Opinion by: Gabby Brancato
There have been many things to strike the news in 2012 that have made me feel many different emotions. Something that keeps popping up in the news that makes me feel sick, but also brings us together in sorrow and grief are mass shootings.
We, as Americans, are free to travel wherever we like, go to movies everyday, and visit our favorite malls. It’s definitely hard to believe that someone would take advantage of this and use the freedom to take others’ lives. I know personally that that’s never something I think about when I leave the house, but should it be? Should we worry every time we step out of our house? We’re told to not be scared of what may happen, even though it can happen anywhere at any time. Unfortunately, even though we want to and try to control and limit these instances to none, they keep happening.
There were sixteen mass shootings in 2012. That is sixteen too many if you ask me. The shooting in Aurora Colorado was one that really shocked me. I was just in a movie theater this weekend and it didn’t once cross my mind that something like that could ever happen. It shocks me because it is something you would never expect to happen. Another one that really shook the nation this past month was the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty innocent children lost their lives in this event and that really saddens me because they had their whole lives ahead of them. They had so much to learn and they could have been somebody. No one could have known that those kids would wake up that morning and not be alive to see the sunset that very same day.
This needs to stop. Over 150 innocent people have lost their lives to some crazed gunman this past year. I have heard about putting bans on certain guns and certain parts of guns, but if someone knows they want to kill, is banning these things really going to stop them? I think instead of spending so much time on gun control, gun control, and gun control, we should be spending more time on background checks for people who want to own a gun and helping those people who are not mentally or emotionally stable. Although the gun does the shooting, it is the person behind the gun that does the killing.