John,
Last night, three students were killed on Michigan State University’s campus — killed by a shooter with guns.
While investigations are ongoing into the shooter’s motives, we know that once he decided to kill innocent people, carrying out that horrible task was all too easy for him because of the extremely open access to guns in our country.
Today, we also observe the 5-year anniversary of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida — where a gunman killed 14 students and three adults. It was our nation’s deadliest high school shooting.
John, the United States contains about 4.2% of the world’s population. But according to data collected shortly after the Parkland shooting, the U.S. has 86.5% of all the school shootings in the world. That means that students in the United States are 1,522 times more likely than students in the rest of the world to have a mass shooting occur at their school.
That’s not a mere statistical anomaly. There’s a clear and identifiable reason for that huge discrepancy: Our nation has decided it is more important to protect guns than to protect children. No other country in the world can fathom our nation’s love affair with firearms, especially as they watch American children being slaughtered every day in astounding numbers.
Republicans like to clutch their pearls in fake outrage and tell us we can’t talk about gun reform in the wake of a mass shooting like the one last night at Michigan State. But John, we have to analyze why we’re stuck in this cycle of gun violence, and we dishonor the victims by pretending that we’re not facing a systemic problem.
Thank you for rising to the moment, even amid the grief and hopelessness that can take over in times like these.
– Hank Johnson (he/him)
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