The Collegio Pittsburg's student voice since 1916
Megan Brownell photojournalist
As we all know, on Mar. 27, a shooter entered the Convent School in Nashville, TN, which is a K-6 grade school. The shooter was Audrey Hale, who was a former student, and killed six people, three kids and three adults. It was a tragic event, with three of the kids being nine, and even one of these kids, Eevelyn Dickenhaus, who put herself before others and was killed trying to pull the fire alarm to get people out of the building.
According to the New York Times, this accounted as the 130th mass shooting in the United States in 2023- that’s only 87 days in the year with that day of March 27.
The debate over gun control related to mass shootings has been around for a while now, with the biggest and a big kick start being from the mass shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. For lots of other countries, once a tragic mass shooting happened new gun laws went into place, and they were less common. But for the United States, nothing really has been done then, or even done now almost 24 years later.
Now, in 2023, the argument still stands and even after seeing shooting after shooting after shooting, nothing has changed. I still remember, being in fourth grade when the sandy hook shooting happened. I was just old enough to understand and I remember my mom telling me about it and talking about it at school and how sad it was that all these first graders and administrators were killed. I was nine. Now, I am almost 20 and I just heard about another shooting where nine year olds were killed and still nothing has changed.
The biggest argument about wanting gun reform is about how it changes the second amendment, “the right to bear arms.” See, I understand why people still want their guns for protection from bad people that do get guns illegally, and even my dad has one for protection. I am not saying to just get rid of them entirely, but we need some sort of reform.
Rather its more extensive background checks, like personally I think a mental health check especially would be good since a lot of recent school shooters have obtained their guns legally. But my main point here is what our politicians are doing isn’t going to put a stop to this. When shootings first hit the news, everyone comes out and says “thoughts and prayers to the victims and survivors.”
Sure if you have no say in what happens that is a great response. But even our politicians are saying that and nothing really seems to be pushed to put an end to it. Congress right now is even trying to get tik tok banned meanwhile the amount of tik toks I have seen that gave me better news about this and the fear teachers and parents have about this happening to them is astonishing.
Currently, they are also discussing banning some books. This is a majority republican action, and democratic senator Jared Moskowitz pointed out in session about how they aren’t focusing on the bigger issues, and said a quote that is going around where he said “dead kids can’t read.” (according to thehill.com) And he is right. Why should the majority of congress want to ban certain books or tik tok, but do not seem to care about our children dying in mass shootings.
In conclusion, there needs to be something done over on Capitol Hill to help stop or at least severely limit the mass shootings in our country. I am always thinking about such things and it is terrifying to think about, and being nine seeing kids my age dying and it being over 10 years later and I am still seeing these shows we need big change and fast. We don’t need to take all guns away, but we need some reform and fast before more children die at the hands of a gunman who shouldn’t have owned that gun in the first place.