I can prevent gun violence by helping others realize we must change our culture and our policies to stop this cycle of violence. Many people die from gun violence each day, from school children to victims of domestic violence to people going about their daily lives. This situation is unacceptable, we need to take action and do everything in our power to keep tragedies like this from happening. In my opinion, suicide, the war on drugs, racism and police brutality are the biggest contributors to gun violence in our country. They must be tackled if the problem of gun violence is to be resolved.
Of all gun deaths, suicide is responsible for more than three quarters of them. Far more people kill themselves with a firearm each year than are murdered with one. Furthermore, suicide rates are higher among children, women and men of all ages in states where more households have guns. One of the most effective and straightforward steps families can take to reduce the risk of suicide would be to remove all firearms from the household. Even a modestly successful program aimed at reducing suicide could see far more lives saved than virtually any other such plan the government could come up with. If you don’t consider gun violence to be a public health issue, suicide definitely is, and statistics show that the two are intertwined.
The war
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The government has passed policies in an attempt to fix the issue, but now it needs to listen to the people, as it has failed to do before. As President Obama said in his speech, "We have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be? This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America." Taking action to prevent gun violence, too, is a political choice--one that is within our power to