Excess Violence

In 2019 alone, there have been 402 mass shootings in the United States. From these shootings, approximately 1500 people were injured and 450 people died. In just 46 weeks, there have been 45 high school shootings. So far, the most recent was a mass shooting in Santa Clarita, California, at Saugus High School. The shooter was a sixteen year old students who fatally shot two others and injured three others. According to the evidence found, he used a "ghost" gun. A ghost gun is pretty much an untraceable gun, assembled from multiple different parts of other guns. There isn't a serial number attached to the gun so it's untraceable. These so called ghost guns are a huge problem because anyone on the street could research about it and create their own, without having to get a permit or go though the law. When a gun has a serial number, detectives and law enforcement have the ability to trace it and get more information. But unfortunately with ghost guns, it's nearly impossibly. Each piece of the gun is most likely from a another gun, so each piece would be have to be tracked down, which is pretty much impossible. The shooter, identified as Nathaniel Berhow, shot 5 rounds of bullets into an open crowd. He hurt 5 people in 16 seconds. Nathaniel counted his rounds and saved the last bullet for himself. The next morning, he died from a head wound. Nathaniel didn't have a history of violence, in fact, he was part of a Boy Scout troop, involved in cross country, and even had a girlfriend. This demonstrates that he was most likely surrounded by friends and loved ones. As of now, the police are trying to unlock Nathaniel's phone to try and get more information.

This tragic event just goes to show how broken we are as a society. An average teenager randomly shoots five people, and ultimately takes his own life in the end. In some ways, the families of the departed and the injured may feel relief knowing that their child's killer is dead. But also, that just means yet another prosperous life is gone. We, as members of society, should be doing everything we can to help to provide help to these people. Rather than spending time mourning and grieving and praying, we should be trying to prevent these deaths. There is so much we can do, yet we fail all the time. Hopefully, the new year will contain less gun violence than this year.




https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/teen-ghost-gun-california-high-school-shooting-67201760
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/15/us/2019-us-school-shootings-trnd/index.html