BY: JESSICA BEUKER
On October 1st, a 26-year-old gunman opened fire on a community college campus in southern Oregon. The rampage left nine people dead and another nine injured. The gunman, Christopher Harper-Mercer, shot his victims in a classroom before exchanging fire with police and then killing himself.
The massacre added to a long list of schools left grieving in the aftermath of mass shootings, including Columbine High School in 1999, Virginia Tech in 2007 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, where 20 children were killed. School shootings are forming a tragic pattern in the United States, one that shocks and surprises each time it occurs. Yet preventative measures such as gun control remain an issue that is merely talked about but never implemented, despite overwhelming evidence of the harm that guns cause.
The floor opens for a debate about gun violence when a mass shooting occurs. According to Humanosphere—despite some arguments against gun control—there is enough data to show that, compared to other countries, the United States has exceptional homicide rates, and it’s driven almost entirely by gun violence.
An article by the Atlantic compares gun violence in U.S. cities to the deadliest places in the world, per 100,000 people. The map suggests that if New Orleans were a country, it would rank second in the world for gun homicide. Atlanta’s gun-related deaths are similar to South Africa’s numbers, Los Angeles has a rate comparable to the Philippines, and Phoenix’s rate is higher than Mexico’s.
According to the New York Times, President Obama said in an impassioned appearance at the White House that grief was not enough, and he implored Americans, “whether they are Democrats or Republicans or independents,” to consider their representatives’ stance on gun control when they vote and to decide “whether this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor.”
President Obama is also challenging the media to compare the number of U.S. citizens killed by gun violence to U.S. citizens killed by terrorism, according to Good Magazine. The results are eye opening.
The video shows a series of alarming numbers, followed by an even more alarming statistic: In 2015, the U.S. has yet to go eight days in a row without a mass shooting. The visual, comparing gun deaths to terrorism deaths, demands not only to be seen and understood but a permanent solution.
Image sources: theguardian.com, monroenews.com
