"In 2007, America said it would never forget Virginia Tech. In 2016, America said it would never forget Pulse Nightclub. And now in 2017, America has once again said it will never forget Las Vegas. It seems the United States cannot stop outdoing itself when it comes to mass shootings. Each year, another massacre breaks the record for how many people are killed, yet each year, nothing changes. Our country’s obsession with guns has left a path of countless lives lost in its wake that isn’t projected to change any time soon.
According to The New York Times, since the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016, there have been 521 mass shootings in the United States over the course of 477 days. The violence has culminated in the worst act of gun violence in U.S. history, with 58 people killed at a country music concert in Las Vegas. The country was again been plunged into a heated debate over whether gun control needs to be strengthened to protect from more lives being lost. It is alarming that this pattern has been the same for at least the past decade, and seems conditions are only staying the same, if not getting worse.
2016 broke a record for the number of guns sold in the country in a single year, with almost 25 million background checks performed for the transaction of firearms, according to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). 2017 is already outpacing last year’s rate to break this record yet again. Alarmingly, there are an average of 12,000 gun homicides in America each year, nearly 25 times the average of other developed countries.
When the shooting at Columbine High School took place in 1999, the nation was shaken at the fact that an act of violence to that extent could ever take place. Now, 18 years later, people have become so desensitized to that same violence that occurs more frequently. Each time there is a mass shooting, the news cycle focuses on it for a few days before moving on to the next headline story. While the media loses focus very quickly, so does the average American. Most are not as outraged each successive time a shooting takes place, even though the opposite should be happening.
The problem isn’t American citizens having guns in the first place, but the lack of regulation over who is getting their hands on them. Regulations on background checks have been rolled back by the Trump Administration, even going as far as making it easier for people with mental health issues to purchase firearms. These kinds of actions are counterproductive to making any sort of meaningful progress, and remove any sort of common ground politicians may find on the issue.
We as students must find a way to push back against a culture that has made us so accustomed to someone committing mass murder with the use of a gun. If we are to never forget the tragedies of the past, then we must never forget what caused these tragedies in the first place."
- Cody Baez
