After the shooting at UCLA on Wednesday and National Gun Violence Awareness Day on Thursday, it seems appropriate to talk about the issue of gun violence.
The “murder-suicide” at UCLA on Wednesday triggered a large response for Los Angeles police. This response from police can likely be attributed to assumptions that an active shooter on campus would turn into a mass shooting that we have seen so many times at this point.
Even though the shooting did not result in mass death, it still made an entire campus fearful for their safety and left two dead, and therefore justifies the discussion of gun violence to occur once again.
The shooting at UCLA was the 186th campus shooting since 2013.
There is a real problem when people can’t go to school or work without being terrified that something bad might happen because they have seen it happen too often.
These shootings impact the well-being of individuals, the strength of communities, and the country. People become terrified, families and friends lose loved ones, and it happens again.
By not doing anything about gun violence, it has quickly become a constant occurrence in the United States. Many people in the country are more worried about terrorist attacks than gun violence, even though people die from gun violence at drastically higher rates than from acts of terrorism. Obviously, a focus should still remain on terrorism, but there has to be more of a focus and more action was taken on gun violence.
How many more people have to die until something is done about gun violence in the United States?