The innocent lives lost

The world is battered and ailing with terrorism of a different kind. The terrorism of gun shooting incidents, in which, an individual who has been living a normal life like one of us suddenly comes out on a mass shooting rampage killing people randomly is hard to fathom? Today public areas, educational institutes, and places of worship have become places that we fear going to. What if? Is the question we ask ourselves? What if, someone comes on a rampage while we are enjoying a film? What if someone puts the gun to our head while we are attentively sitting in a class and taking down notes? What if someone creates a chaos while we are praying at a temple or a church? What if….and my list goes on?

 

I’m not a mother, but I am a daughter, a grand-daughter, and a sister of my parents, my grand-parents and my siblings, and I exactly know how it feels to lose a loved one. Even more, it pains, when victims of these gruesome mass shootings are six and seven year olds who don’t understand why someone out there is hurting them. These crazy routine incomprehensible mass shootings are only increasing by the day, be it the April 1999 incident when two heavily-armed teenagers went on a rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 13 students and staff, or the July 2011 incident when a gunman blew up a government building in Oslo and then opened fire at a youth summer camp of Norway's ruling political party, on the holiday island of Utoeya, killing 77 people.

 

The worst gun shooting recorded in history is the one that happened the day-before-yesterday which took the lives of babies at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. These babies have gone straight to heaven still not knowing why their lives have been cut short on earth. This horrific thing that happened has shattered their parents for life. They say wounds heal over time, but I don’t think these deep wounds will ever heal. The scars will always remain and their parents will never know why their babies were taken away from them forever.  Thank God for God, parents can give their pain to that someone above us and maybe, maybe make them feel better. God is our best counselor in moments like these. An emotional President Barack Obama so rightly said that these are babies had their whole lives ahead of them…birthdays, graduations, careers, weddings, and kids of their own. 

 

These reoccurring heinous crimes have raised the most controversial gun control laws and policy around the world yet again. It has raised the intense debate with proponents generally arguing the dangers of widespread gun ownership, and opponents generally arguing individual rights of self-protection as well as individual liberties. Even in the Connecticut heinous crime, many debated the need for urgent gun control in America, while many opponents argued that had the school kept guns for self-defense there wouldn't have been so many deaths at the elementary school in Sandy Hook at Newtown. In the past, when similar incidents occurred, promises to make changes to the policy were made, but then it was soon forgotten with other agenda's taking center stage.

 

This time, President Barack Obama himself has said that meaningful actions will be taken to prevent reoccurrences of such incidents. People in the United States have admitted that the society is becoming violent and people are getting distanced from each other. We cannot change people’s mental state of mind, we can provide them help by making help available to them, but yes America can do one thing and that is reform its gun laws for now.  Many experts have said that they completely support the Constitution but there is need that it evolves over the right to bear arms. They say that a driver's license cannot allow anyone to legally buy a gun. In the month of November itself 2 million guns were bought by Americans, of which many of them were bought on Black Friday.

 

While the general public is divided by being for and against gun control, the politicians too avoid bringing up the issue of gun control for fear of rejection by the public, just in case the future trend becomes such that most people’s opinions are opposite the politicians’. Hence, once again, the politicians are caught up in the spiral of silence where they have to succumb to present or future trend of public opinion.

 

Furthermore, we cannot even ignore the relationship between media violence and real-world violence and aggression. Violence is portrayed almost every single day through television, video games, movies, music, toys and other media. Studies show that people – children and adults – who watch a lot of television behave more aggressively. Not only does it make them aggressive, but they tend to use violence and aggression as a way of solving conflicts they encounter in life. Video games are clearly capable of producing an increase in aggression and violence in the short term. It has also been found that the gunner in the Connecticut incident was a videogame addict. 

 

I respect the Constitution of the United States. It is the beauty of this Constitution that gives me the right to state my opinion about the umpteen number of senseless gun shooting incidents that are happening day after day. I am not an American and I certainly have no right to demand reforms. I understand that very fact. But since I am currently living in the United States and as a human being with a conscience, I also know that I am terrified about the way innocent lives are lost for no reason at all. Six and seven year olds becoming victims of such gruesome murder is incomprehensible. I am horrified. I still can’t believe it.

 

My heart goes out to families who have lost their babies in the Newtown incident. All I can do is pray for you and your family. God Bless!