Before we delve into the highly controversial gun argument that inevitably has played out across the media in the days after the tragic Las Vegas shooting which killed 58 people and then the shooting in Sutherland Springs which killed 27 people, let me present you with this chilling statistic. I was born in 1998. In that year, the United States witnessed four mass shootings including the Thurston High School Shooting which killed four people and the 1998 United States Capitol Shooting incident which killed two Capitol policemen. In my nineteen years of life, I have witnessed sixty-nine mass shootings including Sandy Hook, the Orlando Nightclub massacre, Las Vegas, and now Sutherland Springs according to data from the Mother Jones investigation into mass shootings in the United States.

In my lifetime, I have seen the five worst shootings of all time.

To put these harrowing figures into perspective, let’s take into account the number of mass shootings my parents had witnessed before the age of 20. My parents were born in 1970 and turned twenty in 1990. In that span of twenty years, they only witnessed fifteen mass shootings according to Mother Jones. In the year they were born, there were no mass shootings reported in the United States. I have witnessed almost five times the amount of mass shootings my parents did before my twentieth birthday.

Now to bring it back to Vegas and Sutherland Springs. In the hours after the shooting, people immediately started screaming “Gun Control!” Many pro-gun advocates screamed back, “This is not the time! It’s disrespectful to the victims!” I want to ask, when is it the right time? We’ve had sixty-nine chances since 1998 to talk about it and fix America’s gun problem. So why haven’t we?

Pro-gun advocates have a good point to their argument and that is the second amendment. Just like every other amendment, it guarantees us a right that can’t be taken away by the government. However, the amendment only says we have “the right to bear arms.” How we do this is where the grey area comes in.

This amendment was created at a time in United States history when all we had were gunpowder guns that took a lot of time to load and could only fire one bullet at once. There were no assault rifles that could kill hundreds of people at once. There were no weapons that could fire hundreds of bullets at once.

Why is the thought of not being able to buy an automatic weapon so abhorrent to some people? Is 59 men, women, and children dying not enough for you? Are 20 children between the ages of five and seven dying at school, not enough? Why is their right to life (which is inarguably an inalienable human right) less important than your right to own a weapon of mass destruction? I would like to see some of these gun advocates stare the mother of a child who died in the Sandy Hook massacre in the face and tells her that the shooter had every right to own a Bushmaster rifle when he clearly had a mental illness.

I currently go to school in the state of Florida which is traditionally a pro-gun state. Here you do not need a state license to buy a handgun, long gun, or rifle with a right to carry license only required for handguns. Think about that. You need a state permit to be able to get into any club in Miami but you don’t need one for something that could kill people. That means the guy who shot 49 people in the Orlando nightclub needed a license to get into the club but didn't need one to buy his weapon.

So gun advocates, forgive me for saying this, but your right to own whatever gun you want isn't more important than a child’s right to be safe in school or the right concert goers and clubbers have to not be shot during a night out. Congress needs to introduce legislation that mandates strict federal background checks and ban assault weapons that have no place in the home. The fact that I have had to witness 69 massacres in my lifetime is abhorrent. The people in Congress who constantly have to send their thoughts and prayers to victim after victim have the blood on their hands and need to act now before I witness more.