Originally, I had planned to write a different article for this week. In fact, I did write an entirely different article. But then, two shootings happened in the midst of two days, and I felt that this article needed to be written.
When are we going to realize that enough is enough?
On Friday night, a musical artist was killed while signing autographs and selling merchandise following her concert earlier in the night. This artist was Christina Grimmie. She was 22 years old. She had just started her career in the past few years, and suddenly, her life was over. The police identified the shooter, who killed himself after killing Grimmie. There was no personal connection between the two. This man just came to kill an innocent young girl. He somehow was able to enter the venue armed with handguns and knives.
On Saturday night, 50 individuals were shot and killed at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. 53 individuals were injured. The assailant was killed in a shootout with police. Before beginning to shoot people, the assailant called the police to pledge his allegiance to ISIS. So, yes, this was in fact a terror attack. This attack took place at a gay nightclub, so it was also a hate crime.
These incidents are completely unrelated, but the fact of the matter lies in that 51 people were innocently killed in the span of two days. Immediately, people look to place blame. They blame terrorism. They blame guns. They blame the overall security of the nation. But while they're blaming all of these factors, they're taking away from the real people to blame; the two individuals that shot and killed these innocent people.
Yes, the shooting at Pulse Nightclub was carried out by a man who pledged his allegiance to ISIS before firing the shots. This, however, does not necessarily mean that this was an ISIS attack. This means a crazy person decided to massacre people to get his name out there for ISIS to see. So while it was a terror attack, I cease to believe it was a plan formulated by the entire Islamic State terrorist group. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who the killer was. It matters that these innocent people were killed.
The same goes with the Christina Grimmie tragedy. The killer was a nobody. There was no reasoning for why he killed her, which is frustrating for the rest of the world. But he did kill her, and the most important thing is that we send prayers to her family. We must also send prayers to the families of all of those killed at Pulse.
Americans jump at the chance to blame gun control for these tragedies. People are shot and killed all of the time- why is this so different? Because it was a celebrity? Because it was a mass shooting? What about every other plain old person who is shot and killed? Why aren't we jumping on gun control being the issue in these cases? There are guns in this world. There are people who carry guns. Don't get me wrong, there are some people who should not be able to carry a gun. But at the end of the day, how many of these crazy people do you actually think get the guns legally? Yes, we can find ways as a nation to improve who legally should be allowed to carry a gun. But this isn't going to stop those who purchase guns illegally from doing so. There are always going to be guns. There are always going to be people. There will always be tragedy. So let's stop jumping on gun control being at fault when something like this happens.
This weekend was one full of tragedy. We need to take a moment to look at our nation and accept that this is sadly a normal thing. Innocent people are killed by crazy people. There's not always a reason. But there is a person to blame, and that's the killer. Nothing else. At the end of the day, hold your loved ones close and pray that one day soon we all realize that enough is enough.
