Thesis: In order to make this nation a more safe place there needs to stricter regulation with regard to ownership, sales and permits of guns in America; we need to look at what we’ve tried to do as a country, we need to use what other countries have done as a guide, however, most importantly we need to look at what the people are demanding.

 

Paragraph 1:-Access to Guns (NRA)

American culture is built on the foundations of the bill or rights and the constitution. These principles are ingrained in us from the very beginning and with that comes this culture that we have created where your right to own a gun out weights my rights to live.  

Bottom line it’s not that difficult to buy a gun in America. There aren’t many rules and regulations stopping a citizen from going out and purchasing a gun. There aren’t extensive background checks to see what type of person you are. There aren’t any safety classes one must take in order to prove they know how to properly handle a gun and there certainly isn’t a shortage of places to buy guns in America.       

EVIDENCE:           

“The FBI checks the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to see if they are a prohibited purchaser. Prohibited purchasers include felons, fugitives, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill. Simply put, the effectiveBrady Law prevents guns from getting into the hands of dangerous people”

“The nation’s gun buying background check system is supposed to keep firearms out of reach for dangerous individuals. But it’s not meant to catch early warning signs like those exhibited by Nikolas Cruz, the man identified as the shooter who allegedly killed 17 at a South Florida high school on Valentine’s Day.”

“the system screens for certain indicators of past violence, misconduct, and mental health issues — but not all. The scope of review is narrow and would not capture all aspects”

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/gun-background-checks-florida-school-shooting/index.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/02/politics/guns-maps-las-vegas/index.html

 

Paragraph 2: -Gun Regulation in Other Countries

Other countries have had sweeping reforms across their nations and with there laws and legislators after single incidents, yet we as Americans have had so many gun related deaths that we are equivalent to third world countries and nations at war, why can’t we follow in the footsteps of our allies, and nations like us?

EVIDENCE:

“When Australia had a mass killing – I think it was in Tasmania – about 25 years ago, it was just so shocking the entire country said: ‘Well, we’re going to completely change our gun laws’. And they did, and it hasn’t happened since,” he said in 2015.”

“Less than two weeks after the Port Arthur massacre, all six Australian states agreed to enact the same sweeping gun laws banning semi-automatic rifles and shotguns – weapons that can kill many people quickly.They also put more hurdles between prospective gun owners and their weapons.

Australia has 28-day waiting periods, thorough background checks, and a requirement to present a “justifiable reason” to own a gun.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35048251

“Other countries all over the world play the same video games and have the same mental health problems as the United States, but manage to avoid a sky-high gun murder rate and frequent public shooting massacres.”

UK: The only firearms that can be owned legally are shotguns, black powder weapons, manually-loaded cartridge pistols and manually-loaded center-fire rifles, all termed “Section 1” firearms.

Canada: “There is no legal right to possess arms in Canada. It takes sixty days to buy a gun there, and there is mandatory licensing for gun owners. Gun owners pursuing a license must have third-party references, take a safety training course and pass a background check with a focus on mental, criminal and addiction histories.”

Japan: “Japan’s gun policies are notoriously strict. Civilians cannot possess handguns, automatic assault weapons, semi-automatic assault weapons, military rifles, or machine guns. Japanese civilians aren’t even allowed to own swords.”

Australia: The laws banned al l automatic and semi-automatic weapons and instituted strict licensing rules involving background checks and waiting periods for purchases.

buyback program, where people were paid for turning in newly illegal automatic and semi-automatic rifles; 650,000 weapons were voluntarily handed in and destroyed at a cost of roughly $359.6 million.

 

Paragraph 3:-School Shootings

In 12 weeks we have had 17 school shootings. After 20 kids (children) I mean children lost their lives due to gun violence in school a place that is supposed to be safe there was still nothing done. All this loss, and this hurt and nothing has come of it, how much potential as a nation have we gunned down in our schools before we even had the chance to see where they (the children we lost) could take us.

EVIDENCE:

After Sandy Hook, More Than 400 People Have Been Shot in Over 200 School Shootings

“When a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults with an assault rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, it rattled Newtown, Conn., and reverberated across the world. Since then, there have been at least 239 school shootings nationwide. In those episodes, 438 people were shot, 138 of whom were killed”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/15/us/school-shootings-sandy-hook-parkland.html

 

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-shooting-victims-school/index.html

 

Conclusion:-March for Our Lives will be like the conclusion of the paper?

The march for our lives was a powerful statement to this nations that enough is enough and we simply won’t stand for it anymore and it’s time the government listen to the people. Public opinion in the U.S. has held weight with legislators in the past.

The rallies included hundreds of thousands of protesters and speeches from activists and survivors of shootings, including survivors of the Parkland, Fla. shooting David Hogg and Emma González.

“We are going to make this the voting issue. We are going to take this to every election, to every state and every city. When politicians send their thoughts and prayers with no action, we say, ‘No more.’ And to those politicians supported by the NRA, that allow the continued slaughter of our children and our future, I say get your resumes ready,” Hogg said.

Too many people have died. Too many have lost their lives to guns. Too many children, brothers, sisters, cousins, and friends have died because of people with guns. There hasn’t been any change despite all of this loss. Despite everything that has happened in this nation there hasn’t been progress, or laws enacted. People are demanding change. The March for Our Lives had millions of people all around the world, demanding action.

 

I went to the deliberation entitled If You Can’t See it Are They Really Sick? The Social Stigma Around Mental Health. I chose to go this discussion because it offered me another opportunity to look at mental health but this time through a different lens, through one that was working to combat mental health stigma in the workplace since that would affect us all in the future since we will all soon join the workforce. I really wanted to go this deliberation because I wanted to see if the ideas that were brought up in this discussion were ones that could be applied to also helping the stigma surrounding mental health on campus.

In this discussion, the focus was on how to help and create a better environment in the workplace so that we can prevent and stop this growing problem plaguing corporate America. This was the main idea that we analyzed during the deliberation.

The main discussion that I participated in and found to be the most engaging was the one discussing the idea of having sick days to being renamed to encompass sick days for physical illness but also mental illness so that there would be less discrimination. I really supported this idea and thought it would work well, businesses already have these built in sick days, to begin with so allowing them for mental health only seems to reasonable especially when you consider the idea that was brought up in my deliberation about how  “mental health issues are just as serious as physical issues; there should be no difference in empathy.” I think this really applies to mental health in the workplace as well and I think it is really important to draw conclusions and make connections between the steps being taken on campus and at the corporate level for getting rid of the stigma surrounding mental health.