Viewpoint: In the Aftermath of the March
On March 24th, 2018, hundreds and thousands of ordinary people from across the country filled up the streets on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. as they listened and walked with each other during this past weekend’s March for Our Lives. Organized by the few teenage student survivors of the recent Stoneman Douglas High School gun massacre in Parkland, southern Florida, many voices were spoken demanding action by the government, local, state, or federal, on common sense gun control that the majority of Americans, including gun owners, support in which include universal background checks, closing gun show loopholes, a ban on military styled weapons, and mandatory gun training. Beyond the star studded performances by Jennifer Hudson, Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and Demi Levato, speeches given by the students, from the inspiration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s granddaughter to the emotional silence of Emma Gonzalez, one idea emerged from this event.
People have had enough. People cannot stand the fact that children, teenagers, and young adults in schools are being threatened by lone individuals with weapons that they should not have in the first place. People cannot stand the fact that places of entertainment, music festivals, movie theaters, and night clubs, should become locations of potential violence. People cannot stand that places of worship, military bases, shopping centers, civic centers, and the rest of their own neighborhoods should become battle zones found in developing countries or pages out of books about wars. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Newton, Charleston, San Bernardino, Oak Creek, Fort Hood, Orlando, and now Parkland are infamous references for massacres in modern America. Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Camden, Oakland, Stockton, and St. Louis have become urban pinpoints of gun violence in today’s America.
Everyday shootings and gun massacres are just the tip of gun violence epidemic iceberg nationwide. Almost every day, every second, every hour, every week, and every month someone is either seriously injured or fatally shot by gun due to suicide, misuse, hate crime, and other forms of violent crime including physical abuse.
People, from the east to the west, should not have to petition, march, or attend town halls for such continuous violence that affects most of our own lives right now and the rest of our own futures. People should not have to worry about their own lives and the lives of others being cut short by such horrendous actions of violence.
In the multiple crowds of these marches nationwide and our nation’s capital, mothers, daughters, nieces, nephews, uncles, brothers, sisters, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, young, old, middle aged, college educated, white, non-white, LGBTQ, straight, rich, poor, middle class, disabled, blue-collar, white-collar, native or foreign, are united against a current government and its own affiliations that are reducing public safety standards in which result in the deaths of thousands of people every year. Whether the Second Amendment is regulated or abolished by any legal means necessary, one central concept is opaque. People have had enough with this violence right now.
