Jerry Horgen
St Cloud
We’ve now had 199 mass shootings this year; we are on day 126 of the year 2023 on the day I’m writing this –April 4. Kids are afraid to go to school! We see that according to the “Sandy Hook Promise,” each day 12 children die from gun violence in America.
Most recently in Texas with an assault rifle. It’s disappointing to see that when elected leaders have close friends lose their life to gun violence, it seems they change their tune and seek gun restrictions to be made in their state. To those of us who have worked with children, we thought the tragedy of Sandy Hook would be a changing point in gun violence. It wasn’t!
Now Australia and the United Kingdom have recently given out travel warnings on America because of gun violence.
“If only we loved our children as much as we love our guns!” said Nicholas Kristof, an American journalist.
If school shootings continue, predictions are that we will reach 400 shootings this year, and that would outpace last year’s number of 273 school shootings. How many shootings are enough before we see more safety measures from our legislatures? What happens if a mass shooting occurs near us, in our state? Are background checks, mental health measures and red flags enough? Ten states have a ban on assault rifles to decrease chances of more killings. A ban on assault-style weapons with high-capacity magazines has shown to bring down the number of deaths.
So what to do? Our only hope is that the kids in school demand more gun safety measures, as we don’t see much help from anybody else. It’s so sad!
“If only we loved our children as much as we love our guns!”