rights are more important than gun control (76% vs. 19%), according to Pew Research Center (PEW). Some republicans say that instead of stricter gun control bans, we should be focusing on greater mental health support. Even though this claim may be true, mental health is not the main reason for this violence. In fact, less than 5 percent of gun-related killings between 2001 and 2010 were committed by someone diagnosed with a mental illness at the time, according to a 2015 National Institutes of Health article (Ebbs). Please take a look at the below image:

This right here is an AR-15 Semi-Automatic Rifle. Aurora, Colorado. Newtown, Connecticut. San Bernardino, California. Sutherland Springs, Texas. Las Vegas, Nevada. Parkland, Florida (NBC). Those were all locations where this type of rifle was used to massacre a whopping total of 154 people, just in the locations named. The AR-15 was originally designed as a military combat weapon to be used in the field of combat, but today it is a widespread commercially-sold product. Now I am all for the second amendment, the right to bear arms, but would one need to bear a semi-automatic military grade rifle for hunting or defense? How many more Americans must fall to gun violence? How many more before Congress finally unites against their common enemy, gun violence? I’ll leave you with one last thing: