By now many of you may have heard about the teenage gunman who killed five innocent people in a Utah shopping mall. The killings occurred Monday night at the Trolley Square Mall, near downtown Salt Lake City.
Police reports identify the 18-year-old killer as Sulejmen Talovic. Police say Talovic was wearing a trench coat and carried a backpack filled with many rounds of ammunition and a .38-caliber pistol. The killings appeared to be random and among the murdered victims was a 15-year-old girl, two 29-year-old women, a 52-year-old man and a 24-year-old man, not to mention four others who were badly wounded.
This is obviously not the first time a possible mass murder has been conducted by youngsters carrying an illegal gun in a suburban, seemingly safe town. The now infamous Columbine shootings, which has been called the second deadliest attack on a school in U.S. history, occurred in the tiny town of Littleton, Colo. Many other school massacres occurred in what appeared to be relatively safe towns, like Red Lake, Minn., and Pearl, Miss. There was even a shooting in the Cal State Fullerton library some years ago.
And what about the most recent attacks, the horrific Amish school shooting that occurred this past October, killing five young girls? Who would ever imagine that putting a gun in the hands of an innocuous milkman would turn him into a mass murderer?
How do seemingly normal people become killers? By obtaining guns, that’s how. Gun control in this country is a controversial topic, but it appears that most everyone should agree on one basic principle: Killing innocent people is wrong. Can we all agree on that?
What most people disagree on is who should be allowed to own guns, if anyone. All anyone has to do is look around to realize that guns always end up in the wrong hands. Teenagers get them online, mass murderers stock up on bullets at Wal-Mart, assassins can even get their guns at their local bank (remember that now infamous scene in “Bowling for Columbine?”)
It is completely ridiculous that guns are handed out like candy nowadays and that no one seems to care. The deaths are adding up and so many innocent people die every day due to lack of awareness about guns and lack of strong gun control laws.
Obviously we’re not asking to change the Second Amendment and guns should be allowed to certain people, like officers of the law, military personnel or, in certain cases, hunters.
All we’re saying is that this sloppy approach to selling guns is resulting in countless deaths, not to mention heartache to those left behind.
It is infuriating to read about cases like the one that occurred on Monday, in that crowded shopping mall. The fact that an obviously deranged 18-year-old boy can just walk into a mall and start shooting people is absurd.
What kind of a country do we live in where this sort of psychotic behavior exists? It makes one wonder: When are stricter gun control laws going to come into affect? We sincerely hope it’ll be sooner rather than later, because who knows what gruesome massacre will occur next.