[When I was younger, I used to be fascinated with guns.] Every single type of gun; big guns, little guns, fast guns, slow guns, everything. If it was a gun, I would’ve loved it. My love for firearms had come from the video games I played at the time like Halo Reach and 4, Call of Duty, and Battlefield. Although I had a love for firearms, I never wanted to use a gun against any sort of living being, insects included, nor had I even touched a firearm at the time. However, others haven’t been as fortunate as I have, and have formed their love of guns around harm, hate, and murder.

On April 20th, 1999, America witnessed one of the worst mass shootings to date, and it happened to teenagers. Over 20 years later, practically nothing has been changed to counteract this. Currently the banning of firearms is a much more slippery topic than it was back then, but people are just as dangerous. Even after schools get shot up, the shooter just pleads mental illness (which obviously they have seeing they intend to murder their classmates) and nothing gets done to protect the children. Like I said before, Columbine was one of the worst mass shootings, and it was done to teenagers, however, it’s also the most infamous school shooting. After Columbine there was Virginia Tech College, Sandy Hook Elementary, and Parkland High School. This doesn't include all of them, or the attempted school shootings that people have diffused, however even 1 is too many.

Mass and School shootings are nothing new, and that’s scary to me. The fact that America is so accustomed to so many people and children dying is disgusting. The lack of empathy towards these victims' families is awful. The worst fact is that this happens to many young people as much as adults, which it shouldn’t, much less happen at all. Orlando nightclub, Las Vegas strip, El Paso, and Dayton, all had a body count of over 20, except the Las Vegas shooting which had 58 deaths and 546 injuries. Yet somehow, nothing has been done since these event to prevent things like this from happening again.

All of the above were not only the perpetrators of school shootings, but also ranged from ages 17 to 20. Mental health is definitely one of the causes, but lately has been the main scapegoat that lawyers for the defense of mass shooters. 3 of the 4 shooters pictured above committed suicide during the shootings, to escape punishment. However, Nikolas Cruz was faced with very little punishment and actually praise from the internet's darkest corners.

• Virginia Tech ( 33 Killed, 23 Injured)

• Sandy Hook (28 Killed, 2 Injured)

• Parkland (17 Killed, 17 Injured)

• Santa Fe (10 Killed, 14 Injured

• Columbine (15 Killed, 21 Injured)

These are just School Shootings, not including the mass shootings that happen regularly, as scary as that sounds. All of these shootings have a few things in common.

1. They had previous experience with firearms

2. They had young people as victims

3. The shooters have a type of mental illness (of course)

4. The shooters obtained the equipment fairly easily and without setting off any alarms.

#4 is the worst part about all of them because it goes the same way for regular mass shootings. The most recent and infamous case is when Stephen Paddock shot up the Las Vegas strip and had 59 people killed and over 850 injuries. He carried a warlord's amount of ammo and weapons up to a hotel room overlooking the strip without setting off any red flags. How he could easily do a thing is beyond me.

In this article, it explains how there has been more than 280 mass shootings over the year of 2019. However, the term mass shooting is described by the FBI as a "mass murder", and includes four or more murdered during an event with no "cooling-off period" between the murders.

In conclusion, weapons have been used as tools for mass destruction, but have also been used to mass protection. For every mass or school shooting that occurs, 100 planned shootings are diffused. Guns should not be banned completely, but should be controlled to the point that:

1) Children cannot use them

2) People with mental health issues cannot use them

3) Military Grade hardware shouldn't be sold to the public without extreme background checks.

I propose these 3 suggestions as good factors that can be used to counteract even the planning of a mass or school shooting and save countless amounts of lives.