Opinion: Mass shootings in America are a problem

Another month, another mass shooting.

At this point, it seems as if I write the same ledes about the same old boring and repetitive topic in America: mass shootings.

There have been 392 mass shootings as I type these words. The number probably just went up by one as you read these words. At this time last year the number was 432. The number reached 477 by the end of 2017.

It’s saddening. It’s depressing. It’s simply distasteful to look at the news nowadays. Especially with a President like Donald Trump in office, where do we look for hope?

Hope that our country will find its way out of some of the worst mass shootings in our countries history. Hope that one day our children will feel safe going to church or an outdoor concert in Las Vegas or simply go to school.

It has been 304 days since the Trump launched his scandalous Muslim ban. In those 304 days, there have been zero attacks and zero deaths as a result of refugees, but four travel bans. In that same span, there have been 52,340 shootings, 13,136 deaths, and 308 mass shootings as a result of Americans, but no gun bans.

The numbers are scary. And as a young adolescent, I simply can not think of a single safe place in the world.

People will now have to look out for maniacs running into their church spraying their gun and killing as many people as they can. People will now have to worry about if their children are actually safe at school instead of worrying if they are learning properly.

Times have changed over the years. With more and more mass killings, we must take stronger action in becoming a safer country.

The problem with our country is not the fact that there are approximately 300 million guns, but the fact that nothing has been done.

A solution to this out of control problem of mass shootings is to simply not sell ammunition. Gun stores should be searched and narrowed down to only specific types of firearms needed for safety, and not any capable of mass murders. Not only should they be narrowed down, but also closed down. There are about 130,000 gun dealers in this country. Cut that in half, clear out the stores and you might be able to cut down the amount of mass shootings in America.

Now, obviously it is impossible to have no mass shootings at all, but by taking the necessary steps we can help our country.

We have a rifle sized problem that we can not ignore. It’s not a little North Korean with nuclear weapons. It’s not a group of ignorant ISIS members. It’s not a controlling horse-riding Russian either. It is all here in our own country. And we must take actions, until it is too late.