The Guns and the Young

The Guns and The Youngins: What is Next for America

Mass shootings have been a trending topic since the start of 2023. Every day since January 1, 2023, there has been some altercation or a group shooting resulting in three or more deaths. To date, 163 mass shootings have taken place, and the majority of these shootings involve children and teens. Rather than enjoy themselves at a house party or hang out with their peers at school, children seem to have joined the faces of the “me too” movement. Many of them are probably wondering if they will be next or when. Sadly, America’s children suffer the consequences of the ineffective gun laws propagated to society. Rules that are seemingly being swept underneath the rug and masked with other sociological, systemic, or racial injustices.

I have noticed that shootings have worsened since someone blew the whistle on the discourse of gun quality and control. Inside the minds of the chambers of Congress live a fear of change, and the politicians have no answers because the citizens are excerpts of the lies they have told since the 1700s.

In today’s society, we see the world in a transition of human declination built without the empowerment of togetherness. Everyone has chosen to wage war against racial inequality and not fight against what is happening with the youth. Our inability to heal the past has caused a bullet fragment to what we witness today. Our children do not see color or the injustices we are fighting; they know the pain we keep bringing up by not caring enough to listen to their cries. They are crying out loud yet becoming victims of sociological disrespect, community dysfunction, and a catalytic system that has bounded them to the atrocities of crime, survival, and acceptance.

Their voices are being carried away at pulling a trigger, with nowhere to turn, and adults running around fighting a battle that will never be won. The youth are finding negative ways to express themselves, and they are shooting or getting shot faster than they are marrying, going to college, or giving birth. Our children are hurting because we, too, have developed and enveloped a sorrowful disgust for human life, allowing them the room to battle theirs freely without self-awareness and control.

Guns and the probe to control them have been a myth. If we live in reality, we know we cannot stop a weapon or change the person behind it. But we can protect our children. We can change the laws surrounding our youth’s freedom. We can embrace the rules and rewrite history in a way where it can benefit the youth. The inequality of life has no color; that representation is cheating everyone, including them, to form a peaceful protest. Children can only mimic what they see, so instead of protesting about police brutality, let’s protest about the change to our Second Amendment rights.

We have come to a vicarious design of life and liberty, and it is strange to see and know that this is not what our Civil Rights leaders meant by civility and equality. They fought so that we shouldn’t have to. But we are fighting because we aren’t taking action against reality; by not finishing the ground they have paved, we are becoming weaker by using their history to continue writing ours. The courts will not change the gun laws because they will face rulings in the precedent. We can beat this, but we have to take our future out of the hands of our youth and place them back into ours. We must guide them how they should be and not keep the guns blazing because of the good ole American soil. We know the death before liberty viewpoint, but why don’t we try libration before devastation? America is not a problematic institution; our children are the victims of a system that has blinded every last of us.