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Gun Violence And Gun Control

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In the United States Constitution, the second amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. In the last thirty days, our country has seen two of the most deadliest shootings in our nation’s history. The first occurred on October 1 in Las Vegas at a country music festival and the second occurred on November 5 in Texas at a Baptist church. Due to the recent rise in gun violence over the past few years, individuals are finding a correlation to the rise in gun violence and the rise of mental illness. With a call for stricter gun control laws arising, an individual’s mental health is becoming more and more relevant.The rise in gun violence is caused by the rise of mental health in America.
In research conducted since the 1970s, sixty percent of mass shooters show signs of mental illness.Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary shooter, was described as an individual who seems to “wallow in it and ride out the low periods by hiding in his room and sleeping for 12 hours or more at a time...Lanza seemed to have no friends or people he could turn to for support or assistance and did not appear to have any enjoyment of life”(Johnson 2017). Seung Hui Cho, the mass shooter of Virginia Tech 2007, was sent to a psychiatric hospital the December before the shooting after he made suicidal remarks to his college roommate. Stephen Paddock, the mass shooter in Las Vegas this year, had a family history of mental illness and was “prescribed an anti-anxiety drug in June (cited year)”. Omar Mateen,

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