48,000 people die in the United States due to gun violence every single year. That is enough people to fill up Fenway Park stadium 1.27 times. Imagine what that would look like. Is death just the necessary cost of “freedom?” The kind of freedom where you are afraid to leave your house or to send your kids to school?
On Dec. 13, 2025, there was a school shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island. For multiple people, this was their second school shooting they had experienced. The New York Times cites, “Mia Tretta, a Brown student, survived a deadly shooting at her high school in 2019 and another attack on Saturday.” The one notion alleviating her pain and helping her through every day was the promise that there was no way it could happen again. This shouldn’t be happening to anyone, let alone twice to the same person. Guns do not care who you are or what you believe; guns do not discriminate like people do. There are horrible people all over the world, but the only difference between the rest of the world and the United States is gun accessibility.
It has been 22 years since Australia had a mass shooting. The last mass shooting incident in America took place three days before the one at Brown University, and before that, it had been two days, and before that, one day. On Dec. 14, 2025, there were two. In the last 10 days, 14 people have died, and 40 people have been injured due to these incidents. It is estimated that 125 people die every day due to guns, and even more are injured. These events are so common that they don’t even make national news anymore.
People often say that America is the greatest country in the world, and to quote directly from Jeff Daniels, in “The Newsroom,” “It’s not the greatest country in the world.” We aren’t first or best in most things that truly matter. We are, however, number one in the number of guns per capita, with an average of 120 guns per every 100 people. We are first in the amount of school shootings annually, far exceeding every other highly developed nation by 57 times. We are first in death by suicide with the use of a gun, and we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world compared to other highly developed countries by far. Not only are our laws, regulations and restrictions allowing this incomprehensible violence to take place, but if you are shot and you survive, good luck paying off all your medical debt, keeping a job or being able to live a normal life. Something needs to change. What will it take for action to be pursued?
