A Non Americans View On Gun Violence

Here's how I found out about the shooting in El Paso yesterday. My boyfriend texted me, and as I glanced at the message through the lock screen- I couldn't see the full thing. When I pulled the notification down, I saw that the rest of the message said 'back home', and back home meant El Paso. I didn't feel the heartbreak my boyfriend felt upon receiving the news. It was sad and awful, and I felt so bad for him and I wanted to do whatever I could to help, but a terrible, awful part of me was relieved that it wasn't in his city. That he was safe. And here's where the first problems stem. If it's not someone you know or love, then it's someone else's loved one. If someone you love is safe, that means that someone else was condemned to death. And that to me, is awful. Disgusting. Nobody should be dying. Nobody should be dying because they went to go buy their damned groceries. It is senseless, pointless, abhorrent crimes for nothing. It's hatred, bigotry and racism that is being perpetuated by the very person who is supposed to be stopping it.

I live in England, and in England, guns are very difficult to come by. To me, this has been my life. My life has been that I go out to the cinema, to a concert, to the shops, to a nice dinner, and I don't worry if someone will come in with an assault rifle. Because they can't. In fact, I don't even know the proper circuits you would need to go through if you wanted a gun. This isn't naivety or anything of the sort. I understand that guns here have not been banned outright, and I don't live in a country where shootings are impossible to happen. I live in a country where shootings are very difficult to happen. They're difficult to take place, because the government made it that way. Because people don't need firearms in modern day life. You can lie to yourself and say that it's for protection, that it makes you feel safer, but I don't think that's it. You wouldn't need a gun if nobody else had one. The only reason you say you need one is because someone else might have a bigger one. And, if they have one-then heck, you should have one too, right? Damned be the consequences of it. You want a gun because, like a spoiled child, you want whatever everyone else has, without truly understanding what it means to actually have it.

I have always been deeply antigun, and I will continue to be deeply antigun. In my village, up until I was eighteen or so there was actually a shop that sold rifles. It was a sports and hunting shop. Their rifles were pinned to the walls, almost impossible to see unless you went in. I knew they sold rifles, and I wished they wouldn't. I wished they wouldn't because I didn't want to live in an area that made that kind of violence easily attainable. I couldn't understand how someone would feel safe having a weapon like that in their home. How they could go to sleep at night, knowing that that weapons only purpose was to take life, it made me feel nauseous. I hated the idea of people using it even to get of 'pests' if they lived on a farm, or in the countryside.

A friend of mine once told me a story as we had a coffee together. Her family travel to America quite often, and one day, they were staying with some friends who lived out there, and whilst they were having breakfast, there was a news alert saying that there had been a shooting. My friend then told me that these people merely shook their heads and said, "not another one", and then carried on with their day like nothing had happened. And that story shook me to my core. It still shakes me and fills me with a bitter rage. The moment we become desensitised to this kind of violence is the moment that these people win. It is the moment that bigotry, racism, misogyny and white supremacy win. We cannot allow ourselves to become apathetic to this. Every new headline, every new name should feel like a punch to the gut. A punch to the gut because that is someone who will now never go home. That is someone who will never get to live the rest of their lives. That is someone who's partner will never get to see again apart from on their funeral. And that breaks my heart. It doesn't just break it, it shatters it like glass to know that innocent people die because of hate fuelled ideologies.

There have been over 250 mass shootings in America this year alone, and as an international viewer, I only heard about maybe a handful of them. The ones that were the most shocking to make headlines across the pond. Now, I don't live in America, I have never lived in America, so I would be lying if I said I understood how its government worked, how Congress worked. But here is what I do know, with each shooting I see the same things popping up on my news feed. I see that the government doesn't want to politicise the violence, it's too soon, we need to bury the dead first, let the families grieve. I also see them recycle and rehash the same arguments every single time. That it wasn't a racist attack, that it was video games that caused it, it's an issue of mental health, and then finally: the endless coverage of the shooter. How, of course he didn't have a previous history of violence, how he was a nice boy, he came from a good family, not about the ideologies he believed in and the people that spread them. I recently played the new Mortal Kombat game, and even managed to almost pull of a fatality. You don't see me suddenly imbued with the desire to start ripping people in half and bathing in their blood. You don't see anybody doing that. For starters, I think it would be almost physically impossible, but secondly, it's also because violent video games don't make murderers. What makes a murderer is their beliefs. If you've raised someone to believe and understand that violence is wrong, then them playing a violent video game isn't going to suddenly undo all of that.

Here's the other thing. Even if you don't live in America, gun violence is still everywhere. It's in our popular entertainment, it's in our movies but most worryingly, it's in the careless racism and xenophobia that Trump perpetuates in his rallies and speeches. Even though I saw my first gun a few feet away from me as I passed US customs in March, it didn't feel real. It didn't feel real maybe because I don't have this fear embedded in me that it could be used against me. I don't have this fear in me that an official could use his weapon if I say the wrong thing. It's easy to become desensitised to this even when you don't live in America. You read horror stories of last texts sent to loved ones, kids describing their school shooter drills, and I can't even begin to imagine how deep it goes when kindergarteners are preparing for the very real possibility of not making it home one day. I can't even begin to wrap my head around that. To me, it seems impossible that a nation claiming peace and freedom also celebrates a culture of death. A culture, which they seem to find nothing wrong with.

And if anyone is reading this and being worried about people wanting to take away their guns, be worried. I want to take your guns. I want them gone. I want them destroyed, because you don't need them and you've been indoctrinated to believe otherwise. You can screech about the second amendment all you want, but something needs to be done, and something needs to be done now. How many more people need to die before enough is enough? Even one mass shooting is too many, let alone over 250. I can't begin to imagine the grief that people feel when their loved ones die over something that could be so easily preventable. And, I want to apologise for their losses. I want to apologise for the incompetence that allows these things to happen, this belief that if you stick your head in the sand, the problem will solve itself. This belief that these things are inevitable, they're as commonplace as your Starbucks barista misspelling your name. These things, this violence, is not inevitable, and if you think otherwise then I don't know what to tell you.

If you look at these deaths and don't bat an eyelid then there is something broken within you that nothing will ever fix. If you listen to Trump's speeches and nod along approvingly, thinking that he has your best interests at heart, there is something missing in you. If you believe the poison dipped words that news outlets like Fox News spread, then there is something in you that can never be replaced. Something in you doesn't exist. You should not be looking at this and thinking it's normal. You should feel bad. You should feel awful that you are complicit in letting this happen. There is nothing that will ever justify this and make it okay.

But more than that, it's tiring. It's tiring because I know there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, because America is not my country. It is not my home, but it is the home of my boyfriend and we are powerless to make it a safer home. My boyfriend told me today that he was still dwelling over the shooting, and I can't blame him. We talked about how it would be better if we stayed off the internet for a bit, and I had full intentions of doing so, but it wouldn't feel right to me if I didn't express my thoughts.

And I'm sorry if this hasn't been very coherent or very eloquent, these are things that I think about every time there's a shooting. And, I wish this could have been more level headed towards both sides of the argument, but I would have found it very difficult to apologise for how I feel. And maybe you're reading this and wondering why I'm even saying anything about it, after all, I don't live in America. I might not live there, but many people who are incredibly important to me do, so I care about gun legislation, I care about these issues because they're close to my heart. And, even if they weren't, even if I didn't know a single person in the US, I would still care because empathy and compassion should be basic human nature. How could we watch on and say nothing? How could we not feel any injustice? If we truly care about equality and our fellow human beings, then we wouldn't be able to stand for any of this.