When I woke up Sunday morning (6/12/16), I noticed a bunch of CNN alerts on my phone. They all were about the tragic shooting that took place at the LGBT club Pulse in Orlando, Florida. I think one of the worse things about this tragic mass murder is that it came as no surprise to me. We live in a country where everyday we hear about innocent people getting blown away. As a culture we have become desensitized to it. It has turned into a human being losing their life being seen less as a tragedy and more of as another statistic. On the Gun Violence Archive Website, there is a six page list documenting the 136 mass shootings that have happened in 2016 alone (as of early morning 6/13/16, 5:30 6/14/16 the number of mass shootings has went up to 139). Let that sink in, 136 times someone has attempted (and a lot of times succeeded) in ending the lives of others. And we are only halfway through the year. Does that mean we should expect another 136 people to go out and slaughter fellow human beings like wild animals before the year ends?
When will it finally be enough? We already witnessed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history this Sunday. We witnessed two cases in 2012 and 2015 where the act of going to see a movie was ruined by gunmen opening fire in the theater. We witnessed in 2015 the racially charged murder of nine African Americans in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. A house of faith where many people go to find comfort and feel safe in this heinous world. For God’s sake we witnessed 20 children get massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School 11 days before Christmas. These young kids and their families were probably anticipating having a great holiday, but do you know what their families got as a present that year? Their six and seven year old family members in a casket.
You would think the American people would be sick of this. That we would finally wake up and see that there is a problem. That if we don’t want this to continue we need to pass stricter gun control laws and have a serious conversation about repealing the Second Amendment, but no, we have people like this:
We also have people like Mitch McConnell (the Senate Majority Leader), who has an A rating from the NRA and voted yes on allowing firearms on amtrak trains, essentially running the Senate (which is the highest house in the most powerful branch of the federal government). We also have a big orange buffoon, who is the presumptive presidential nominee of one of our major political parties, who said that the Paris massacre in November would have ended differently if everyone had guns. Well congratulations Mr. Trump for once you are right about something, it would've ended differently. Everyone in that concert venue would be dead instead of the already high body count of 130.
It is time we finally take these shootings as a wake up call. This November we need to elect politicians in all levels of government that are pro-gun control. We need to contact all government officials, whether it is through our own personal letter or a petition, and tell them that we need to do something now. Because if things stay the same, either you or someone you love is going to be six feet under the ground.
