One after another, mass shootings and gun related violence continue to take place in America.  Everyday, we watch news broadcasters tell us about another fatal shooting and occasionally another mass shooting.  When we start to use the word “another” to describe a shooting, it starts to become a problem.  The United States is becoming more violent, yet so few people are doing anything to stop the violence.  

After the San Bernardino shooting, many 2016 presidential hopefuls took to Twitter to express their feelings.  Instead of taking action and calling for a reform in American gun control, they expressed that “the victims will be in their prayers”.  Many of the tweets looked like Ted Cruz’s, “Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and the first responders in San Bernardino who willingly go into harm’s way to save others.” After every mass shooting or act of violence, the reactions are the same: to pray for the victims and their families; however there comes a time when prayers need to be accompanied by action to prevent it from happening again.  That time has been long overdue.  

Unlike the GOP, Democratic presidential hopefuls took to Twitter to call for change after the shooting.  Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, tweeted, “I refuse to accept this as normal.  We must take action to stop gun violence now.” The other Democratic candidates, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, agreed and tweeted the same as Clinton, calling for change in gun laws.  

In this country, gun related violence continues to happen everyday, yet little action has been done to stop it.  It has become a fight between the Republicans and the Democrats, that continues on with no result.  According to the Mass Shooting Tracker, there were 372 mass shootings in 2015.  From these mass shootings, 475 people were killed and 1,870 people were injured.  As of December 23, 2015, 12,942 people died from gun violence, according to The Trace.  On average, 36 Americans died from gun violence per day.  Also, nearly 20,000 Americans commit suicide using a gun each year.  So far in 2016, the US had 4130 incidents of gun violence, leaving 1,050 people dead, according to the Gun Violence Archive.  

The United States always wants to be the best country-number one in the world-and we pride ourselves on our freedom and rights.  We pride ourselves on our precious Second Amendment:  the right to bear arms.  In that instance, we are number one in the world.  The United States is the number one country in the world for having the most gun violence.  

Other countries such as Australia, Canada, and England, put in place stricter gun control laws when a terrible mass shooting takes place.  England introduced the Firearms Act after a lone gunman went on a six hour rampage with two legally owned semiautomatic rifles, killing sixteen people and then himself.  Similarly, nine years later, in 1996, a man armed with two handguns killed sixteen children and then himself.  After the 1996 incident, England proposed the strictest gun laws yet, banning all high caliber handguns.

Our allies have taken action after large mass shootings, yet we are allowing innocent people die because of our pride in an amendment.  Where was our change when twenty school children died at the hands of a mass shooter in 2012?  Or when a gunman killed nine people praying in a church in Charleston, South Carolina?

Everyday people die from guns in homicides, gang related activities, mass shootings, or suicides.  People in politics have the power to make this stop, but they will not change their opinions for the sake of human life.  It is time that we start taking action and save innocent lives.