The Human Cost

It's been a while since I've posted on here and new posts about Japan are coming soon, I promise. But today I wanted to write about something different, something that broke my heart as I scanned the news this morning... the shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut that killed 20 children and several adults. Recently, it seems like things have gone haywire in America. So many senseless shootings on college campuses, movie theaters, churches, and now elementary schools.
I won't pretend to know much about guns or gun control, but I do know that the prevalence of guns in America and ease with which people can acquire them is surely in part to blame for these horrific tragedies. I read this article "The Human Cost of the Second Amendment" several months ago and it has stuck with me since then.

"Gun advocates say that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. The truth, though, is that people with guns kill people, often very efficiently, as we saw so clearly and so often this summer. And while there can be no argument that the right to bear arms is written into the Constitution, we cannot keep pretending that this right is somehow without limit, even as we place reasonable limits on arguably more valuable rights like the freedom of speech and due process."

Japan has virtually no guns. They are almost completely illegal here, and as a result, there are only a few gun-related deaths every year in the entire country. Sorry to flood this post with articles, but I found this really good one about gun control in Japan as well.

I think it's great that there are hardly any guns here. I think that's how it should be in America too, no matter what people say about personal freedom and the right to bear arms. How many more people have to die in these mass shootings, or just from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, before we do something about it? If the tragedy of 20 children dying in Connecticut doesn't spur us to action I don't know what will. I think about my elementary school kids and how they are so full of life. They never fail to put a smile on my face, and I always look forward to seeing them. My heart breaks for this kids in Connecticut and all the kids who have died from gun violence. It's the worst kind of tragedy, and I don't know how our country can stand by and let it happen.