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Gun violence: unpreventable?

Columbine. Fort Hood. Virginia Tech. Aurora. Sandy Hook. Orlando. San Bernardino. Charleston. Las Vegas. Parkland. Pittsburgh.

Thousand Oaks.

There’s nothing we can do. We’re helpless. It’s not like the country can totally upend the Second Amendment or pass legislature that would help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. As of now, the only requirement to own a gun is to count to 10 apparently.

“These are terrible tragedies, but these things happen and we can’t do anything to stop them,” said Rodney Whittier, my very real, very informed source.

Whittier’s comment is echoed across the entire U.S., a nation where 64 percent of homicides are gun-related, excluding suicides, according to the BBC — a nation that only makes up five percent of the world’s population, but owns 45 percent all the world’s privately held firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey.

The U.S. possesses the most guns per capita in the world, according to the same survey, with 120.5 guns per every 100 people. Yemen trails close behind in second place with 52.8 guns per every 100 people. I guess we win yet again. This makes sense though, right? Yemen’s a failing state in the middle of a civil war and has a compulsory military draft, and we’re the United States. Apparently we need to have guns — because liberty.

There’s nothing we can do to stop gun violence though. It’s merely a coincidence that, according to vox.com, the United Kingdom only has 0.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people ever since semi-automatic weapons were banned in the 1980s and handguns in the 1990s.

It’s also a coincidence that, according to theguardian.com, Japan only had six reported gun deaths in 2014. Ever since completely banning firearms in 1958, Japan’s gun violence is nearly nil. Shotguns are an exception to the stringent gun law but prospective owners must pass written and practical exams along with psychological assessments.

Sounds like a terrible idea created by snowflakes that would never work in the U.S. We’re the most economically and technologically advanced nation in the world, but we could never take away guns just in case we break into civil war like Yemen. We could never tighten gun control laws like the laws in the United Kingdom and Japan, because it’s a right guaranteed to all American citizens. This is blasphemy — how could we ever take away guns from Americans?

So here we are: helpless, afraid and tired.

But hey, at least we’re great again.

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Gun violence: unpreventable?