On Thursday, October 1st, Chris Harper-Mercer opened fire in a classroom at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and killed 10 people.
Everybody knows that, right? But does everybody know that on that same day, a man killed his wife and a good Samaritan bystander, and attempted to kill his wife's boyfriend? What about the man who shot five and killed one that Friday in Baltimore? Do people know how many shootings there have been in the past week (7), month (39), or year (296)?
The answer is no, most people don't know these things. I didn't even know these things before I started writing this article. We don't know about all the shootings that happen in the US because the media simply does not have time to talk about every single one. There are too many shootings for all of them to get coverage, and that's just sad.
Earlier tonight, as I was doing homework and inwardly complaining about the fact that I have a problem set due in a few days, a friend who goes to Penn messaged me with a much bigger problem: an Oregon shooter copycat has threatened an unspecified school in Philadelphia, and she's afraid to go to class. Right now, of course, most of the heat is on Penn for not canceling classes.
But here's the thing: Penn shouldn't have to cancel classes, because this shooting shouldn't even be a possibility. My friend shouldn't have to try to choose between her education and her safety as she goes about her day. She shouldn't have to spend her day hiding in her apartment because she's too afraid to go to her midterm.
This simply shouldn't be happening.
In his statement on the Oregon shooting, Obama stated that these shootings are becoming routine, and he's completely right. He pointed out that while we are not the only country with people with mental illnesses, we are the only advanced country that sees these shootings so frequently. The difference? Other advanced countries have stricter gun control laws.
On a much less professional note, a very popular text post on Tumblr addresses the issues of bagged milk.... and America's lack of gun control (warning: explicit language). Clearly, our gun policies are foreign to our fellow advanced countries. Canadians, our neighbors, can't comprehend why it is so easy to legally get guns here, yet they know that firearms are so common that, when my family went across the border in our RV this past summer, they thought we were hiding something when we said we didn't have any weapons and spent half an hour searching the entire vehicle. We, as the Americans without guns, were unusual enough to warrant suspicion.
According to the New York Times, Obama states that there is “a gun for roughly every man, woman and child in America." Isn't that ridiculous? He also pointed out that states with stricter gun laws have fewer gun deaths, so we know that these massacres are preventable. If we could make that gun-to-human ration a little lower, we could lessen the chances of these shootings. If we could control who can get guns, we could make a safer America.
The US needs reform its gun policy, and it needs to do so for many reasons. It needs to reform its gun policy because I'm sick of worrying about my parents getting shot as they drive down the highway to work. It needs to to reform its gun policy because we shouldn't need to have websites that do nothing but keep track of country's mass shootings.
It needs to reform its gun policy because my friend shouldn't have to decide between her life and her Ivy League education, and it needs to reform its gun policy because there is no need for another family to grieve the loss of its father, mother, son or daughter due to a gunshot. The US needs to reform its gun policy because it's the only way to keep our people safe.
