We live with the knowledge that a person can walk into a school or any public place with a military-grade weapon purchased legally and shoot a massive amount of people. According to The Washington Post, a shooting on a college or high school campus occurs once a week on average in the United States. We are now facing the 17th school shooting of the year and we have to ask, why is this still happening? [1]
As Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler points out in his open letter to Portland students, there is a cycle. We hear about the mass shooting, we feel sadness and send prayers and then do nothing. [2]
According to CNN, since the beginning of 2018, 17 shootings have occurred on school campuses. Two of those qualify as mass shootings and injured more than 15 people. On Jan. 23 in Benton, Ky., a teen shot and injured 16 people, killing two. On Valentine’s Day, a teen in Florida killed 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. According to Time, between 1982 and 2017, there have been 91 mass shooting events, with 722 deaths and 1,177 injuries, with the highest numbers of deaths and injuries occuring after 2000. [3][4]
Guns used in previous school shootings were acquired legally by the shooter or a relative of the shooter. It has now been proven the answer isn’t more guns and better guns. The answer is no automatic rifle style weapons, semi-automatic or automatic weapons and bump stocks.
The Second Amendment states “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
