Honestly, I don't care about your second amendment rights. I don't care that owning a gun is legal and I don't want to hear arguments that "guns are only as dangerous as the person using them," or that "it's not guns that kill people" – Might I add that the sole function of a gun, the reason that they were constructed in the first place, is to kill. But I guess that is neither here nor there.
All I care about is the fact that over the weekend 50 innocent human beings were murdered in Orlando for no reason other than the fact that a man who had weapons of mass destruction in his possession decided to use them to end their lives.
I care that among the people who were allowed to donate blood to the victims of the shooting, gay men were not, as the waiting time for bisexual and gay men is one year with no sexual contact, yet anyone off the street can purchase an assault rifle in a matter of three days.
That just the night prior to the incident, a 22-year-old singer was shot and killed at her own concert, also in Orlando, because another guy with a gun wanted to put a bullet through her head.
That in just the last 72 hours, 124 people have died in a firearm-related incident.
I care that in 2015 alone, 372 mass shootings took place, more than any other country in the world.
That in the past year, 13,286 people were killed in the United States by firearms and 26,819 people were injured due to an unintentional shooting or murder, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
That last year, a five-year-old boy found a loaded 22-caliber Magnum revolver lying around and accidentally shot and killed his 9-month-old brother in the head.
That in Vermont, while 16-year-olds cannot drink, buy a pack of cigarettes, or even buy tickets at a movie theater to an R-rated film, they're allowed to purchase a handgun or rifle.
That in Michigan, loaded guns are now allowed in schools, day care centers, bars, churches, hospitals and stadiums, and states such as Tennessee, Arizona, Georgia, Virginia and Ohio have very similar laws.
That since 2013, all but one American city, Austin, Texas, has had a mass shooting.
That in 2012, a deranged and heartless individual went as far as to walk into an elementary school and murder children, and that this country stood by them and vowed change, yet since then 998 more shootings have occurred.
I care that an average of 91 people per day lose their right to breathe, love, grow old and experience everything this world has to offer because of your right to own a gun. And seven of those are teens and children.
So say what you want, but gun laws need reform. Because when any right takes away another's right to live, it should no longer be a right.
It isn't about religion, it's not about terrorism or extremism. These horrific mass shootings that we wake up to read about every so often, whether they were in a bar or nightclub, a school, a concert, or a movie theater are heartbreaking, disappointing and devastating. But they only account for a tiny fraction of deaths due to gun violence in the United States.
Just because we may not hear of every loss of life, while it may go under-reported or may not seem relevant to us, they were human beings and they died. They had lives, families, and friends who cared for and loved them and their deaths and the pain and grief that followed could have been prevented. Gun violence in this country continues to grow and it only does so because we allow it to.
And maybe banning guns is not the answer to the problems that plague this country, but making them harder to obtain should be a serious conversation now more than ever, as it would have prevented many of the tragedies that we have far too many times been faced with, including Saturday's shooting.
