Did you know that on average about 45,700 die from gun violence, and about 40% of those are from Gun homicide, according to everytownresearch.org. And that’s only in America alone. Why decide to talk about this topic you may ask. I mean there’s way more interesting topics to talk about right? Well, of course there are a million more interesting things to talk about then gun homicide/shootings, but there’s also a million people affected by this topic, including me. In this story I will be talking about gun homicide, school shootings, and, like I mentioned in an earlier sentence, my own story about this topic.
It might or might not be a surprise to you that compared to other high-income countries, America has a big problem with gun homicide (at least a rate 26 times higher per 100,000 people), according to everytownresearch.org. In the US, the top 5 states with some of the highest rates of gun homicide are Louisiana, District of Columbia, Mississippi, Alabama, and New Mexico, according to cdc.gov. Many leaders in American history have died from gun homicide and the consequences of gun homicide are losing out on great people like Abraham Lincoln, JFK, and MLK Jr from it.
School shootings are an experience that can be very gruesome and traumatizing to many students who have been in them. America is known for having some of the most school shootings and loads of people know that as there are many people posting these stories on social media now. According to edweek.org, “There have been 232 such shootings since 2018.”, and there were 39 school shootings with injuries or deaths last year.”, and if there had been at least 232 shootings since 2018 then that means that the US has had 57x more school shootings than the rest of the G7 countries(Canada, US, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, UK) all combined in that same period, according to cnn.com. From all this you can just imagine how much worse the rates of kids getting exposed to shootings in the US have gotten over the years which can cause kids to be afraid to even attend school.
One of the reasons I decided to write about this topic is so I could bring more awareness to something that I had experienced when I was younger. When I was maybe around 3-4, I was in a shooting in my home. Fortunately my family was not hurt when this happened but a lot of things in my home did get destroyed and shot up. I do not remember most of what happened that night but I do remember I was going to sleep and my mom and brother were downstairs watching the TV and my younger sister who was sleeping downstairs as well. It was then when my brother and mom heard the gun shots. In my town, we were not the only ones that they got to. Someone I was friends with said their mom was almost shot, got away, but was hurt in the process. This is a topic that’s not touched upon by any of us because of the fact that it was experienced differently and it’s a personal story to everyone that was involved.
In all, gun homicide is something that has a big rate of deaths in the US and school shootings rates are increasing by a lot. It’s important to help and support those that have been affected or had lives taken from them by this. Since gun homicide and school shootings are a problem that is not going away in a few years, make sure to be careful and not make choices, on purpose, that will put your life in danger. If you want to learn more about the facts or be more educated on this topic, you can try checking out everytownresearch.org or edweek.org for more information.
