Over the past few months, lawmakers have been arguing over Roe v Wade, whether it should be overturned or not, whether an embryo at nine weeks is a soul worth saving. Behind the scenes, gun violence continues to rattle America.

On May 14, a man from Tennessee drove all the way to Buffalo, New York, and shot up a predominantly black grocery store, killing 10 people in the process. On May 24, a lone gunman shot and killed 19 students and two teachers in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. On top of that, four people died in a shooting at a Tulsa hospital last Wednesday. When is enough going to be enough?

Parents, friends, children, families are being torn apart by gun violence whether it be a shooting in a grocery store, a concert, or a school shooting.Yet the government still doesn’t seem to find gun violence more important than taking away women’s rights to do what they want with their own bodies. Lawmakers are so set on the ‘souls lost’ during abortions that they simply overlook the thousands of lives lost in gun related incidents.

Crazy thing is, the same people lobbying against abortion are the same people making it so hard to regulate gun distrabution. Political parties aside, it seems people with coservative ideologies believe life begins at conception but they also end up funding the NRA. In many cases abortions are nessacary for the mother to live and people think “this fetus is more important than a woman’s life,” or “sucks that you might die, but that’s better than a child dying.”

Make up your mind!

You’re so adamant on saving children who aren’t even alive but what about the 48 victims killed from school shootings this past year? Everyday, both students and teachers go into schools with a voice in the back of their heads worrying them about school shootings. Everytime the TV turns on, all that’s on the news is school shootings and gun violence.

There are children living with trauma from very preventable school shootings, preventable by placing stronger background checks and psych evaluations on people trying to purchase guns. Politicians are so worried about being against the opposite political party that they forget about the much larger and dire issues. Instead of being focused on constantly countering the opposite party, lawmakers should set aside their differences and fight against gun violence. We can argue about abortion later, I’m not dismissing it, I’m just suggesting that gun violence among the youth and in general is a topic, which should be discussed now.

It took one shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, in 1996 for Australia to tighten gun control. The shooting had left 35 dead and 18 injured. It took one shooting in Dunblane, Scotland for the UK to ban firearms. It took one shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand to ban rapid firearms. The US has had 288 recorded school shootings. This isn’t something that we want to lead in. The second country with the most is Mexico with eight shootings and we still haven’t put anything forward to prevent them.

Gun violence is something that impacts all Americans and it’s what occupies the minds of students, teachers, families and friends. It doesn’t make sense to argue against something that may save a person’s life just for the purpose of saving a ‘soul’ and then turn a blind eye to the thousands of people who’ve died in gun related incidents in America.