Luevanos, Silguero and Lopez were killed during a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School one year ago on May 24th.The town of Uvalde prepares to mark the first anniversary of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School which left 19 children and two adults dead. Murals of 10-year-old Jayce Luevanos, 10-year-old Jailah Silguero, and 10-year-old Xavier Lopez is seen on Apin Uvalde, Texas. This has resulted in the leading cause of death of children in the United States now being gun violence.Īs we cure any number of diseases that have caused children to die in the past, we as Americans have proven absolutely incapable of making any real progress in addressing child death by guns. There are approximately 200 victims of gun violence every day in the United States, resulting in 120 deaths per day, of which 11 are teens or children. Most of those have been carried out with some form of automatic weapon intended for military use, where the gun has been optimized for rapid fire mass killing. We are averaging more than one mass shooting in the United States a day since the beginning of this year. That theory reflects the ignorance of those who oppose strict gun control-and their irrational and twisted thinking. And those statistics clearly show that the scourge of gun violence in this country is simply not going to be solved by targeting the mental health problems of potential violent actors. As we approach the anniversary of the Uvalde school shooting, it is important we reflect on some basic statistics which frame the gun debate in a clear light. Like the vast majority of Americans, I am sick and tired of hearing about another mass shooting involving an automatic weapon and the politicians who oppose banning the weapons that killed our kids saying in the aftermath, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim's families." These days, there's a third act: Those same feckless politicians now like to insist that our gun death epidemic is actually a mental health crisis.
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