On Monday, we were hit with an all too familiar feeling. We sat back and said, “Man, again… when is this going to end?”
Around 2:30 p.m. on March 22, a man by the name of Ahmad Al Aliwl Alissa brought an AR-15 into a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado and opened fire on shoppers, killing 10 people in the process.
According to Alissa’s brother, he was bullied a lot in high school for his unique name and hairstyle. There have been reports of him having mental health problems and he was seen as becoming more antisocial over time. Plus, his sister-in-law even said she saw him playing with a gun about three days ago. When we step back and look at how this event took place, we realize that this event was easily preventable from the start.
All these details of this case bring up a question. How many more people have to die in mass shootings before our Congress acts on it? This newest shooting has brought up a national conversation that hadn’t been on the forefront of American politics since the start of quarantine: how do we stop mass shootings from happening in the US? When reading into the details of this case it is not hard to see why this would bring this same topic back to the political forefront. Many have been calling for more intensive background checks to be run on people trying to buy assault weapons. The public has also been pushing for assault weapons to be banned for sale across the US.
This case checks both of those boxes and has woken people up to the fact that just because we are in quarantine and school shootings are becoming less prominent due to schools being closed, it does not mean the issue has been solved forever.
I think the first thing we need to do is ban all assault weapons from sale right away. They pose too much threat in the hands of the wrong people and we are seeing consistently with many shootings in the US that an AR-15 was the firearm that was used.
Another thing that needs to be done is to improve background checks that are run on people trying to buy not just assault rifles but all guns.
These two things have been debated for years and years and it is time for our elected officials to act on these issues and pass laws while the national conversation is still discussed.