Our country has witnessed a total of 163 mass shootings in 2023 as a result of unregulated gun distribution. Gen Z has grown up in a country where there’s constant lockdown drills because of the fear of school shootings. This generation is desensitized to this and there needs to be a huge change. Listening to these mass shootings on the news is upsetting and frustrating.

Generations before there was not an emphasis on school shooting and lockdown drills, but now schools are advancing towards various technologies to protect the children. Schools are gearing towards having teachers carry a gun which can lead to more gun violence, not the other way around. This issue is surrounded by the amount of access a person has to a gun that ultimately leads to mass shootings.

William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate formed the NRA (National Rifle Association) in 1871. The primary motive of forming this advocacy group was to advance rifle marksmanship and advocate for gun rights. The NRA states that “more guns make the country safer.”

How can guns make the country safer when we have witnessed that easy gun accessibility has led to an increase in deaths as a result of mass shootings? In this year alone 11,500 people have been killed due to gun violence, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).

On March 27, three children and three staff were killed in a shooting by a former student at the Covenant Private School in Nashville, Tennessee. After this school shooting, political debates have started once again, further emphasizing the safety and stricter gun laws there should be.

Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson are the Tennessee Three. On March 30, The Tennessee Three gathered at the state house to demand for stricter gun control laws. Jones and Pearson were expelled from the Tennessee State legislature due to breaking the rules that the House Of Representatives implemented in relation favoring gun control. This has also been controversial because only two of the Tennessee Three who happen to be black were expelled, while Gloria Johnson, a white woman was not expelled.

In the U.S, states like California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland have the most limited laws than any of the other 42 states. Even though with all these background checks, permission, even training shootings, still happen in the strictest states, now imagine how easy it is for someone to purchase a firearm in all the other states if it’s still accessible in the strictest states.

This is why 57% of Americans have protested that guns make the world unsafe; it results in more killings while 42% of Americans protest for maintaining gun laws the same or even less stricter, saying that guns make the world safer, regulating guns save many lives.

Now, guns are deeply engraved in American culture and it’s not an easy thing to change no matter how many protests, how many mass shootings there are in the United States, it will always be a part of history. Too many young lives are being lost in these shootings and families apart from their loved ones. This is why gun accessibility is the issue responsible for gun violence.