SEVEN children and teens are killed with guns in the US on an average day.
Since 2013, there have been nearly 300 school shootings in America — an average of about one a week. Just seven weeks into 2018, there have been more than a dozen school shootings at US schools that have resulted in injury or death.
Seventeen people have been confirmed dead in a recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day. Less than a month later, two people were shot dead at a dormitory on the campus of Central Michigan University.
However, The Dunblane massacre in 1996 brought gun ownership in Britain to the forefront of the political agenda for the first time. The Snowdrop Campaign, set up to reform gun laws, blossomed into a nationwide movement. Its co-ordinator, Ann Pearston, founded the campaign after discovering that nine victims of Michael Ryan at Hungerford and all 17 of Thomas Hamilton’s at Dunblane had been slain by legally-held handguns.
Following a nationwide gun amnesty, 160,000 handguns were surrendered to police and the Snowdrop Campaign disbanded, seemingly with its work done. There have been no school shootings in the UK since 1996. When will America realise that having stricter laws is the only solution?
In 2012, one of the biggest school shootings in America occurred in Conneticut. On December 14th, 20 students and 6 teachers were gunned down by a crazed killer, Lanza, who was only 20 years old. He became one of America’s most notorious mass murderers. His mother Nancy – who he shot dead before launching his school rampage – was a gun nut with a weapon stashed in her bedroom drawer. She and her estranged husband Peter communicated with their deeply disturbed son mainly by email – but loved to take him shooting or hunting.
Police pictures show the aftermath of 11 minutes of gun terror at the school – eerily deserted classrooms with shattered windows, bullet-blasted walls, blood-stained hallways and a pistol discarded on the floor before Lanza shot himself dead. Is mental illness the cause of gun violence? NO. Gun violence is a bigger public health crisis than mental illness, top medical officials say. In the wake of the mass shooting at a Florida high school on Valentine’s Day, experts have been quick to remind the Trump administration that mental health is not the real problem. Media has to STOP equating mental illness to violence. Media and politicians have to stop using the excuse of mental illness for these extreme massacre shootings that are happening almost every day in America. Research published in 2016 found that more than a third of news stories linked mental illness with violence toward others, which does not reflect actual rates of interpersonal violence where mental illness is involved. Sure, there are cases where mental illness might play a role in gun violence. But the reality is fewer than 5 percent of gun-related killings are committed by someone diagnosed with a mental illness, according to research. An overwhelming amount of the general public, who are affected by some form of mental illness, are extremely offended that media is using this as an excuse for the perpetrator to make their actions seem reasonable.
I believe that the only solution to gun violence is gun control. An increase in brady background checks should be put in place to ensure the gun buyer is using the gun in the correct manner.
