It’s Wednesday morning and you’re going to school, you go to your first class everything’s normal, second class is the same as it always is but then in the middle of your third class your principal comes on to the P.A. system and says that there is an active shooter in the building. Your first reaction is panic and fear because this is the first time anything like this has happened to you and you don’t know what you should do but then you start to get even more scared or worried when you start to realize that now school might not ever feel the same again or that you might die here today, possibly even seeing your friends and fellow classmates die right in front of your eyes. Your terrified and you don’t know what to do, all you can think of is how you and all your friends are going to die and that even if you do survive you don’t know how you’ll ever go back to school and feel like everything’s normal or how you’ll deal with the loss of some of your fellow classmates and maybe even the death of your friends. You start to think about how much you miss how the day started and how all the days before this where normal and how much you wish that today was just another one of those days or that this was all just a bad dream that’ll end any minute now, but this bad dream doesn’t ever end and after all of this you realize the gravity of the situation and just how bad this is, causing all of your panic, fear, and worry to sky rocket up to the point where you can’t take it anymore.

This type of thing can happen to anyone and the worst part is that these shootings happen more and more everyday, showing no signs of slowing down. These shootings can also deeply change someone and stick with them their entire lives leaving them with serious mental and, depending on the situation, physical health issues.

But this doesn’t only happen to students or teachers, instead it affects all Americans because anyone can become a target of gun violence, not to mention the effects that gun violence has on communities, the way that it ripples outward and attacks the mental health of all the people in a community. 

Gun violence and gun control have been a big problem throughout the U.S. but recently it has become an even greater issue threatening the lives of countless people, especially for children and teens as they are the main targets for gun violence. Along with this, gun violence affects children and teens by making them scared or anxious, something that can be easily solved as one of the only reasons that this happens is because someone living in the house has a gun and they don’t have it safely stored away. For example, “For the last 20 years, students, educators, and parents have lived with the reality of increasingly frequent school shootings. The worst period for this violence has been in the 2021–2022 school year, which saw nearly quadruple the average number of gunfire incidents since 2013. From an average of 49 incidents in every school year since 2013, this past school year saw 193 incidents of gunfire on the grounds of preschools and K–12 schools.” (Everytown) This highlights the issue of gun violence in that it shows how overtime, shootings have become more and more frequent leading to the death of even more children, teens, and adults. The increase of school shootings has led some to believe that in order to solve gun violence in schools we should do things like arming the staff members at schools, but this only makes life for children even more dangerous, “There is something profoundly dangerous at work here. It is an ideology embedded in the very idea of gun rights as envisioned by people like LaPierre, Paxton, and Pirro: a vision that armed citizens, and not the state, represent the ultimate guarantors of freedom and civil peace.” (Zack Beauchamp) Showing that adding more guns to an issue surrounding guns and their negative effects on people is a bad, not to mention dangerous, idea. U.S. politicians should work to stop gun violence by increasing gun control with stricter gun laws that provide more control of firearms and people’s accessibility to them in order to protect its citizens from harm because no one is immune to gun violence regardless of who you are.

The freedom and liberty that most Americans associate with guns actively harms America itself. It limits the action that people can take on the matter because if they try to do something about it or try to make a change they are viewed as oppressors, as the culture surrounding America and guns has taught people that when their access to guns is cut off they also lose their freedom. In addition to this, it leads to bad, dangerous ideas like arming staff members at schools to deal with school shootings because of how guns are seen as providers of freedom and justice. For example, in “A child can’t be a good guy with a gun” the author states, “Instead, it is the idea that the survival of liberty depends on people being equipped to use violence against ever-creeping tyranny — a belief that’s rarely found among citizens of other advanced democracies.” (Zack Beauchamp) Describing how this problem seems to only exist in the U.S. because America is the only country with an advanced democracy that struggles as much as it does with gun violence, again showing how the culture that America has developed with guns actively harms the U.S. and its citizens. An example of this is in the article, “America’s unique, enduring gun problem, explained” in which the author writes, “No other high-income country has suffered such a high death toll from gun violence. Every day, 120 Americans die at the end of a gun, including suicides and homicides, an average of 43,375 per year. Since 2009, there has been an annual average of 19 shootings in which at least four people are killed. The US gun homicide rate is as much as 26 times that of other high-income countries; its gun suicide rate is nearly 12 times higher.” (Narea, Zhou, et. al) The issue of gun violence in America is even further highlighted by this and although so many people have died from gun violence and will continue to die by it America’s gun laws have not gotten much, if at all, stronger because of how America’s citizens view guns.

Gun violence deeply affects communities, with it lingering well after it actually happens, again showing how gun violence is a very complicated issue as well as the fact that it can deeply shape a person. It’s effects ripple out and last very long, greatly traumatizing all who are affected by it, for example, in “The negative impact of firearm violence on children is so strong that some experts have advocated formally classifying it as an “Adverse Childhood Experience,” a distinction that would denote its proven negative effects on lifelong health.” (Keren Landman) This further proves how dangerous Gun violence is and how it has many effects that affects many people, both physically and mentally. Along with this, the author states that, “The costs of gun violence go well beyond deaths, and it’s not just witnesses and children who bear these costs. Shootings “have a ripple effect far beyond the person who was actually shot within a community,” (Keren Landman) and “The innermost circle are those killed or injured by firearms. Between 2015 and 2019, more than 76,000 Americans survived gunshot wounds annually. In addition to coping with the long-term functional limitations resulting from their injuries, these survivors are at increased risk of chronic pain, psychiatric disorders, and substance abuse — and their families are also more likely to face challenges to their mental health.” (Keren Landman) Once again showing how complicated the issue of gun violence is and how gun violence attacks both your physical as well as your mental health, with long lasting effects that harm many more than just the people who get shot.

In america the ability to own assault weapons should be taken away as these weapons are made for war and therefore have no right to be inside of someone's house especially if that person has children or the gun is just lying around, free for anyone to use. This issue of gun control is prominent throughout the U.S., with people not being safe with their guns and not treating them like they can take someone’s life. This type of thinking gets countless amounts of people dead every year, because when you don’t safely store your guns it means that all sorts of people can get their hands on them and kill the people around them or themselves, including children. One of the even worse parts about this though is that these deaths can be complete accidents, like when someone is under the influence, not mentally fit, or is a child that doesn’t understand what it is they’re holding in addition to all the harm it could bring. This is further shown by the fact that, “When it comes to gun violence in America, nearly 6 out of every 10 gun deaths are suicides. The US gun suicide rate is nearly 12 times that of other high-income countries. Access to a gun triples the risk of death by suicide. Gun suicides are concentrated in states with high rates of gun ownership.” (Everytown) Showing how the fact that we have as much access to guns as we do and are not storing our guns safely enough leads to the deaths of many. Along with this, if we enhanced gun control we could greatly lower the amount of suicides as well as homicides in America by safely storing away guns and banning assault type weapons, effectively saving the lives of countless people. As shown by the fact that “While the majority of child deaths from guns are due to homicide, an average of 35 percent between 2018 and 2021 were suicides, while 5 percent were caused by unintentional, accidental shootings.” (Rachel DuRose) and “one-third of these households with dangerously stored guns are also home to children.” (Rachel DuRose) These pieces of evidence show how much of an impact gun control has on the U.S. and just how many people could be hurt or even killed because of something so easy to prevent.

Gun violence can have serious mental health affects that go far beyond the people who get shot, affecting entire communities and traumatizing many people. This can lead to someone’s entire life being changed because, as Vox author Keren Landman wrote,  people who are exposed to gun violence can experience, “ a variety of mental health issues, including problems with social function, anxiety, and depression.” (Landman) Explaining how much people are affected by gun violence both physically, emotionally, and even financially as losing someone you know, especially if you were close with them can have detrimental effects on a person. This can include depression and anxiety as well as severe financial loss, like if the primary income owner was killed, not to mention the effects that it can have on a person’s social life as it can cause them to distance themselves and stay away from others, which in the long run is even worse for your mental health. An example of this from a Vox article where the author says, “At least 15,000 children lose a parent to guns every year. That’s 15,000 people whose lives — their financial and physical well-being — may be forever set on a different course.” (Landman) Once again showing how devastating the long lasting effects of gun violence can be and their impact on a person as well as an entire community. Another example of this can be found when the author from the previous article writes, “When firearms injure or kill a person, hurt and loss radiate outward to affect concentric circles of people around them. Victims’ families and close friends sustain different harms than their communities and society at large — but the pain spreads far and wide in both predictable and surprising ways.” (Landman) The evidence here demonstrates how gun violence is a complex issue that hurts many people, including the people directly affected by the gun violence or the victims, the people who know the victims, and many other people connected to a community.

Gun violence is a complex issue but some of its main causes are inadequate gun laws and the bias that guns have obtained over the U.S. 's history. Because of America’s early relationship with guns and how they were associated with freedom or the liberation from British control the citizens of the U.S. have associated guns with freedom as well as patriotism, this has caused and continues to cause people to want to own guns, to protect themselves, their family, and their freedom but in fact these people by doing this often actively harm those same people that they wanted to protect, actively surrounding themselves and the people they know in danger by owning guns. An example of this can be found in an article from Vox news written by Nicole Narea, Li Zhou, and Ian Millhiser, where they say, “The US’s expansive view of civilian gun ownership, ingrained in politics, in culture, and in the law since the nation’s founding, and a national political process that has so far proved incapable of changing that norm.” (Narea, Zhou, et. al) This further shows the way America sees guns needs to change in order to actually make an impact on the situation because the way that we see guns now makes gun laws and gun control near impossible, lengthening the amount of time that more people have to suffer as a result of gun violence. Along with this first issue though there’s also the issue of the sheer amount of guns in the U.S., “One estimate from the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss-based research project, found that there were approximately 390 million guns in circulation in the US in 2018, or about 120.5 firearms per 100 residents. US gun ownership is still well above any other country: Yemen, which has the world’s second-highest level of gun ownership, has only 52.8 guns per 100 residents; in Iceland, it’s 31.7.” (Narea, Zhou, et. al) This highlights the astronomical amount of guns in the U.S. as well as the fact that this only shows the ones that we know about, these issues combined put together the fact that there are many, many guns in America and the more guns there are the harder the issue is to resolve, showing again how one of the key factors to ending gun violence is changing the way that we see guns or the idea of them/what they symbolize.

In conclusion, gun violence affects many people, physically and mentally as well as entire communities as gun violence can traumatize people for their entire lives even if they weren’t directly involved in it, and that traumatization can spread far and wide. Along with this, the issue of gun control is just as if not more important as with stronger gun laws and more regulations gun violence can be a lot less serious of an issue, saving countless lives in the process and preventing mass mental and physical health issues. None of this change can happen though now with the way that America and its citizens view guns and the idea they carry, the idea that guns represent freedom and liberty because of their use in wars and the rebelling of the british. This idea prevents anything from happening because if guns are viewed as bringers/symbols of freedom and liberty than locking than preventing their use and making them more scarce or harder to get a hold if then people would view that as the government trying to deny people of their freedom or ignoring the second amendment, a law that makes gun control or resolving gun violence an even greater challenge. Even if you agree with the way that guns are viewed and think that they are providers of freedom and think that creating stricter gun laws is wrong you can’t ignore the amount of death, pain, and suffering the guns cause and how if there were less guns are harder ways to use a gun in that way than it would help mediate gun violence and ultimately be for the better of the U.S. This is why I still believe that in order to make a change U.S. politicians should work to stop gun violence by increasing gun control with stricter gun laws that provide more control of firearms and people’s accessibility to them in order to protect its citizens from harm because no one is immune to gun violence regardless of who you are.

Works Cited

Beauchamp, Zack. “How the NRA’s “good guy with a gun” myth gave us the Uvalde nightmare.” Vox, 25 May 2022, vox.com/2022/5/25/23140519/uvalde-school-shooting-nra-texas-good-guy-gun. Accessed 23 May 2023.

Everytown for Gun Safety. “How To Stop Shootings and Gun Violence in Schools: A Plan to Keep Students Safe.” Everytown Research, 19 August 2022, everytownresearch.org/report/how-to-stop-shootings-and-gun-violence-in-schools/. Accessed 23 May 2023.

Landman, Keren. “The health effects of gun violence go beyond deaths.” Vox, 6 June 2022, vox.com/science-and-health/23151542/gun-deaths-firearm-injuries-violence-health-grief-mental-physical. Accessed 23 May 2023.

Narea, Nicole, et al. “The latest mass shooting in Texas puts focus on America’s unique, enduring gun problem.” Vox, 29 April 2023, vox.com/23142734/cleveland-texas-mass-shootings. Accessed 23 May 2023.