A curtain of depression in the United States has not lifted since the first mass shooting in 1966, cutting between the line of progression and digression.
We are stagnant. We are complacent to the deaths of innocent lives that thought, “It won’t happen to me.”
Seventeen souls were lost in Parkland, Florida by a 19-year-old with a legally purchased AR-15. But those are just numbers, right?
It should seem obvious that politicizing shootings will not benefit the tragedy and if anything, it dehumanizes the victims. They are just another statistic added to the body count, conveniently transformed into a info graphic for the world to judge.
Most people will skim over the facts without a second thought besides a “prayer,” soon forgetting the new reality that the loved ones of the victims will have to live with and endure on a daily basis.
Please do not forget the lives lost, the dreams crushed and the futures erased.
This is a plea for the voices that can no longer speak; the ones silenced by a discharged bullet. This is for the names that will never be signed again and the faces left memorialized in photos.
You will be remembered.
But to do so, the society created by the U.S. must progress. The curtain must be lifted and the prayers silenced. Action should be demanded, not requested and a life should mean more than just a number scrawled on the incident report.
Mass shootings are not just a gun problem nor are they just a human problem. There are a plethora of explanations as to why shootings happen, but to begin the healing process, society needs to be more empathetic.
It’s time to expand empathy and sympathy to not only the people we are close with, but the entire human race.
To a country unsettled by innocent deaths, this is not the end.
Mass shootings are a product of lenient laws and careless individuals, independent of their political preference. There is much that can be achieved by not banning guns, but creating more efficient laws around the purchase of firearms. We should not want to prohibit anything but rather improve the ways we buy, use and store these weapons.
The second amendment was written before the development of semi-automatic weapons and developing the technology, yet the right to bear arms has not been touched since it was first written in 1791. This fact is not dependent on a political affiliation and both parties should consider revaluation, especially considering many semi-automatic guns have been used in mass shootings since 2004, according to the Washington Post.
Time is up, the curtain must rise and action is mandatory to save future victims of mass shootings because it is inevitable that more will occur.
Both society and our gun laws are to blame for the deaths of innocent human beings.
These may not be the only reasons but it seems clear that these two aspects must progress for any real change to go into effect.
There are many statistics and psychological answers that can be determined by examining the shootings that have occurred in the U.S.
Yes, there can be comparisons drawn from other countries and the laws they have enacted. There are many explanations to what can be the answer to mass shootings.
However, let’s encourage solutions instead of answers. Let’s find out how to stop it instead of why it happened. Nothing can be done to repent the actions of another, but there are steps to be taken toward terminating these calamities, more than “thoughts and prayers.”
If we claim to love this country so much, it’s time to start acting like patriots and keep our citizens safe within these borders.
