| Photo / WLNS
On March 27, reports of a shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville hit national headlines.
Seven individuals are confirmed dead.
One was the shooter.
Three were adults.
The remaining three were children, all 9 years old.
Though police responded quickly to the event and the perpetrator is deceased, it has simply become another brick in the wall of school shootings in the United States.
In February of this year, Michigan State University fell victim to a mass shooting and three students died as a result. A now widespread picture shows “The Rock”, a boulder which has been a prominent symbol of the school, spray painted with the message āHow Many More?ā
At the start of this month, the Gun Violence Archive reported that the United States had passed 100 mass shootings within the first three months of the year.
The same site states nearly 10,000 people have died from gun violence and events related to it since the start of the year.
398 of those deaths have been minors. Sixty were children aged between 0 and 11. 338 were teens aged between 12 and 17.
Both the MSU and Covenant shootings received national attention in the hours after they occurred.
President Biden has been quick to respond to each of these events with a promise of stricter gun control laws being implemented nationwide.
Other politicians have similarly responded in solidarity with the phrase āthoughts and prayersā echoing throughout social media.
Despite the promise of actions to be taken to prevent another similar incident, very little has happened on the front of harsher gun control laws.
Since the MSU shooting in February, headlines related to gun control faded in favor of reports on an overwhelming desire by both the federal and state governments to eliminate rights for LGBTQ+ individuals, ban books with content that doesnāt align with current standards, and possibly overturn more landmark court decisions.
The issue is not completely lost on Congress, though.
Back in January, before both major shootings, Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced bill S.25 before Congress primarily calling for the regulation of the availability of assault weapons.
However, nothing has happened on the bill since a review in late January.
Even worse is how much money is being spent on keeping these bills from being passed.
From the Brady Center to End Gun Violence, the National Rifle Association has spent billions of dollars on campaigns of senators who oppose these laws. Furthermore, OpenSecrets, a non-profit organization that researches campaign funding and lobbying, reported that the NRA spent over $2.6 billion on lobbying and $15 billion on outside spending in 2022 alone.
This all comes to light despite the fact that in Michigan and Tennessee an average of 1,100 people die because of gun violence every year.
People die because of government inaction.
The nation bleeds out as gun violence continues to sweep through the streets, into homes and into schools.
The government turns a blind eye to gun violence and chooses to contend with issues that restrain the personal freedoms of people unlike them.
It feels as though, despite promises, nothing has happened to gun control in the nearly 24 years since the Columbine Massacre.
So how long will it take before the government takes some action and does something more than just thoughts and prayers?
How long will it be before parents can stop living in fear that their children may go to school one day and never come back?
How long?
