"It's time to stop rehearsing our deaths and start screaming"
- Illicit Hygge
- Dec 24, 2018
- 3 min read
For the past year I've woken up to news about a shooting somewhere in the US nearly everyday and frankly, I've started to just scroll right past it. We've gotten so used to this reality it doesn't even have an impact on us anymore. So what has happened? Do lives just not mean as much anymore? People, children in schools have now just been reduced to yet another casualty statistic in America's rather long, and soon never ending list of victims of gun violence. And this is the new normal. At the beginning of this outbreak, it was everywhere. Protests, grief, anger, realization. Not anymore. Have we given up and accepted this reality?
You could go to school and never walk back out. You could go grocery shopping and never make it home. You could go out with friends and never see the sun rise. You could go for a movie and never be able to finish it. You could go to a place of worship and never complete your prayer. You could go for team practice and never finish the game. You could be at a concert and never be able to hear your favorite song. You'll be gone. Forever. Just because you made the decision to step outside your house.
And what is being done about this? Well, rehearsing hiding and staying safe when a white man with a gun shows up and giving more people guns, for protection, of course. Makes sense. Harmless people from numerous Muslim countries can be banned because they are terrorists, but when the person actually spreading the terror and death is a white man, he must have had mental issues.
This shouldn't be normal.
Changes are made all the time, and this one needs to be made too. It may be difficult to enforce and adapt to, but what impactful change isn't? I can't say for sure it will be a 100% successful, but it will most definitely be a step in the right direction. It may be scary not to have guns as protection anymore, however, most of the rest of the world doesn't either and we are perfectly fine.
I've heard lots of arguments about how guns don't kill people, people kill people, which, in my opinion, is a ridiculous argument, but even considering it as valid, why would you want to give the people who kill the power and resources to be able to do it? At least with this change, the "mentally ill" won't be able to kill dozens in an impulse due to the gun they already legally own. Weapons can be obtained illegally, but that is far more difficult to do. And the reality is that guns have killed far more people than they have helped protect.
So, don't give up. keep yelling. They may not listen right away, they may not listen for a long time, but one they will eventually have to face the facts and that realization will make all the difference. We are responsible for the change we want to see and have been given the great power to share and educate. Raise your voices and fight for your cause.
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