Young Naomi Wadler spoke to the fears of many children at the March For Our Lives D.C. protest
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1789, 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.”
The most recent school shootings --one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL., leaving 17 dead and numerous wounded, and another at Great Mills High School in Lexington Park, MD., leaving one dead and one wounded-- have re-ignited the so-called gun debate in America.
Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in Washington, D.C. on Saturday and across the country in support of the March for Our Lives protest.The prevailing narrative from those in support of gun reform legislation is student safety and the reduction in the incidence of attacks on our nation’s schools and public arenas by assailants wielding assault-style weapons.
The rebuttal from the NRA is that passing any serious gun control legislation starts the country down the “slippery slope” of eliminating the 2nd Amendment and an individual’s right to own a gun, otherwise known as “the camel’s nose under the tent” theory.
Part of the problem with this debate is how these arguments are framed. The focus should not be the reduction of gun violence in American schools. The issue is how do Americans reduce the amount of gun violence, of which school shootings is a subset?
According to Business Insider.com[1], gun violence is one of the leading causes of death in America: “Assaults by firearm kill about 13,000 people in the US each year, which translates to a roughly 1-in-315 lifetime chance of death from gun violence. That's about 56% more likely than
