Currently, the United States of America has one of the highest gun violence rates in the world. 2022 accumulated an estimated 640 mass shootings from January to December. Around 20 of them resulted in five or more fatalities, the more recent ones being at a Walmart in Chesapeake Va. Nov. 22, Charlottesville Va. Nov. 13, Raleigh N.C. Oct. 13, and of course the attack on a strip club in Colorado Spring. 

On the night of Nov. 19, the Tansgender Day of Remembrance, there was a brutal attack by a 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich resulting in 25 injured and a loss of 5 innocent patrons and workers. The gunman was subdued by a U.S. Army veteran and two other patrons, one of whom got the gun a safe distance away and the other. A transgender woman used her high heel to repeatedly stomp on the shooter and helped disable and hold the shooter until authorities could arrest him. 

Nobody is really safe anymore; there are attacks everywhere. You aren’t safe in a Walmart, a holiday parade, even school. As of December in America there has been between 250-300 shooting incidents on school grounds, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database.

 Around 3,180 people have been shot in mass shootings which results in 637 deaths and 2,500 people being injured. These larger numbers have been steadily growing since 2020 where the major increase in gun violence began. 

The ever loosening noose on gun control is sentencing hundreds of people to death yearly, allowing for more violence to spread across the country to create more violence. Girls’ clothing is more regulated in schools than guns are in America. The people who are pro life are advocating for less control which means more guns in the hands of bad people, and more death and destruction.

How safe can having a gun make you when each neighbor has one and has the ability to use it? Untrained people able to possess the item that has murdered thousands of people with little to no restrictions is simply asking for trouble. 

Guns are inevitable, they’ve won us wars and people have become reliant upon them. We are never really going to be rid of them. What we really need to do in order to protect the lives of innocent people is gain control. Call it infringement of amendment given rights but, the ability to mass murder people is not a power common people should possess. As we can see, and have seen, the power given to people by guns is damaging and harmful for everyone.

 We will only continue to lose innocent lives and the people who are so keen on protecting human life are the people who are allowing this to happen. Nobody deserves to die in such a cruel way and people need to understand that inorder to change we need to recognize the problem and work to put an end to it.