Viral

This powerful image sums up America's gun problem

This powerful image sums up America's gun problem

A shooter opened fire at YouTube's headquarters in Northern California on Tuesday, leaving at least three people injured and one woman - the suspected shooter - dead.

The shooting, a chaotic scene where the tech workers attempting to blockade themselves in their rooms for safety, is at least the 58th mass shooting in the US in 2018 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive. 

It also comes just over a month and a half after the massacre in a high school in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, including 14 students and three members of staff. 

Now, the gun control debate has once again reached a fever pitch. While gun control advocates cry out for tighter restrictions on an individual's ability to buy a gun, proponents of gun rights insist on the importance of further security members to protect schools.

You will know their mantra: you need a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. If bad guys will always get guns, the only way to stop them is to arm yourself too.

But this sign devastatingly summed up why gun control advocates find this saying so suspicious.

Following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre spoke at the Conservative Political Action Shooting, pedalling this view yet again. He said:

To stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good gun with a gun.

This powerful, seductive line or reasoning is so ingrained that Trump even made the controversial proposal to arm certain trained teachers with guns.

Yet an armed deputy on duty - a man specifically tasked with keeping the students safe - did nothing as 17 people were gunned down.

In the wake of the shooting at YouTube, tech leaders are joining the push for reform, a movement initially reinvigorated by students and survivors of the Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School shooting who inspired thousands to take to the streets last month.

In response to a tweet from President Trump that offered everybody involved in the incident "thoughts and prayers", Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted an argument for change:

When it comes to statistics, there is no reasonable debate. The research is clear: more guns mean more gun deaths, and more firearm restrictions mean less deaths.

More: This man's single tweet about gun control and abortion has gone viral

The Conversation (0)
x