On November 30, 2021, a fifteen year old student walked into Oxford High School and murdered 4 students. He was seen trying to buy the ammunition for the shooting the day before.

With the correct measures in place, we should have been able to catch him buying them and stop the tragedy before it happened. It is severely distressing that the minimal gun control laws in our nation allowed for this severe oversight.

Stricter gun control laws are no longer an unrealistic want, rather they are becoming an unwelcome need.

This issue affects everybody, but most importantly to this nation’s children. Guns are the second leading cause of death among US children, and the leading cause of death for teens. Over 1.7 million children live in homes with unprotected, loaded guns. If we placed laws and regulations on the ownership of guns, we would be protecting our children as well as the rest of the population.

The argument that guns are only harmful in the hands of malicious people, who would find ways to cause harm without them, is an overall false idea.

The damage done by guns is not limited to mass shootings or homicide. People who report “firearm access” are three times more likely to commit suicide. Suicide attempts are more deadly when a gun is used, 90% compared to 34% from jumping. Stricter gun laws and warrants for guns would decrease the death toll of suicide significantly. 

If our government put in place background checks and identification requirements, it would save thousands of lives a year. According to a March 10, 2016 Lancet study about firearm mortality across states, universal background checks would reduce firearms deaths by 56.9%, universal background checks for ammunition by 80.7%, and gun identification requirements by 82.5%.  We could save thousands of lives a year if we implemented these into our legislative system, and it is mind-blowing that we have not yet.

Mass shootings have become more and more commonplace in recent years.

It feels like I have seen a news report everyday about an active shooter in some part of the country. Fear of a school shooting has been drilled into the children of this country from the time we were in elementary school, and has only increased with time. I don’t want to watch my fellow students duck and cover anytime there is a loud noise in the hallway. 

I don’t want the young children of our country to become as accustomed to the violence as our generation has. Violence will continue without guns, but that does not mean that we should not do our best to stop as much damage as we can. 

Our country needs gun control.