Money Over Lives: The American Way
Mass Shootings in the United States
By Zoe Koniaris
The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
EVER SINCE COLUMBINE, the first major mass shooting of the contemporary era, gun violence has marred the American experience. When reading the phrase “mass shooting,” countless tragedies come to mind: The 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, where an armed man slaughtered six adults and twenty children. Orlando, three years ago: forty-nine deaths. Las Vegas, two years ago: fifty-nine. Parkland, last year: seventeen. My neighboring school district joined the list a few months ago when a middle school boy shot a teacher and a fellow student seven times. The day after the shooting, I visited the office of my congressional representative, Susan Brooks. Her assistant nodded along to my concerns, but told us that Congresswoman Brooks’s priority was defending gun rights. Susan Brooks, like many other politicians, has collected thousands of dollars by various interest groups to disregard her constituents’ safety and promote an alternative agenda: keeping guns as unrestricted as possible, no matter the cost. Such corruption perverts our supposedly democratic system to prioritize corporate interests over the lives of Americans. Politicians funded by special interest groups are subverting our American system, prioritizing gun rights as part of an endless campaign for reelection, a treasonous act that triggers deadly consequences.
Refusal to pass measures preventing these massacres is murder by negligence. The government went after the perpetrator of the murder of twenty six- and seven-year-olds at Sandy Hook before he shot himself in the head. But what about the next guy? Politicians like Congresswoman Brooks offering “thoughts and prayers” after every shooting are filling their pockets with NRA money, an insult to the Americans murdered every day, an empty gesture given their power to stop the violence. Our nation is finally moving towards gun safety and Indiana refuses to make any concession. Rates of firearm deaths in Indiana are 3.2% higher than the national average. 1 in 5 illegally possessed guns recovered in Chicago were traced back to Indiana. We’re a national supplier! The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives Indiana an ‘F’ for the strength of its gun laws. Do you want to know why we’re so backward and illogical? Seven out of the nine representatives from Indiana get an ‘A’ rating from the N.R.A. Senator Todd Young accepted nearly $3 million dollars from the NRA. Efforts to ban assault weapons and establish background checks for private gun purchases have been entirely unsupported by my very own Congresswoman Susan Brooks, thanks to none other than her NRA money and status as a puppet politician for the Republican Platform. In their crusade against gun control, the pro-gun collective has consistently fought against universal background checks (a government record of transactions for guns), claiming that they would infringe upon the rights of Americans. Our elected officials, my congresswoman and our senators Todd Young and Mike Braun, our supposed protectors, have made it clear that they would rather fill their pockets and stay in power than shield those they vowed to serve.
Every American should be outraged that politicians have let this country become a place where mass shootings happen almost every day, to the point that only the most sensational and violent breach the collective media consciousness. To the point that tragedy is so commonplace that each shooting is forgotten by the next one. To the point that we ignore the deaths of children in the cities, or people by their partners, or teenagers by their own hand, because sixty people may die tomorrow in one fell swoop. Our perspective is so skewed that gun violence is a cultural norm. This is beyond absurd.
Those who would defend the inaction of many politicians may cite a legitimate belief in the integrity of the Second Amendment to the Constitution as the basis for their actions. Sure. It says you can bear arms. However, the extreme defense of the Second Amendment is what has resulted in the infractions upon the foundations of our government. Every individual possesses inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it is the job of the government to protect those rights. The Preamble of our Constitution says that our government should be guided by the principles of “insur[ing] domestic Tranquility, provid[ing] for the common defense, promot[ing] the general Welfare, and secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty.” By letting Americans die every day, the government is failing its cardinal responsibility: to defend those rights to life, to happiness, to freedom (in this case, freedom from being shot dead). A nation of state-defended murder machinery is not insuring domestic Tranquility, nor providing for the common defense, nor promoting the general Welfare, and most certainly not securing the Blessings of Liberty. And a nation of politicians determined to retain their power is most certainly not forming a more perfect union or establishing a system of justice. The only freedom in a corrupt system of dark money and pocket politicians is freedom to be fatally shot by someone holding a gun that your representative makes money to defend. A country where lives are forsaken in the interest of guns is not a government by the people, for the people, but a government comprised of the rich, the powerful, and the undemocratic. That is nothing short of treason.
I have high hopes for America. I believe in our power to come together to usurp the powers that refuse to take us out of the danger we all are in. We are a country founded on the Enlightenment principle of liberty who refuses to submit to tyrants, whether those despots take the form of corrupt politicians, lobbyists, or the English Empire. For our politicians to continue authorizing murderers to gun down Americans is treasonous. We are one nation, indivisible, and we need our representatives to value more than reelection funds and support from the NRA. We need them to no longer enable the executions of thousands. How many future congressmen and women lay among those slain by firearms? How many entrepreneurs? Doctors? Parents? Artists? How much of our future has already been destroyed, and how much more will we lose?
We’re doing what we need to do. We’re demanding that our Congressional Representatives and our Senators stop accepting money from the NRA and that they sign onto the common sense legislation being introduced. And if they continue to refuse, if they continue to be negligent to those who they are supposed to represent, if they continue to be complicit in the destruction of our nation, we will vote them out. 2020 isn’t long from now. Do everything you can to elect gun sense candidates; volunteer with your local democratic campaign. Knock on doors, call people, post on your social media and spark these conversations with those around you. Mobilize the American populace and we can triumph over this evil together. My wish is for our America to become the place it claims to be; for it to protect and unite its people, so you and I and all Americans can stand together, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
