April 16, 2007 on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, 32 people were shot and killed, and 17 others were severely wounded.
On July 20, 2012 in Aurora Colorado, friends gathered for the midnight premiere of The Dark Night Rises inside of a Century 16 Theatre, when a gunman opened fire, killing 12 and injuring 70 civilians.
A few months later in Newton, Connecticut, 20 children and six staff members were fatally shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
This past June we have seen a shooting in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine dead at a church.
One month later at a showing of the movie Trainwreck, in Louisiana, a gunman began firing into the crowd and killed two people.
And that brings us to August 26, 2015, when a news reporter and cameraman were shot on air by a former employee of the news station.
The shootings are happening more frequently and the only common denominator between these stories is that the law has yet to change.
The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
To put this in the most blunt way possible, unless the 20 innocent children and six staff members at Sandy Hook, the 12 people who were waiting eagerly to see their Batman movie, the nine people praying at church, or the two people delivering our daily news were in any way, shape, or form remotely dangerous, make the freaking guns illegal.
With less than 5% of the world’s population, the United States has about 35-50% of the world’s civilian owned guns (Switzerland Based Small Arms Survey). In Australia, to obtain a license for a gun you must present a genuine need for a particular type of gun. Since this law has been in place there have been no mass-killings since 1996. In Japan, you must go through a serious of mental, drug, written, and rigorous background tests before you can even apply to get your gun license because the Japanese see no need for firearms.
Democrat, Republican, Green Party, whatever— you can acknowledge that innocent people are getting shot by mentally unstable people who should have never acquired a gun in the first place. Any human being should be able to walk into a public place without fear of the heartbreaking news stories we are constantly hearing about becoming a reality.
Today, being the third shooting this summer should have opened America’s eyes. This isn’t something we can just talk about for a week or two, say how horrible it is and how guns need to be illegal. Because, two months later the whole thing will happen again.
I didn’t know James Madison or Thomas Jefferson well but I could almost put my college tuition on it that when they wrote the constitution this is NOT, what they meant by the “right to bear arms.” To harm innocent American citizens and make others feel unsafe wherever they went.
