Enough

This has to stop.

Yesterday, another campus shooting took place. Twitter was flooded with posts about Umpqua Community College and news reports told the story of yet another mass shooting in America.

It's been less than three years since Sandy Hook and yet, gun violence abounds. And not just gun violence, but violence that is linked to mental health problems. Mental sickness combined with easy access to firearms at a national level. We know why this keeps happening.

When will we stop this?

There are quite a few people who are in favor of handing out guns to almost everyone in the interest of "protection." Are we so sick as a nation that we require constant protection from each other? Concealed carry proponents are everywhere, and at least one professor is engaged in a lawsuit with his school because he can't carry a pistol on campus. Do we really believe that an armed populace will simply shoot those who have mental health issues and keep everyone else safe? To me, it sounds like the worst cure to an even more insidious problem.

Left, right, liberal, conservative...do these labels even matter? We polarize and strike out at each other until reality and logic no longer matter. Do we really need a right to bear arms in 2015? Are we so wrapped up in our "greatest country in the world" rhetoric that we can't see the simple truth that the populations of an overwhelming number of countries are not perpetrating mass shootings on college campuses, and in fact have little to no gun violence?

The killing continues and we refuse to do anything substantive about it. Will we ever reach a moment when we say that enough is enough and collectively do something to stop mass killings?

My heart is breaking for Roseburg, for Umpqua Community College, for Oregon, and for the United States. How many times does this need to happen before we do something great as a nation and abolish the 2nd Amendment while increasing access to mental health care?

This has to stop.