Senior Rachael Erickson serves as the March For Our Lives Missouri State Director. In March of 2018 she organized a rally in Columbia, attracting thousands of protesters. Additionally, when RBHS held their walkout in solidarity with the students whose lives had been lost in the Parkland Shooting, she spoke and distributed shirts to advocate for gun control. She said she was elated at the news of the funding, which will go to the Center of Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) equally.
“The limitations on gun violence research has always been one of the biggest things I don’t understand about the gun lobby’s position, like if you don’t have something to hide, why would you stop people from looking into it?” Erickson said. “It’s also made gun violence prevention work a little difficult because most of the data we have to work with are rough numbers.”
Junior Garrett Roach said he disagrees with the nation’s fervor to restrict guns further than it already has. He said the solutions to violence lie elsewhere.
“I like guns, and even though they’re a problem in the U.S., I think it’s more of a culture problem than a gun problem,” Roach said. “The classic ‘Chicago has the strictest guns laws but the most deaths,’ example says to me that the community fosters these dangerous environments, not guns or gun laws.”
Advanced Placement (AP) World History teacher and Students Demand Action Club sponsor Gregory Irwin brings politics into his classroom because he said it’s important to stay informed on the current events.
“And I think the AP historical thinking skills we try to challenge our students with, and not just AP, but all students is like, what has changed over time?” Irwin said. “[For the AR-15], the bullets go three times faster than say like a regular rifle, which means instead of the bullet landing inside your body as intended, it goes through your body, which makes it very difficult to repair internal organs when they’re hit.”
Irwin said he is saddened by the mass shootings around the U.S., and he believes that gun control is a legitimate solution to prevent tragedies such as when “a mother held her daughter in her arms and watched her die,” Irwin said, in the El Paso shooting August 2019. Senior Sam Munns said, while he empathizes with the tragedies, law abiding gun owners are not at fault for the horrific behavior of mass murderers. He said the restrictions would only hurt good citizens rather than stop crime.
“I definitely don’t think that we need any more laws restricting guns; there’s already plenty in place that limit what citizens can buy,” Munns said. “I just don’t think that any more should be put in place because there’s already so many restrictions on marijuana and things like that. And so there’s a lot of guns that get kind of screwed over, I guess, because of little like nitty gritty laws.”
Disagreeing with Munns, Erickson said the March For Our Lives campaigns will continue to strive for better protection for the American populace. She hopes to play a part in this effort fighting lobbyist groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA).
“Allowing this research to start is a really important first step to both reducing the power of lobbying interests,” Erickson said, “and giving lawmakers more data to make educated decisions based on.”
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