Latest Mass Shooting gets Panthers Talking Gun Control

Mitzi Aldana, reporter|September 7, 2018

On August 26 1:30 pm last Sunday an armed man opened fire at a video game tournament. In the end the shooter was dead and twelve victims had gunshot wounds, and two others suffered injuries while escaping. It was speculated that the crime was committed due to simply losing in a video game. Later on it was shown that the shooter had previously been hospitalized for mental illness as a teenager.

This incident has got some of our Panthers talking about gun control, here is what they had to say:

“I personally am not pro or anti-guns. I think I’m more in the middle since I just care about people’s safety. I don’t think it makes sense that people are able to own rifles and military guns just because it’s not really necessary. I believe we should be able to own guns but maybe smaller ones, like pistols for self defense. I think a way that this situation could have been avoided was to have metal detectors or something like that for the players and the audience. I think mental illness had a big roll in this tragedy. I don’t think people take mental illness as seriously as they should and I believe this is why things like this happen so often. I think it’s obvious that a mentally healthy person wouldn’t do this. I think his family is partly responsible because they should have checked up on him and given him the proper help he needed.” -Jennifer Garcia(12)
I’m personally pro gun because I strongly stand by our constitutional right to own them. I believe everyone should be able to own a fire arm to defend themselves… I honestly don’t think it was mental illness at all that in this situation. You see every time a white male creates a large crime like this, it is labeled as “mental illness”. Now, I’m not being racist but as a young man who understands the society we live in and the way media spreads news, I believe its safe to say our country is still racist and always will be. For example, if he had been a Muslim man they would have labeled it as “terrorist shoots up gaming competition, had links to to ISIS”. You see I don’t think it was mental illness at all. Instead I believe the man was just frustrated and happened to be caring a fire arm with him. There is no other way really of dealing with gun violence other than background checks. Chicago has the strictest gun laws in America yet they commit almost more than 30% of gun violence within America and I think that has a lot to say. That goes to show that guns are not the issue but the people who acquire them. When a young man is drunk and kills people with the vehicle, we are not going to ban vehicles are we? Of course not… everyone is accountable for their own actions. Ernesto Cuello (12)

 

“I am pro-gun because it’s in our constitution and we have our own rights. I think maybe sometimes we should get stricter on gun control laws because with our current background checks, we aren’t accomplishing much. I think mental illness was triggered by the anger of losing. Tighter security or maybe metal detectors could have helped, but I don’t think anyone could have prevented this. With so many things going on within the tournament itself, everyone was busy and had their hands full. If I was in that situation I would have simply hid or if I were brave enough, I would have tried to stop the shooter. I would try to do everything in my power to save somebody.”-Andrew Tinoco (10)