Fifty-five. Does this number have any significance to you? Does it ring any bells? As of February 29, fifty-five is the number of mass shootings that have occurred in 2020 alone. Fifty-five mass shootings in just sixty-eight days. People all across the United States are being brutally murdered by machines that were created to kill. This piece is not to convince you that we need a gun free society, but rather inform you of what is happening in our country in terms of gun violence.
Although sometimes necessary, guns have become evil beings. Death or serious injury is all that really results from their use. Yet, there are still people everywhere who still want them because they are “fun to use” or it is their right. Some people truly believe that we are still deserving of a right that was given to us over two hundred years ago. America is almost like another planet compared to how it was in 1791, when the second amendment was ratified. The world has changed, and not necessarily for the better.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 26th, an employee at a local brewery went on a rampage and fatally shot his coworkers leaving six dead, including himself. Is this the only shooting you’ve heard about this year? Maybe you’ve heard about a few more, but unless you’ve done extensive research like I had to do, it is unlikely anyone understands how common shootings have become. Why is that we only really heard of this shooting in Milwaukee and not the twenty-five other ones that happened in January, alone? It’s because the number of deaths were enough to make it “relevant”. For some reason, six was the cutoff to make this calamity important enough to alert the media. I guess the thirteen year old boy who was killed on March 8 in Rosedale, Maryland is not deserving of our thoughts and prayers. Or the wife and children of the man who fatally shot them and himself? Is there a magic number of deaths that makes a shooting significant enough for people to care?
It seems to be that nobody really does care unless they are personally affected. When the Milwaukee shooting occurred, Donald Trump spent a mere fifty-three seconds at a press conference covering the tragedy. He repeatedly expressed his condolences for those affected as he continuously looked down at the script in front of him. It is appalling that this catastrophe was not important enough for our own president to spend even a full minute to cover.
According to the second amendment, we, as Americans, have the right to own a gun and use it as we please. If you think about it, though, just because you’re allowed to do or have something does not mean you should. For instance, imagine that you are lactose intolerant and have a glass of milk sitting right in front of you. You could easily pick it up and drink it, but you won’t because you know it’ll be horrendous. It is wrong. Just because you can drink that glass of milk does not mean you should. Reading that lousy example, you probably know how obvious it is to just not drink that glass of milk, but some disagree. Some claim that they will drink it because they love milk and never want to give it up, despite the dire consequences. Others claim that since the milk is there, they may as well drink it since nobody is stopping them. There is no law stopping them from drinking that milk, so why shouldn’t they? Now, change that milk to a gun and change the lactose intolerance to the hundreds of people who are killed every year due to gun violence. If you know it is wrong and so many people suffer so often, then why is the killing device so important?
So much is currently going wrong in our world that we can so easily feel helpless and overwhelmed. The only way to help the United States in the fight against gun violence is to stand up. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. Call or write your local politicians, post on social media, be a voice in your community. I am tired of looking at the news (when they do cover the shootings) and seeing shooting after shooting and rising death and injury tolls. It is sad to think about how much we have normalized shootings in our country. It is our job, as the youth in America, to invoke change. We are fighting for our futures. So, let us not just sit around, thinking about those affected by gun violence. We can do more. Please, speak up. Scream and do not stop making your voice heard until somebody listens. You may be one of the reasons that fifty-five does not become fifty-six.