Today, various news outlets have been covering the tragic school shooting that took place at Butler High School in North Carolina. According to officials, the suspect, Stason Tyrrell, shot the victim with a gun in the hallway after fighting with them. Both the shooter and the victim were students who attended the school. Thankfully, no other student else was injured, however, this current event raises the debate on gun control...again.
Unlike other school shootings where the shooter deliberately shot random students and faculty, this attack elevated from a fight. Matthews Police Department Patrol Commander Mason Tyrell commented the following: "It's been an extremely tragic event here for us in Matthews for the Butler High School community... This is believed to be an isolated incident and the scene has now been secured by police."
The superintendent of the high school, Clayton Wilcox, said, "We are incredibly saddened by the fact that we had a loss of life on one of our campuses. What makes it doubly worse is it was one of our students who was the shooter."
This incident occurred early in the school day. The lockdown lasted two hours. After the police alleviated the situation, the school's media page posted that parents would be able to pick up their children; however, classes proceeded throughout the day.
The school's chief communications officer, Tracy O. Russ, commented, "Our goal was to ensure that students could remain on campus and safe until such time that transportation arrangements could be made by families." However, other individuals on Twitter didn't feel the same about the school's action. One person posted the following:
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
You would think after incidents like Parkland, gun control would be an important issue to address and resolve in this age. Unfortunately, taking the political division after the 2016 election into consideration, both sides are torn on many subjects, including gun control. Americans are forgetting that this issue isn't a light topic and that these tragedies have a tremendous impact on today's youth. Young students whose voices are not heard in election ballots are suffering the consequences from our current gun laws.
This incident isn't to bring up whether or not guns should be illegal (banning the second amendment is a whole other debate). The Butler shooting should raise the question of how we can restrict the access of guns from those who aren't fit to own or carry the weapon.
It's a true shame that these horrifying events still occur in 2018. Just this weekend, before the North Carolina incident, another shooting took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue. That mass shooting left 11 people dead. How many more Americans have to die in order to make gun control a priority?
