I know a lot of my posts are usually just for the shits and giggles and I try to make light of situations going on because that’s how I express my thoughts, but there is no way this could ever be flipped into some sort of joke. There is not one thing about this that can or should be taken lightly because it’s a fucked up and avoidable situation.

I don’t know if you have heard the news in the past few days, but let me catch you up. On 24th May 2022, there was a school shooting in an elementary school in Texas causing the death of 19 children. You also may not have heard that this is the 27th elementary school shooting of this year. In the first 5 months, there have been 27 shootings. And these kids were 8-10 years old.

Do you know what should be happening at this age? Forming life long friendships, playing imaginary make-believe games where they live in a magical world or figuring out what they want to do in the future, and how they want to change the world someday. But, now we have not only lost 19 children and 2 adults, but we have also lost the innocence of so many more. This moment will be scarred into the brains of hundreds if not thousands of kids who don’t feel safe in a place where they are supposed to learn and play and grow. Sure school isn’t everyone’s favourite place, but it was a place that we feel or should feel, safe in.

And I could go into detail about how the 18-year-old shooter was a psychopath or a fucking awful, horrific human being, but that doesn’t make what he did less of a tragedy. Whether he was drunk or sober, insane or mentally stable, he was able to buy 2 guns and end the life of so many people. He was able to damage so many families and cause so much misery. So for whoever is reading this that doesn’t see the problem here, how the fuck can you justify the right to bear arms? How the fuck can you not recognise that the common denominator is guns and how easily you can access them.

Oh, and just so you know, I do know what I’m talking about. Yes, I didn’t grow up in America, but I did do some research and it didn’t take long to find out that between January 2009 and March 2018, the USA has had the most school shooting events. Before I tell you the exact figure, I want to point out that this is within a 9-year time span and doesn’t even include the countless others that have been all over the news in the past couple of years. I’ll leave a link to the resource that showed these statistics here, but what it showed was that within this time period there were 288 school shootings in the USA. The second highest was in Mexico. They had 8 school shootings.

There is a 280 difference between the first and second place of the most school shootings. No person in their right mind could ignore that figure. How many more shootings are needed before action is taken? How many more lives have to end before you recognise that the problem is the rules about guns? You say it is part of your right and that the USA is a free country, yet your ‘free country’ refuses people the right to feel safe and to live a long life in the way that they want to. How can someone feel free when there are people pointing guns at every corner. How do guns represent freedom?

As someone who doesn’t live in the USA, it is absolutely mind-boggling how people can react so calmly to these situations. It’s actually terrifying to hear what changes they do make because it is never the right one. Instead of banning guns or even just making them harder to get, they teach kids how to hide or defend themselves against a shooter. Over 95% of schools in the USA have school-shooting drills. That means over 95% of people in school are vulnerable to a school shooting with no actual protection.

Let’s look at it in a different way, just for the people who still don’t get it. The Coronavirus. How did we decrease the number of people getting ill from it/dying from it? We didn’t just tell people what to do when they get it. No, what we did was we stopped people getting it in the first place. That did take the USA a little longer to figure out and to achieve, but I’m pretty sure they figured it out eventually. And it’s the same thing for guns. How do we decrease the number of school shootings/ people dying due to guns? We don’t just tell people what to do in a school shooting. No, what we do is we stop people from getting guns in the first place.

I could go on all day about why there needs to be a ban on guns and weapons like it but I assume you get what I’m talking about. So to end this off I just want to add that I am so sorry to all the people affected by the shooting on the 24th of May 2022 and to all the people affected by many other shootings. I can’t even begin to believe how that must feel and to those in school, I hope for your sake that the government listen to what is happening and actually take action because your memories of school shouldn’t be of shooting drills or jumping at every loud noise. It’s unfair and should never have gone this far, but I know someday this will change for the better. I hope you have a great day, stay safe and stay yourself PERIODT.

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