Another day and yet another mass shooting in America, this time in Hesston, Kansas - with the shooter killing three people and injuring another 14 others. However for Americans this kind of event is all too familiar.
We are only 57 days into this year and already 51 people have been killed and a further 131 more injured, in the last 72 hours alone there have been over 185 gun related incidents reported in the States. With 300 million guns being owned by the US alone, nearly enough for one per member of the US population, these statistics really aren't that surprising.
In 2015 nearly 40,000 Americans were either injured or killed in shooting related circumstances. In the same year gun crime took a sinister turn when an innocent camera man and presenter were shot, by a disgruntled ex colleague, live on air whilst they were doing a section on Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia. The shooter then posted the horrific footage on Facebook for the whole world to see.
The right to own guns in the US comes from the Second Amendment to the US Constitution which many lobby groups fiercely defend. I've seen numerous interviews with pro gun lobbyists making the arguments that if guns were banned innocent people would have no way to protect themselves, however to me if you didn't have these sorts of gun laws in place in the first place then the US wouldn't have this amount of blood on their hands. I'm aware that I come from an extremely biased point of view on gun laws and gun crime due to being brought up and living in a country where we have very low gun crime. After the tragic Dunblane school massacre, in 1996, handguns were effectively banned. To me I find it a crazy concept that teachers in schools over in America feel the need to arm themselves in order to protect themselves and their class. The one place that children should feel and be safe, other than their homes, is their school.
This law will unfortunately never change but some sort of action needs to be taken, even if it is just increased background checks on potential gun owners. With the US spending more than, reportedly, a trillion dollars per year defending itself against terrorism, which kills a tiny fragment of people compared to the outrageous amount of people killed by ordinary gun crime. Nowadays everyone seems so focused solely on terrorism but I can't help feel that the real threat is at home with these obscene statistics.
It begs the question of how many more innocent people have to lose their lives and how many more families have to suffer before something is done?
Love Charlotte
The rants, quips and anecdotes of a twenty-something year old
Comments