How Gun Violence impacts more than just the scene of the crime.

What is it going to take to stop Gun Violence?

For those of you that don't know, which im sure you all do, Gun Violence is a major problem in today's society. All over the news and social media, you always see and read about the shootings and threats going around this wonderful world we live in. However, I am sure none of you have ever realized the impact that Gun Violence has on those involved. Gun violence has impacted the world physcially, emotionally, and mentally, and has been brought to the attention of those who weren't even involved.

This is shown with school shootings, mass shootings, or even random attacks. According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that tracks shootings in the US, there were 340 mass shootings in 2018. This is an absurd number of attacks that has affected too many harmless victims. To put this into perspective, the US has had nearly as many mass shootings as days in the year in 2018.

To start, all across the world, survivors and witnesses are all scared and traumatized for life after witnessing something so devastating. The main focus is mass school shootings. For students, School massacres leave deep emotional scars and can affect academic performance, such as decreased school attendance and lower test scores. Afterwards, any student that was involved, tries to define a new sense of normalcy, all while struggling with grief, guilt, PTSD, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Children, parents, and school staff are all affected by a school shooting. These affects could be behavioral, physical, or mental. Studies show that any kid who witnesses a school shooting has a striking 77% chance of suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), (Takeda, 2012). When it comes to parents, they are mostly affected psychologically. In a study on five school shootings that have happened in the past, they came to the conclusion that school staff who have witnessed a school shooting would suffer from several negative long term consequences that include illness, divorce, PTSD, and maybe even career change. This might not seem like a big deal to some people, but for most it really touches home and makes you wonder what we can do to prevent this.

The affects from Gun violence physically, can all basically be seen from the stats themselves. According to the Gun Violence Archive, in 2018 there were 14,789 deaths, 28,233 injuries, 670 children injured or killed between the ages of 0-11, and 2,869 teens 12-17 killed or injured. To me, I think those numbers speak for themselves on the such negative impact Gun Violence has on our society. Not to mention, people forget about all of the lives that have gotten touched from those 28,233 injuries or deaths that were involved.

This topic has been brought to the attention by many through the news, word of mouth, and most importantly social media. The biggest area where the attention of gun violence was brought to was on twitter and facebook. People started using the hashtags #gunviolence, #endgunviolence, #todayistheday, #NomoreNRA, and many more to help put and end to it. All of these users who put in there opinion have been impacted by those killed or injured. Some may have been affected more than others but the point that I am trying to get at is that there are so many innocent harmless people out there who have to deal with the physical, mental, and emotional effects of Gun Violence in today's society.

The question that makes you wonder, is how are we going to stop this from happening? Of course there is no written law or beaten path to take , but we need to come up with something to stop this. Some people think we need to ban all guns for purchase, hire armed guards, or even enforce more harsh penalties to make others see what the consequence is. These however, are all ineffective solutions which are difficult to implement, as such there is no easy solution.

When will people learn?

I know for many of us, we just look at it as apart of society and being apart of the world we live in. But have you ever realized the impact that it has on other kids, students, families, teachers, and even communities? I sit here and think to myself what is it going to take to stop people from the violence and to start thinking about others before they act. My thoughts are just look at it as if it were your own family suffering over something they had no control in. Would that change your decision or change the way you act?