Just the other day I glanced down at my phone and my eyes fixated on an alert that read: "School shooting takes place at high school in Florida." My head began to spin, yet I wasn't surprised. The lack of gun control laws in America manifested into the form of another mass shooting. No matter where you lie on the political spectrum, and whether you're a pacifist or not, it shouldn't matter, because kids died. The fact that kids are no longer safe at school should be blatantly alarming.

February 14th, a day of giving love and receiving love was sans love this year for many students in Florida. At the moment, a recorded seventeen lives were taken on this solemn day in Parkland, FL. To be honest, it's quite ironic that an event so horrific could take place on a holiday created for one sole purpose: to love. Schools are a safe place for kids, a learning environment where students can converse about the joys and struggles of growing up in today's world. Schools were created to comfortably nurture kids into functional human beings; however, constant mass shootings prevent learning and promote fear.

America should not be in a perpetual state of mourning, and we can not let mass shootings become a normalized reoccurrence. Not only are stricter gun control laws a good idea, but they fall under the category of a desperate necessity. The saddest and most preposterous statistic is the fact that there has been a total of 18 mass shootings in 2018 thus far. There is absolutely no justification for mass shootings, and the perception that mental illness is the exclusive cause of mass shootings needs to be discarded. Is mental illness a problem in America? Yes. Is it a main cause for mass shootings? No. Easy access to guns and a lack of gun control laws are equal contributing factors to the outrageous statistic America has produced in regard to the obscene number of mass shootings. Additionally, shame on all the politicians who are accepting donations from the NRA, and shame on congress for not making any policy changes in respect to the accessibility of guns. As a nation, we are failing and people are dying. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of hearing about a new shooting every time I turn on the news.

This satirical cartoon depicts the sad reality of America today: