When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into a high school on April 20, 1999, they set about a wave of shock, horror and ultimately started the debate about gun control laws throughout the nation. Columbine. One word. A single place. A high school where students ate lunch, attended football games, got asked out on dates and forgot to finish homework before tests. A high school that would remain like any other high school—until two teens went on a shooting spree killing 13 students and wounding 20 others before turning the guns on themselves and taking their lives. Columbine—once just a place, just a single high school, is now synonymous as the worst high school shooting in the United States. Columbine has become the starting point of a shockwave of mass shootings across the nation, and in the wake of such events like Orlando and UCLA, we need to ask ourselves this simple question…when is enough, enough?
To be ignorant to this familiar American reality is something that anyone within this country can no longer do. The United States is home to nearly a third of the world’s mass shootings, and there are more mass shootings in the United States that any other country in the world (CNN). We are ranked 14th out of 40 in education as of Jan. 6, 2015 (Ranking America), however, we are ranked first in mass shootings against any other country in the world as of June 21, 2016 (CNN). That is a serious problem, and yet some refuse to see that. While the U.S. government has never classified “mass shooting” as a category in itself, we are left to put the puzzle pieces together and determine how many mass shootings have shocked our country. According to the Gun Violence Archive, that considers any shooting incident involving four or more people who are wounded or killed a “mass shooting,” the data shows that we have seen 136 mass shootings in the first 164 days of this year—136 out of 164. As a nation we are still suffering from the effects of Sandy Hook four years ago when 27 people (20 of those being children ages 6-7) lost their lives in a situation that could have been prevented. Sandy Hook, Tuskegee, Virginia Tech, Kalamazoo, Wilkinsburg, etc. and now Orlando. How many more places must be affected—shaken, until we start making actions?
Pulse Nightclub was not the first, and I’m afraid that it will not be the last—49 killed, 53 injured. This tally makes it the deadliest mass shooting done by a single gunman in U.S. History. I think of the families that will no longer hold their daughters or sons in a loving embrace. I think of the couples that will no longer see their partners for the rest of their lives. I think of the students that lost their best friends to a gunshot wound in the chest. I think of the schools that could go every day without the fear of someone coming in and killing innocent people, and now require every student to pass through metal detectors and have police patrolling every hallway. Places that are supposed to be a “safe zone,” places formed on the basis of security and protection have been tarnished. So I find myself ending this article with the same question I began with, will we ever put the gun down?
