On Feb. 13, three Michigan State University students died and five were severely injured at the hands of a gunman.
That Monday at 8:18 p.m., the first call reporting an active shooter on campus took place. At that point, over 20,000 students feared for their lives, marking this event as the 67th mass shooting of the new year.
Since then, five more attacks have been reported, totaling 72 mass shootings in America in just 2023–a number that exceeds the total of days we have had in the year so far.
President Joe Biden spoke the following night and renewed his call to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. But will it ever see fruition?
As a country, we have been debating gun violence for decades; with the nation divided on whether or not gun ownership should be easier or stricter to access. According to a 2021 Pew Research poll, about “half of adults (49%) say there would be fewer mass shootings if it was harder for people to obtain guns legally, while about as many either say this would make no difference (42%) or that there would be more mass shootings (9%).”
But when you look at how other countries have dealt with gun violence, how can you not spot the extreme difference? Twelve days after Australia’s Port Arthur massacre in 1996, their government initiated a major gun reform, and there have been no mass shootings in the 27 years since.
The United Kingdom has proved the same results as they have not had a mass shooting in the same time frame after the Dunblane massacre of 1996. In the following year, Parliament banned private ownership of most handguns and semi-automatic weapons while also requiring mandatory registration for shotgun owners.
The list of countries that have experienced traumatic events, passed laws and succeeded in preventing these violent acts continues–and America is not on it. What is it going to take for us to initiate change? How many more children, spouses, parents and loved ones have to die for us to finally enact stricter laws?
There are several students–several–that currently attend Michigan State University who were previously subjected to mass shootings in their short life. Survivors from the Oxford High School and Sandy Hook Elementary shootings came forward in multiple publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post to speak on their experiences.
How insanely heartbreaking is it for multiple young adults to have been subjected to such horrors by their early 20s? How heartbreaking is it that anyone has to experience this at all?
While weapons are not the only attribute to blame for these occurrences, as we need to take a deeper look into mental health and other potential causes, making it harder to obtain these destructive weapons is a start to making a difference.
May Arielle Anderson, Brian Fraser and Alexandria Verner rest in peace, and may the United States start taking the needed precautions to start saving their people.
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