Virginia Tech 2007

Orlando 2016

Las Vegas 2017

"Largest mass shooting in U.S. history."

I’ve seen this headline 3 different times in my life.

On October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on a crowd of people that were attending the Route 91 Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was said that gunshots were first heard around 10:08 P.M. and lasted for a little over an hour. Later, it was confirmed that the shooter was 64-year-old Stephen Paddock. He was found dead later that night in his room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel, where he reportedly opened fire. As of right now, there are 59 reported deaths and over 500 people injured which now makes it the deadliest mass shooting to date.

Now, I’m not here to preach my political views or give you some spiel on gun control. I am strictly trying to hand out the facts of the case and let you, as average citizens, decide where you stand on this issue. Events like this bring up topics like gun control, mental illness and terrorism. With subjects like this, it’s easy for the media to get involved and create content for their own personal gain. Things like clickbait have become the norm in everyday media and I think that it is a large contributor to the divide within this country. Instead of just stating the facts, the media is able to easily twist and put information in a certain order to give off a more liberal or conservative viewpoint. This causes for not only false or faulty news but also creates room for division that is already extremely prominent in this country.

What I am warning is to be cautious and smart about what news medium you are getting your information from because many leave out or add particular information to sway you a certain way.

In reality, this whole situation comes back to the fact that people are dying all around us.

What, as a country, but more specifically, as individuals, are we going to do about it?

Like I said earlier, I am not here to preach to you about politics or give you reasons to be either democratic or republican. What I do want to orate is love and peace. It is so easy now, in a world full of hatred, violence and death to get caught up and choose the negative route. Or to choose to spread hate. I am saying here and now, please choose the opposite. Spread love and peace and positivity, always. Having fights with random people over Facebook, Twitter or any social media platform is in no way, shape or form going to change what is going on in the world.

Everyone has the right to speak their opinion and I don’t want to take that away. However, if you truly want to make a difference, start by being kind to one another. Choose to not fight with that person via social media but rather, engage in a discussion because maybe, just maybe, you will LEARN something from that person who you originally thought was completely in the wrong. You might get a new perspective by listening to another person speak rather than trying to prove how your point is correct.

The first, and frankly I think easiest, step is to just be kind and spread it like wildfire.

It’s alright to focus and grieve on the negative but in order to make things better we all ultimately have to be nicer to one another. And if you do want to try and change the world and change the way our government is running our country, write an email, send a letter, drive all the way to Washington D.C. yourself to speak with your congressman. There are plenty of things we can all do to try and change this country but sitting behind a computer screen and complaining or fighting with others only spread negativity.

So, as I conclude my ramble and long stream of consciousness, I hope if you take anything away from this article it’s, love, kindness and peace. Spread it all around. Be a better person to others and to the world. Go out and channel your anger and your rage into something positive and I promise, the world will be brighter.

The world is only as dark as we allow it to be.

As John Lennon once wrote, and the last thing I will leave you with, “Everybody’s talking about Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism. This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m...

All we are saying is give peace a chance.”