Two Hundred and Ninety-Seven

Six years ago when I started this blog I didn’t have any opinions that mattered because I didn’t know a thing about the outside world.
I’m 22 now and I still barely know anything about the world since I spent my entire college career in a bubble of my own without wanting to know what’s happening outside of my sorority. But I’m 22 and I’m aware that the world we live in is at it’s absolute worst. We’re talking about a world that was 99% at war with itself because one man decided he hated everyone else and started killing because of their religion or race or hair color.
We live in a world where you can discriminate against love, race, gender, religion, political opinion, you name it and I’m sure you can discriminate against it. But we also live in a world where violence is so prevalent we all should be fearing for our lives every single day.
I might be one voice out of millions, but I still want my voice to be heard because I matter.  My opinion matters… Not only is that what is being thrown at me from all the feminists but the fact that I get to vote too – my opinion is supposed to matter when it comes to our elected officials so why can’t it matter right now?  If I can touch at least one person with my heartbreak on violence, then why can’t I be heard?  My difference from everyone else is that this post is not only about how I feel about the recent shootings but also about the violence in the whole world and how it touches me. Maybe if we stopped caring so much about ourselves as individuals we would see that we can do so much for the world.
I have a sorority sister who is not only younger than me, but much brighter than I am and much more informed than I was at her age and she inspires me. She wrote and article for The Carroll News titled, The Maiming of Lady Liberty. In it she depicts Lady Liberty as the mother of our Great Nation and how much pain she feels because of the shootings and violence in this country. And it hit me so much harder than just a regular news anchor telling me about the news. This is something that everyone should read. Seriously, everyone. Because it matters. These shootings matter. These lives matter. Watching our country fall apart because of some faulty gun regulations matter. It hurts my heart every time I decide to watch the news because every time I do there is just another story of kids my age or younger dying.
I lived every day at John Carroll wondering what would happen if something like that came to our campus because the world, the country, we live in is so dark and scary that it became a very real possibility, especially when you have a new school shooting every couple of months. I was very fortunate to never have to experience it, but I still have friends in undergrad there and I still worry with every new story about a shooting about what could happen to them. Don’t any of you worry about what could happen to your loved ones?
It’s too late and we need to do something NOW, but in 247 days 297 people DIED because of gun violence. Doesn’t that make you upset at all? Doesn’t that make anyone other than our president upset? I can’t keep from crying when I think that things like this can be prevented and yet they aren’t. Schools. Malls. Movie theaters. Parks. City Streets. Where can we be safe?
So I am asking all of my readers (even if it is just my dad and one other person) – why can’t we put stronger regulations on not only guns but violence in general? Why can’t our country’s leaders come up with tighter restrictions to save the next 297 lives we could lose any day now? Screw the second amendment because it clearly isn’t doing much for our country but giving “arms” to the people who want to destroy the lives of the people in our country. The second amendment was created by men who were trying to fight a war with their “mother land” in order to get their freedom.  The Right to Bear Arms was a right they didn’t have in 1776, so they felt that it was necessary in order to make their country survive England’s wrath.  What is it doing for us now? Killing children, that’s what it is doing today.  An infant in Cleveland, Ohio died this past week.  An infant.  She was a super cute baby too.  But we don’t know what she could have done for this world because her life was taken too soon because of GUN VIOLENCE.  Shootings in elementary schools, high schools and colleges – that’s what the second amendment is giving us in the 21st century.  Sounds like a lot of really good things leading to a very wonderful future for our “great” nation…
Lady Liberty deserves children who will respect her – not ones who will emotionally and physically abuse her. Why is the only person who is publically still upset about this our president?
The little boy, Aylan, the one from Syria, I know you know who I’m talking about – that little boy broke my heart because his family was trying to escape a civil war and three out of four of them died. What if you were Aylan’s father – the possibility is very real, we don’t know what is going to happen in our country (and don’t say “that isn’t possible” this is America… Well, it already did happen and history repeats itself all the time). So what if you were Aylan’s father? What if you entire family died because you were trying to escape something so terrible that you couldn’t raise your two beautiful children? Aylan’s father went back to his home because he had nothing left to fight for. He had nothing left to save – he didn’t even want to save himself because he was probably doing it all for his kids.  And now this is how his youngest son is going to be remembered forever – lying on a beach, almost as if he were sleeping, just another victim of a war he never asked to be apart of.

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