When the Columbine shooting happened on April 20, 1999, the nation was in shock. It was, at the time, the biggest school shooting that had ever occurred in the US. The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012 was another grave shooting that rocked the US with its high level of gun violence and deaths. These were two shootings that took place in a school environment, but since Sandy Hook, there have been over 2000 more mass shootings in the United States where at least four or more people have died.
Gun violence has been a hot topic in the US for a decade now and students and parents have been getting more and more involved in advocacy for stricter gun control laws. For instance, several students who survived the shooting at Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland Florida, Jaclyn Corin, Emma González, David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, and Alex Wind, have been active speakers at gun control rallies and have created the #NeverAgain movement. This involvement is slowly but steadily causing more conversation and causing change to occur.
What is so dangerous about gun violence in today's US society is that it is becoming so normalized. There was a shooting in Jersey City, New Jersey on December 10, 2019, and the scariest part of this shooting is that it did not receive near as much attention as Columbine or Sandy Hook. I saw one vague news article regarding the shooting on my social media timeline and then a few mentions, but nothing truly depicting the grave nature of it. In addition to the Jersey City shooting, there are probably many more shootings that I am unaware of because they are not publicized as much anymore. This normalization of gun violence massacres is a dangerous trend that is leaning society towards a norm that should never be established. Gun violence is not normal and it should never be portrayed or considered as such. It is up to us as a society to keep talking and to keep making noise when it comes to gun violence because the only way to change a problem is to ensure its prominence in the minds of the American public.
