Gun Violence in America

 Gun Violence in America is a major issue that our nation is suffering from. While there are appropriate and legal reasons for owning a gun, there are also restrictions for owning a gun. In our nation, mass shootings have become too common. There are ways we can keep our people safe and prevent mass shootings and even shootings in general.

How do you feel knowing that 100,000 students carry a gun to school (Bourne)? Out of those 100,000 students, it is possible that 5 of those students are in your school. Of those students, 75% of them, possibly more, have said they’ve been bullied in some form. At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, April 20, 1999, two students named Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, planned on bombing their school. When the bombs failed to go off, they went on a shooting spree, killing and wounding teachers and students, before taking their own lives. These two students carried out this shooting as a result of being bullied (Columbine Shooting).

Mass shootings are occurring more frequently; the numbers are increasing each year. I held an interview with Police Chief, Robert Doss, of the New Windsor Police Department and he had some very good solutions towards preventing mass shootings. Whenever you hear about a mass shooting on the news or on social media, they release all the info on the suspect and his reasonings for doing such a horrific event; instead they should be putting out the posts and pictures of the loved ones that were lost. Now why might this be a bad thing? Chief Doss said “Releasing the suspect’s name is an encouragement for others to possibly do the same or worse. It’s an encouragement because, people who may have dealt with something for instance, their boss firing them, those people then want to be noticed just like the other person and could look at then the amount of people the past shooter killed and try to do worse”. By putting up pictures and posts of the loved ones lost, it takes away the hatred and brings in the sorrow and care for the families. We can potentially reduce these rising numbers of mass shootings by allowing no notoriety of the shooter.

Do you think that criminals or people with mental disorders should have the right to own a gun? Everyone has the right as a United States citizen with the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms. Going off of that, a person may have owned a gun for ten or so years and just developed a mental issue. Now what do you do? Chief Doss believes, and I agree with him, in a system where an agency who feels that a person is unstable to possess of a firearm, can go to a judge and get approval papers to remove their firearm(s). Those papers will then be handed down to the police and they will have approval to retrieve the weapon(s). This could potentially reduce the amount of gun violence that happens, such as mass shootings. It can reduce the amount of gun violence by monitoring people with serious mental health issues, and also reduce the amount of gun violence by allowing the chance, if necessary, to seize weapons from these people who are not stable enough to have any possession of a gun.

Within a week of writing about this topic, two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, faced a terror attack after a gunman left 50 people dead in mass shooting on Friday, March 15 (New Zealand Mosque Shooting in Christchurch). Imagine how the future could be, with all these systems and actions we could put in place to reduce and prevent such horrific events. With all these options we have that we could use to prevent these shootings, imagine how much Friday, March 15, could have been different for the people in New Zealand.

Works Cited

Bourne, Greg. “Violence in America – Are You Satisfied?” Lead4Tomorrow, Greg Bourne, 13 Feb. 2013, www.lead4tomorrow.org/violence-in-america/.

Editors, History.com. “Columbine Shooting.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 9 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/topics/1990s/columbine-high-school-shootings.

“New Zealand Mosque Shooting in Christchurch.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new-zealand-mosque-shootings.