A student armed with a 12-gauge shotgun at Taft Union High School in California fired at two classmates Thursday morning, missing one and critically wounding the other.
This shooting comes less than a month after a gunman killed 20 children and six caretakers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The Second Amendment guarantees Americans the right to keep and bear arms. However, the country was also founded on the idea that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights granted to all human beings — rights that were stripped from 26 innocent people in the Dec. 14 tragedy.
Gun violence is a recurring issue in America. There may never be an ideal time to discuss possible solutions, but it shouldn’t take another devastation to start looking for one.
Americans have cooperated in the past to resolve societal problems such as drunk driving through stricter regulations and simply recognizing a need for action. Identification is required to purchase correction fluid, such as White Out, as the result of inhalant abuse among teens.
These examples show Americans can recognize and resolve dangerous issues in our communities through reasonable discussion. So when an issue as serious as gun violence arises and thousands of people each year are dead, why do we choose to do nothing?
Left-wing extremists believe guns shouldn’t exist, while those on the right believe everybody should be armed and gun control shouldn’t exist. Those aren’t solutions.
As Idahoans we live in a pro-gun state, and as Americans, guns are an important part of our history and culture. Eliminating them altogether is unrealistic, but that doesn’t mean gun control is a bad thing.
Neither side of the aisle wants a massacre, yet neither party is willing to put aside its differences to reach some middle ground.
A perfect solution will not be found immediately, but that doesn’t mean we should give up on the issue altogether.
As shootings continue throughout America, doing nothing is unacceptable. Are we so rooted in our stances that we can’t even have a reasonable conversation about one of the most prominent issues in society?
The only way to resolve gun violence is to talk about controlling it.
— BK