by the Stanford Democrats
“Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence — they deserve a simple vote.” — Barack Obama
In the United States, there are nearly four gun stores for every grocery store. There are almost as many guns in this country as there are people. More importantly, 1,894,139 years of life are lost to gun violence every single year, while more than 30,000 people are killed and more than 200,000 are injured because of guns each year.
These deaths were not a result of self-defense — they were a result of crime. In the course of a day, a fifteen-year old boy from Prince George’s County, Maryland was robbed and fatally shot after a long day of school. Hours later in Jacksonville, Florida, a woman was shot twice after a fight over a parking spot. Senseless gun violence has become routine. “So it goes,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut over 40 years ago; since, we have become even more desensitized. It is our apathy that must change — it is our silence that is most deafening. (Someone has just been shot by a gun.) Continue reading
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