Saturday Night Live has been a celebrated American tradition for over 40 years. And, for 40 years, SNL has been satirizing issues plaguing the American people.
What better issue to talk about this month than guns?
The SNL cast addressed this specific issue three different times on Saturday night, and with so many pressing issues in America, why did the late-night NBC show focus on guns so much?
Joined by host Amy Schumer, the SNL cast dedicated an entire skit to poking fun at the constant presence of guns in American society, insinuating that our seeming reliance on guns has far surpassed our reliance on other things.
This video is meant to be funny, adding guns to everyday interactions. Its outcome is chilling. A man gives his beloved a gun on a date. New parents give their newborn a small pistol. Two people watch a meteor shower while firing guns in excitement. The clip ends with the narrator saying "Guns - we're here to stay."
Later in the show, Weekend Update hosts, Colin Jost and Michael Che addressed this topic a second time:
While this segment is supposed to be really funny, with Jost and Che comparing gun control to the laughable Soda Ban in New York, they raise a lot of good points, especially at the end.
Che says, "I know the founding fathers said you have the right to own a gun, but they also said you could own people."
The Constitution celebrated its 226th birthday last month. A lot has changed in the past 226 years, so it may be time to start taking the words of the constitution with a grain of salt. Abraham Lincoln certainly did in his efforts with the Emancipation Proclamation, as Che references, so shouldn't our politicians be doing the same with gun control?
The cast addressed this a third time in the "City Council Meeting" sketch:
Amy Schumer played a 6-year-old Christian girl who, not only asks to make recess longer, but also asks if she could bring her firearm to school. While we see this image of a gun wielding 6-year-old girl as funny, it shouldn't be. Guns are such a major concern in America, especially since it's so easy to get guns in America when compared to the rest of the world.
Within a 90 minute program, the cast of SNL smartly and wittily addressed a pressing issue to the American public: gun control. This is clearly an important issue and I can only hope that politicians and the American public start to realize that we can't live like this anymore. Until there is gun control, people are going to continue to abuse their rights and commit tragedies like the ones at the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Charleston, SC, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and at Umpqua Community College.
In 2015 alone, there have been at least 300 mass shootings across the nation. The most recent major mass shooting was October 1, when a gunman killed 10 students and wounded another nine at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. On October 2, the day following this tragedy, two more shootings occurred, both in Baltimore, MD, which concerns me more than most since I go to school in Baltimore.The gun epidemic in this nation is out of control. Politicians constantly argue about how many restrictions guns should have, and yet guns still abound in the cities of America, leading from one tragedy to countless others.
If the comics at SNL are taking this issue seriously, so should the rest of us.
