Valentine's Day, when singles have to live through another day of seeing couples post cheesy snapchat stories and even cringier Instagram posts depicting their love and appreciation for each other (while subtweeting each other almost every other day of the year). Meanwhile, hopeless romantics are set with their annual Feb. 14 plans: binge-watch The Office, devour a pizza and, for those of age, top off your night with whatever alcohol is in reach to help heal your broken heart.
Sadly, as a nation, our hearts were collectively broken as a school shooting left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz, was taken into custody after being released from the hospital. Cruz had been expelled from the school and didn’t graduate. Students described him as a “loner” and would “joke about shooting people.”
This is the eighth school shooting, according to The Guardian, that has occurred in the US since the start of 2018. We’re only in February.
This is also the 800th time following a mass shooting where we, as a nation, are going to go through the same tiring cycle of blame, denial and a repeat tragedy, starting with offering our recycled statements of “thoughts and prayers.” The next step is for both advocates and opponents of gun control to have fierce debates via social media, not reaching an agreement on how necessary semi-automatic rifles are within our society.
After this, politicians do their best to reject any type of legislation to improve gun control, having decided that their donations from the National Rifle Association, or NRA, are far more important than the value of human life. The final step? A mass shooting devastates our country.
While nothing is wrong with praying for the ones that have perished, continually ignoring that this country has a problem with gun control. The fact that every time someone goes to a concert, movie theater or an educational facility, they are chancing being gunned down by an AR-15, is appalling.
The U.S. has six times as many fire homicides as Canada, and 16 times as many as Germany. On average, our nation has one mass shooting each and every day. There are countless other disturbing statistics that all agree with the argument that America has an unreasonably sick fascination towards rifles. It is difficult to think about how many more tragedies similar in this nature will occur until change is implemented.
For those of you that cheered when President Barack Obama’s legislation for gun control was blocked following the Sandy Hook shootings, you should be ashamed. As a nation, we can continue to blame one another and choose sides, or we can unite together and step forward to erase this troubling trend of witnessing weekly mass shootings.
A day that marks love will now be remembered by parents and family of the victims as a day of senseless violence and bloodshed that claimed 17 innocent lives. Those people didn’t deserve to die under a government that is more concerned with athletes standing for the national anthem than America’s future.
Akash Bakshi is a freshman studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Do you agree with Akash? Let him know by tweeting him @akashmbakshi.
