Another day, another shooting. Whenever my phone lights up with a CNN notification about another mass shooting, vehicle running through a large crowd of pedestrians, or terrorist attack, I no longer feel surprise or sadness. These tragic occurrences have become so common that I feel almost unfazed by the news and the pain that I should feel with each attack is almost nonexistent. How awful is that?
For someone – let alone our president – to call the most recent Texas shooting a “mental health issue” instead of gun violence, they would really have to be blind to everything that has been happening across the country and around the world.
How can anyone in their right mind call a national tragedy a mental health issue rather than recognizing the incident for what it really was? A shooting in Las Vegas, a shooting in Manhattan, and now a shooting in Texas. Many supporters of the second amendment will claim that “guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Well, the right statement would be that people with guns are killing others.
President Trump is not doing anything helpful to prevent these incidents from occurring. It may be a silver lining that another man had a gun to stop the attacker, but there would have been no need for this if gun rights were either taken away or laws made more stringent.
It is not surprising to see that this church shooting took place in Texas once we read the gun laws in the state: “No permit is necessary for the purchase of rifles, shotguns, ammunition, or any firearm component in the state. The only qualifications pertinent to the purchase of firearms set by Texas gun laws is that the purchaser be at least 18 years of age and a resident of the state.”
I’m still mind blown that it is so easy to acquire a weapon, especially for someone who is only 18 years old. With such ease of access, we’re almost asking for tragedies like this to occur. Of course, there are some rural and unsafe parts of the country in which people need the right to arms for their own protection – that’s a different story.
But handing out guns like candy is not answer, and neither is dismissing the murder of 26 people as a “mental health issue.” For Trump to call it that makes me believe that he is the one with the mental health problem.
We shouldn’t be desensitized to groups of innocent people being killed, but that is exactly what is happening. There needs to be an end to the gun violence and an end to people abusing their second amendment “rights.” You don’t have the right to take away a group of innocent people’s lives.
