Gun Violence: Who is Pulling the Trigger?

By Dona B.

 

 

Brooke Harrison, a freshman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, arrived at her English class on Valentine’s Day. Her backpack was heavy with gifts and chocolates for her friends. Anticipation hummed through her nerves as she started working on her essay assignment, eagerly waiting for the class to end so she could exchange presents, when suddenly...BANG!!  BANG!

         Startled, Brooke peered up. She saw the narrow window of the classroom door shatter to a million pieces. Instinctively, she sank to her knees and commenced crawling toward her teacher’s desk in the corner of the room. The awful realization only struck Brooke when she reached a classmate; his arm was scarlet with his own blood. Hacking coughs overtook him, as he spat up blood onto Brooke and the tiled floor. A shooting! She realized, it was a shooting! Terror coursing through her blood, she haltingly looked up; a close friend of hers was still sitting at his desk where he had been writing his assignment just minutes ago. His shirt was soaked; he was shuddering violently.

It was just like that, a perfectly normal Valentine’s Day turned into one of the bloodiest school shootings in US history.

Gun violence is an expeditiously flourishing problem that is affecting the lives of thousands of people all around the globe every single day. Did you know that more than 2000 people are killed or injured each day in the U.S. because of gun violence? This huge issue is swiftly turning into an epidemic as statistics have pointed out. More than 2000 people are either injured or killed every single day because of this revolting form of aggression. According to Amnesty International, 1.4 million people were killed, ranging through the years 2012 to 2016.

Gun violence impacts the community in numerous ways, but most of them are negative. One example is when LaNiyah Murphy devastatingly found herself in the middle of a drive-by shooting. She survived but felt herself often getting angry or hysterical after the accident when a bullet was shot at her. She would always be grateful that it had managed to miss her spine, but that didn’t mean that it hadn’t inflicted any damage on her body and mind. “It made me lose patience quickly. It made me angry at everybody. I didn’t know how to handle it. Nobody knew what I was going through,” LaNiyah confessed.

It is not unusual for victims to be scarred, not just physically, but psychologically as well. The scientific term for a traumatizing event having an impact on a person’s mental health is called PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 8 million people are diagnosed with PTSD every single year in the U.S., and more than 4.5 million of those people have been exposed to gun violence at some point in their life. Surprisingly enough, 58% of those people suffering from PTSD don’t receive proper therapy and counseling, leading to their deteriorating mental health.

"We always hear about those who died but never about what happened to those who lived. It seemed as if they were to just pick up the physical and emotional pieces and just go on with their lives," Kathy Shorr, a freelance photographer in New York, argues. She, herself, has been a victim of gun violence in the past.

Sometimes, the negligence of PTSD can even lead to madness or negatively consequential actions committed by the person. For example, Marcel McClinton was inside a church teaching Sunday School when the first shots rang out. An armed man sprayed a volley of bullets at the church building. The shooting spree continued for over an hour, leaving one person dead and six others injured, and Marcel was left with enduring trauma. After numerous investigations were conducted, it came to be known that the gunman was a former military veteran who sadly suffered from depression and PTSD and neglectfully was never offered the appropriate therapy and counseling after returning home from the battlefield.

Even if mental health is a huge factor in rising statistics of gun violence, it certainly isn’t the only factor. Weak laws, or “loopholes,” are another huge dilemma. Laws concerning gun violence and gun control and access to guns are controlled by laws under several federal statutes. These laws regulate and control everything related to firearms. These laws are imposed by state agencies and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or the ATF. In addition to that, many state governments have their local laws concerning firearms. But no matter the number of laws there are concerning firearms, there are just as many loopholes.

Numerous mass shootings could have been prevented by common-sense gun reforms, such as background checks, mandatory waiting periods, assault weapons bans, age limits, and red flag laws. For instance, in Charleston, South Carolina, the shooter received his gun without completing a background check due to the “Charleston Loophole.”

What is the Charleston Loophole, you ask? In a vast majority of cases, when an individual buyer wants to buy a gun, he or she is required by law to submit a background check. The National Instant Criminal Background Checks Systems, or the NICS, can return a definitive result within a matter of minutes, indicating whether the buyer is legally eligible to buy a gun. But sometimes, in a small number of cases, the NICS is unable to immediately determine whether or not the buyer is eligible or not. If that is the case, then under current federal law, the FBI has three business days to investigate. If after three days, the FBI has not concluded the investigation, the seller has the discretion to sell the weapon despite the lack of evidence pointing out eligibility to buy a firearm. These kinds of sales are known as “default proceeds” sales. The default proceeds sale has also come to be known as the “Charleston Loophole”

These sales have been a huge factor in the violence rate of firearms. For example, the shooter purchased his gun in Atlanta the same day he committed the shootings. To further illustrate the patterns of the violation of these laws, in Parkland, Florida, the person bought an AR-15 gun when he was eighteen despite having multiple reports from the police about his troubling behavior.

People often recoil at the thought of having tough discussions like this, but these discussions are a crucial step in taking action against this form of aggression. "We rarely have gun discussions in the United States," David Hemenway quite accurately states, "We have gun debates." Gun violence had increased significantly in the past couple of years. According to recent research Harvard conducted, the killing rate related to gun violence in America is 25X higher than in other rich countries. For young people generally around the age of 15 to 24 years old, the death rate is dreadfully 45 times higher, and the suicide rate is eight times higher than in other countries. And what do we do about it? We have debates; we come up with ideas but rarely use them.

Usually, gun violence seems like something straight out of a story, but it is happening right now in the U.S. and all over the world. Gun violence is a complicated problem; there are numerous approaches to prevention, but one of the most important things we can do as a community is to start the conversation and bring awareness to people. Recognizing gun violence as it is, and acknowledging that it is slowly transforming into an epidemic, helps the people themselves and their communities in the battle against firearms. You can help and support your society as they implement and plan safe prevention and intervention against various forms of violence.

Raising awareness can also help war veterans and individuals with PTSD receive proper care and therapy so they aren’t as haunted by their pasts. It can benefit people to seek help and promote healthy mental health. There are numerous organizations willing to help and support people on their journey to healing. Some examples are Survivors Empowered, The Rebels Project, and Trauma Survivors Network, all of which help people cope with the loss and trauma of gun violence.

People who are educated about gun violence and firearms also have a lesser chance of being careless with these weapons, such as leaving them out for adolescents and young children to find. In fact, more than 1,300 children younger than 18 years die every year in the US because their parents left fully loaded unconcealed guns around the house.

It is no secret that there can only be a difference when we acknowledge that this issue is bigger than one source and one solution. Carelessness and the lack of education aren’t going to prevent the increasing amount of gun violence, so get out there and take a stand, because change can only occur when we choose to get involved, educate ourselves, and bring awareness to people.