Photo courtesy of seniors Grace Byde and Alex Thorne

  The following speech was written by senior Lily Scurria and read by senior Malena Stenvall on March 27, 2022 at San Luis Obispo High School. Due to the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas this speech was read among others at a SLOHS lunch assembly to encourage awareness on the topic of gun violence and to urge students to take action. 

  I have heard discussions on the issues of gun violence my entire life, and while that is only 17 years, it is more years than I would hope to still be having the same conversation over and over again, to the point where we have practically become desensitized to the problem altogether. It baffles me how people care more about owning a weapon that can kill countless numbers of civilians in seconds than protecting children, students, and family members. 

  The United States has 120.5 firearms per one hundred residents. The next closest country in that statistic is Yemen, with 52.8 firearms per one hundred residents. The U.S. beats the next country in gun possession per capita by more than 67 guns per one hundred people.

  In 1996, there was a massacre in Tasmania, Australia. A gunman killed 35 people. After this event, Australia initiated a National Firearms Agreement which banned several types of firearms, created a 28 day waiting period for gun purchases, and resulted in the government buying back hundreds of thousands of banned weapons. After implementing this, by 2010, the suicide rate by guns had gone down by 74 percent and there has only been one mass shooting in Australia since then. 

  In 1987 in the United Kingdom, a gunman killed 16 people and immediately the country banned semi-automatic weapons. After one school shooting in 1996, the U.K. then banned most handguns. Currently, the U.K. has one of the lowest gun related death rates in the developed world. 

  It took 14 mass shootings in Australia before they made drastic changes, and roughly 19 in the U.K.. The United States has had 271 events considered to be mass shootings, and still we have yet to do anything major to mitigate this issue. 

  I feel like everything that should be said already has been, which saddens me even more because I will never understand how politicians, gun advocates, and peers continue to refute the fact that we do have a gun violence issue in the U.S. despite the tons of evidence that has been sent their way. 

  Gun advocates will continue to say that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, yet they do nothing to increase accessibility to healthcare that would help people gain access to the medications and resources they need, because healthcare is seen more as a commodity rather than a basic human right. 54 percent of all gun related deaths in the U.S. are from suicides. Access to a deadly weapon is easier than access to mental health and medical care. 

  Every time an event like this occurs, people get angry, they protest, and nothing ultimately happens. Young people especially are the ones who tend to protest the most, and while I do believe that protest is important in order to shed light on the fact that we are passionate about change, young eligible voters tend to replace voting with demonstrations like these. We cannot claim to be politically active by going to events such as this one if we are not also going to vote in elections that quite literally change lives. Do not disillusion yourself into thinking that your vote doesn’t matter, because your vote is what elects the representatives and senators that are tasked with implementing the changes we want to see. 

  The government is meant to protect people’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and their efforts to do this have been weak. They have not protected these rights while we reside in schools, in grocery stores, in churches, or in clubs. The Declaration of Independence, which started this country, states that when a government becomes destructive to the rights and desires of the people, it is our duty to alter and abolish those policies. 

  As the generation that has labeled ourselves as the generation that will make a difference, it is our job to follow through with that claim. Please, if you are 16 or older, pre-register online to vote, contact your representatives and senators and let them know exactly the changes you want to see happen because this country cannot continue to disregard the lives of so many the way that it has for far too long.

Sources: rand.org, bbc.com, fastcompany.com, nytimes.com