April 16th, 2007: Blacksburg, Virginia --Virginia Tech 32 dead
July 20th, 2012: Aurora, Colorado -- Aurora Theater 12 dead
December 24th, 2012: Newtown, Connecticut --Sandy Hook Elementary 27 dead
May 23rd, 2014: Isla Vista, California -- UC Santa Barbra 7 dead
June 18th, 2015: Charleston, South Carolina -- Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church 9 dead
October 1st, 2015: Rosenberg, Oregon -- Umpqua Community College at least 13 dead
Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Well this is insane. Relying on the same outdated gun laws to keep the American people safe when they have proven time and time again to not work is insane. We are insane and I feel like I am going insane.
Whenever a humanitarian crisis happens abroad we are all so fast to sit on our high horses and look down on our noses at their governments. How could they let this happen? How could they allow these extremists to do this to their people? We run, and help; we raise money, we protest, and cry out, and take action. Well, where is our action? On domestic soil, where we have the nerve to pretend as though we are above those who commit atrocities around the world, we seem to be lacking in any action.
Laws have not shifted, people can still go and buy a firearm with no hassle, and people can be killed in their schools, their churches, and their communities with no hassle. Since 1982 there have been 62 mass shootings, and every time the public roars that something must be done, and every time it seems to fall on deaf ears. We see a government that hems and haws about gun legislation while people all over the country die at the hands of legally obtained firearms, begging the question: are your second amendment rights more important than the lives lost?
Every day I wake up and hear about the war-torn nations in the Middle East. About the war zone in people’s backyards over there, but what about the slow moving war right here, the war that happens one mass shooting at a time. Does the government realize that they are arming those who wish harm on the public by standing back, by caring more about party lines and outdated convictions than the people are being picked off one by one here and now? Do they realize that we are scared, no, we are terrified, and saddened, and furious, and most of all done with being heartbroken over unnecessary lives lost and blood spilled?
It’s time to stop being insane. It’s time to stop the bloodshed, and the slow war, and the pain. It’s time to stop breaking the hearts of Americans. For a country claiming to be the land of the free and the home of the brave I as an American, do not feel free, nor do I feel the desire to be brave, I’m too scared, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
