Persuasive Essay On Mass Shootings

Since 2013 there have been 268 school shootings in the United States alone (Everytown for Gun Safety, 2017). School gun violence is becoming increasingly probable. It is imperative that our government and our citizens come together to create a solution and implement a plan to prevent and stop the occurrence of school gun violence. The solution, for some, is to bring more guns into the picture by arming teachers, principals, and other school officials, or place armed police officers at school sites (LaPierre, 2015). For others, the solution is to make even stricter laws regarding gun use or to get rid of these weapons altogether. These certainly are drastic options; I must say that I do believe the true solution is to increase the focus on mental health services and by extension, mental health awareness. There is simply not enough focus on the mental health of our youth and of our students. Mental health services are the most important step to making schools safer, because this solution touches the entire problem of violence at its root level.

Recently there was a mass shooting in Las Vegas. A gunman opened fire on a concert from his hotel room leaving 58 people dead and over 500 injured. This incident has reintroduced the issue of mass shootings to our societal conversations. The topic of mass shootings is an emotional one. It triggers the most basic human fear, fear of the unknown. Most people have an emotional bias one way or another on this subject, making it a very sensitive topic of conversation. I will do my best not to offend anyone, if I do offend you please understand that it was not my intention. I will do my best to not let any bias I may have affect examination of this topic. My intention is to examine the topic in a logical manner to better understand the issue. This is a problem that is not going to fix itself. We as a society need to come up with a solution.

I have been a student in the Thomas County School System ever since I started pre-school. During my time here, I have loved every minute of it, learning and having great experiences with friends and teachers here. Over the last four years of my high school experience, I have noticed that there have been more threats of bombings and shootings around the nation. Even though we do have a safe school and take precautions, there is still room for error. I am proposing that we make school a safer place for kids to learn by installing bulletproof glass as well as door-stoppers in each class.

A very controversial topic throughout the United States and the world is guns. As American citizens, we have a constitutional right to own a fire arm. But why is a gun so important and why is it such a huge part of the United States division of its people? The division starts with people using this Second Amendment to harm people. In recent years, mass shootings have become the norm for the United States and that outcome is not the purpose of the Second Amendment. These mass shooting happen everywhere from movie theatres to concert halls. But the majority of these mass shootings seem to happen at schools with innocent children aging from kindergarten to high school students. With the deaths of children in school rising, the urge to find a solution and develop prevention tactics have become top priority. Not only limiting the access to guns but finding out the reason behind the shootings will help aid in the fight to stop gun violence in schools.

There are many problems in this world today. One main problem in the United States and all over the world is mass shootings. This problem is a huge one because it involves people killing other people and that is just unacceptable. In the last ten years there have been over 53 mass shootings in the United States, not including the rest of the world (Chris Wilson). In the last thirty-five years there have been seven-hundred and twenty-two and then one thousand one-hundred seventy-seven (Chris Wilson). If you look at the number of people that are killed or being wounded, you will notice that with new devices being introduced. One of the devices that have been introduced is a bump stock. This device is a stock for a semi-automatic rifle that can basically turn your semi-automatic rifle into a fully automatic rifle. They are considering making this attachment to a rifle illegal to the public.

According to President Trump, arming teacher with guns will become the solution to school shootings. Presently, thirty-two mass shooting have taken place all over the states of America since the year 2005. In fact, the most recent occurred the fourteenth of February this year, 2018, in Florida. Nikolas Cruz, the school shooter, previously attended Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and reportedly suffers from mental illnesses which may contribute to his motives.

Sutherland Springs church, Texas (2017), Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas (2017), Pulse nightclub, Orlando (2016), Inland Regional Center, San Bernardino (2015), Aurora, Colorado (2012), Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut (2012), Virginia Tech (2007), Columbine High School, Colorado (1999), Luby’s Cafeteria, Texas (1991). You may recognize these places and times, as they all hold one thing in common, they are the sites of slaughter. Men, women and children; all robbed of life in some of the most horrific and gruesome mass shootings. Recognizing the dates of these occurrences shows that they are largely continuous. Every year innocent lives are lost through another mass shooting, murder, or fatal accident, and the story is distributed to the world. Many have become desensitized to this violence, as it occurs so often. Society is less likely to feel shock or distress over images and information of continuous gun violence.

The audience of the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert thought they were hearing fireworks. When screams filled the air and bodies dropped to the ground, they realized that they were being attacked. Twenty-two thousand people were filled with terror as they desperately attempted to flee the scene. Gunman Stephen Paddock fired down on the helpless crowd for over ten minutes.

The era of mass shootings has unfortunately arrived. In “Vital Signs,” Quade reports that “[e]ach year, we lose approximately 33,000 people in our country as a result of gun violence.” The mass shootings that are occurring have split the population in today’s society and adds another topic for citizens to argue each day. Mass Shootings are a big problem in the United States and as an effect some people have called for stricter gun laws, while others state that this shows the need for guns, and lastly victims have to deal with life after the tragedy.

Mass shooting: a single episode of gun violence in which at least several people are injured or killed (Rosen). After the shooting at Sandy Hook, the United States of America said never again, yet America regularly has mass shootings. In the Constitution of the United States, the 2nd Amendment protects citizens’ right to bear arms. As this right has been protected, mass shootings have continued to happen with no gun control laws to stop them. There are many countries, unlike America, who has had mass shootings decrease because of gun control laws. Some of these countries are Canada, Australia, and Japan.

Gun control is a controversial topic within American communities. Loopholes in current gun control laws give dangerous people access to firearms. Mass shootings have increased while government policies reduced requirements for background information regarding mental health and the ability to obtain high-capacity semiautomatic assault weapons. High-capacity weapons are being purchased legally and used to cause chaos across the nation. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) of 2015 stated: "it [was] unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a semiautomatic assault weapon." However, after that statement, it listed series of vague exceptions that could be loopholes for people declared unstable. People who have shown violent tendencies should not be able to secure weapons that could bring harm to themselves or others.

n July 18, 1984, eight-month Carlos Reyes and his mother, Jackie, was killed by an unemployed father. Along with Carlos, 21 innocent people were killed at the McDonald’s located in San Ysidro, California. Carlos is the youngest victim to gun violence till this date. His death is the result of the killer having easy access to a semiautomatic pistol and a shotgun (Berkowitz et al, 2017). Ryan Frazier, the 21-year old husband of Emily Frazier, shot himself with a semiautomatic gun he bought from a gas station in November 2008 after confronting his teenage nightmare for a lawsuit. He was molested by a priest and his first time using a gun was to end his own life, despite having a whole future ahead of him (Drexle, 2016). Carlos and Ryan are one of the many few that lose their lives from guns. They represent the stories of victims who have died after the trigger was pulled. With guns being readily available, everyone has the licenses to kill at any point in time, whether the pain is inflicted on others or themselves. Imagine if these were stories of your own family members or friends. According to our Founding Fathers, our second amendment should not be infringed and that people have the rights to keep and bear arms. However, because the United States is the number one country with mass shootings and suicide is the number one cause of gun deaths, it is necessary for our second amendment to be infringed and regulated in order to stop more people from losing their lives.

HOOK :Hey do you know that kid who everyone considers “uncool” or peculiar that sits in the back of your class who is always biting their nails, wears old clothes and shoes, smells kinda funny. You probably always walk past them like nothing and make as if they don’t exist and if they are irrelevant.You probably even have nicknames for them, that probably aren’t nice .You also might wonder why they always isolate themselves. Or in another scenario that kid who is always on the honor roll, star athlete the one who is a ladies man. Have you ever asked yourself what goes through their heads or if they have feelings or even if they are even if they are doing fine? Or what does it take for someone to reach their breaking point and commit such heinous acts? Have you ever asked yourself what is the the likelihood of them shooting up their school? Lethal violence is a problem in schools and nobody's doing anything to prevent it.

Gun violence in the United States has reached an alarming rate, but the country as a whole is not making significant progress towards curbing access to firearms. This is largely because American military culture has mitigated the seriousness of gun violence and desensitized the U.S. public to gun caused homicides. In order to reverse this process, the government must significantly cut military spending and update the Second Amendment in order to weaken the nation’s military industrial complex. It seems reasonable that reducing public exposure to military related ideas and firearms will rewire American minds to look upon gun violence with renewed caution, rather than desensitization. Solving this desensitization problem is important for the U.S. in order to first keep its public secure and second keep its citizens from losing regard for human lives.

On October 1st 2017, a gunman opened fire on a crowd of country music concertgoers in Las Vegas, resulting in fifty eight people dead and four hundred and eighty nine people injured. Around ten o'clock sixty-four year old Stephen Paddock fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition from his hotel room on the thirty second floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. Roughly an hour after he had shot his last round from his hotel room, he was found dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound. The couple days following the shooting, many elected officials and media outlets were extremely cautious about how they described the man responsible for one of the largest mass shootings in modern American history. A man who does not fit the “mass shooter profile”. No expensive Mexican border wall could have prevented this. No Muslim ban that stops immigrants in randomly chosen countries from reaching the United States could have reduced the likelihood of this happening. Paddock, like a majority of the mass shooters in the United States, was a white American man and this very simple detail changes how the whole entire horrific situation is discussed by the media and the national discourse.