When Will It End?

Cover photo: courtesy of The Texas Tribune

On May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old boy legally purchased an AR-15 rifle, which he first used to shoot and injure his grandmother, then used to kill nineteen students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The next week, another mass shooting occurred at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing 4 people.  These chilling events transpired only a few days after a similarly gruesome shooting occurred at a supermarket in Buffalo, a big city in western New York. 

Clearly, gun violence is an issue of extreme importance in every state across the country, including our own. In a nation that is built upon the principles of liberty and freedom, we should not have to deal with horrors such as school shootings, hospital shootings, or shootings in general.

As a high school student who goes to school every day in a society in which shootings are becoming a regular occurrence, I care about this issue very deeply. As profoundly grateful as I am for attending a school with an abundance of security, it pains me that my experience is not shared by every child in this country. According to NPR, there were 417 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019, 611 in 2020, and 693 in 2021. As for school shootings, there were 24 in both 2018 and 2019. As of May 2022, there have already been 27 school shootings, surpassing the totals of both 2018 and 2019. The situation has reached the point where news headlines about deadly attacks are practically expected.

 Despite, or perhaps even because of this, lawmakers such as Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who, according to Axios, excluded the topic of gun control from a special committee session on school shootings, seem to be growing more apathetic towards gun violence, considering it more of a normal occurrence than an unacceptable horror. Children are more scared now than ever. In fact, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2018 found that 57% of U.S. teens are worried about the possibility that a shooting might happen at their school. Since then, shootings have become increasingly common every year. I do not want to have to tell my future children that as school shootings were becoming increasingly frequent, my generation stood idly by and let it happen before our very eyes. Safety should not be a privilege.

The main counterargument to the gun control debate is that the United States Constitution’s Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to bear arms. I would argue that this has been utterly misinterpreted and that the constitution does not do that at all. The Second Amendment’s exact words are: “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.” These words do not imply that anyone can walk about the country with a gun. The main reasoning of the second amendment is that a “well-regulated” armed citizenry can protect itself from and revolt against a potentially oppressive or authoritarian government. The words “well regulated,” in my opinion, nullify the argument that gun regulation is unconstitutional. If anything, the second amendment encourages gun control. 

While governors and legislators across the country are busy giving pre-written speeches and offering lukewarm condolences and prayers for every mass killing that occurs on their watch, more concerned about outdated constitutional interpretations than about the safety of their people, the leaders of New York are turning their words into action. Passing the set of gun laws introduced by Governor Kathy Hochul and her fellow Democrats in response to the attack in Buffalo, which included raising the legal gun ownership age from 18 to 21, on June 2, was an essential first step toward building a safer community. In the words of State Senator Zellnor Myrie, “Here again, in the face of inaction by the federal government, New York is stepping up to lead the way.” However, the fight must not and will not end there.

With Washington quarreling uncontrollably and unproductively, there is no better place to start making a difference than in the State legislature. New York must prioritize gun control by implementing many of the existing gun purchasing prerequisites in New York City statewide. Those include but are not limited to:

• strict background checks of medical and legal history
• examinations of moral character
• the requirement to submit a letter of necessity

Such laws maximize care for most people, as the threat of spontaneous mass shootings, a consequence of this country’s lack of gun control, decreases the safety of everyday citizens. With Democratic majorities in the State Senate and State Assembly to support Governor Hochul, there is no excuse not to take action.

History is not kind to those who possess power but fail to use it for the betterment of society. For the sake of the current and future children of the world, the noble ideals  of freedom and equality upon which our nation was built, and the enduring, undying and eternal promise of peace, New York must not end up on the wrong side of history.