The September shooting at Sacramento City College and the recent Umpqua Community College have reminded us of a stark reality in the U.S.
Someone gets angry, guns are everywhere, now someone is dead.
Gun violence in this country is out of control and has been for a long time. There are more guns in this country than there are people, which is mind-boggling.
As you brag about your weapon, one of – or in the case of Umpqua College – 10 of your fellow Americans just senselessly got gunned down in Oregon and seven more were injured.
According to gunviolencearchive.org, in the U.S. there have been 42,993 gun violence incidents so far in 2015 and 10,843 deaths attributed to those incidents.
The saying “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is absurd. It’s like saying that the superfluous amount of guns that are in this country has nothing to do with the gun violence epidemic that has consumed our great nation.
The Second Amendment seems to be what gun supporters hide behind when the subject of gun control is broached.
The Second Amendment was put in the Constitution because the United States did not have a military. Citizens were encouraged to arm themselves to ward off an imminent British invasion.
The Second Amendment does not fit the reality of today. In 2015, the chance of America being imminently invaded is very slim.
If a person’s only reasoning for having a firearm is for protection, the odds are astronomically not in one’s favor of having to use that firearm to protect themselves or anyone else. Gun supporters come up with every excuse in the book to validate their views on why they need a cache of weapons in their basement, but none of these claims make much sense.
The only excuse that makes any sense is that it’s their Constitutional right, but the amendment as mentioned previously is outdated.
Being pro or anti-gun doesn’t make you a bad person, but being pro-promotion and glamorization of these instruments of death in a country whose gun violence homicide rates dwarf all other first world countries – by both the National Rifle Association (NRA) and ardent Second Amendment supporters – is not what is best for this country as a whole.
The “as long as it doesn’t affect me” mentality is exactly what is wrong with this country.
Whether or not you own a gun is entirely up to you, but please do not flaunt it.
Maybe if somehow we can change the gung-ho mentality that exists in this country where it concerns firearms and come up with some type of legislation to address this issue, tragic incidents like we saw at SCC and Umpqua College will drastically decrease or go away all together.
Something has to be done.
