Gun Violence in Mass Media

Gun violence has swept the nation countless number of times to the point where Americans aren’t shocked by the news they hear through television or their local newspapers. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 297 people are killed a day as a result of gun violence through homicides, suicides, unintentional shootings, and police intervention. What many Americans are most familiar with are the mass shootings that have happened within the past few years. Because of the countless number of mass shootings that keep occurring, President Barack Obama has called an immediate call for action to create stricter gun laws for all Americans. Not only is this affecting all Americans, but is this issue targeting the wrong people by the way they are all generalized in mass media?

Many Americans have fallen victim to mass shootings that have swept the nation periodically throughout recent years. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza went to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut with the motive to kill twenty-six people, including children and his own mother. In these moments can we ask ourselves, who in their right mind would murder not just people, but innocent children who barely got to live their lives. According to a New York Times article, Lanza was “completely untreated in years before the shooting.” The article claims that doctors highly recommended he be treated for “psychiatric and physical ailments” such as anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but his mother refused. Lanza’s mother, who was fatally shot by her son, ignored her son’s ongoing mental issues which were recommended by doctors because she wanted to keep her son “sheltered.” Dr. Harold Shwartz, a psychiatrist at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living, says that Adam Lanza’s “untreated mental illness was a predisposing factor.” This devastating event is one of many that have shook the nation to the core. After many demonstrations as to why stricter gun laws should be enforced, President Obama, for many years tried to find ways to make America a safer place.

During a town hall meeting in 2015, President Barack Obama addressed his motive to create stricter gun laws for all Americans. In attendance were many people related to a lot of the mass shootings that have been going on in America such as Mark Burden, whose son was killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. According to CNN News, the White House, Obama included, are seeking to expand background checks for buyers. This means restricting guns from individuals who have a history of some kind of mental illness, whether it is minor or mild case. Although, Obama says in his agenda to take away everyone’s guns, but to try to come up with a way to be in compliance with the Second Amendment, which states an individual’s rights to bear arms. In addition to creating stricter gun control laws, Obama wants to “provide more funding for mental health treatment, FBI staff and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives agents.” Mental illness has been associated with gun violence many times to the point where the mentally ill are being generalized under this category in mass media that Americans have viewed them all as a threat to society.