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This viewpoint column was submitted by Melissa Siig, a mother of 3 and a Tahoe Metropolis resident.
Pricey university student,
I know you as soon as had dreams of learning overseas in the United States, of getting immersed in the tradition you have occur to admire from our motion pictures and Television set displays that we export overseas. You believed you would appear to America to find out English, to are living close to the sunny beach locations of California or the bustling cities of New York or Chicago. You imagined you would appear right here to practical experience the newness and openness of The united states, to reside in the nation of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, of Wall Avenue and Disneyland, of Harvard and UCLA, of soccer games and prom queens and kings.
Regrettably, I am here to notify you a person point: Do not come. It is not safe here. We simply cannot guard you. Our educational facilities have been sacrificed to the altar of guns.
I was a international trade pupil when I was 16. I put in six months residing with a host household and likely to significant faculty on the west coastline of France. I am now 50 years aged and to this working day I even now value the unbelievable practical experience I experienced residing and learning overseas. I came back again to the states fluent in French and with a increased understanding of an additional country, Europe and how the earth sights my personal country.
Now, I would notify all prospective overseas trade pupils and their mom and dad – do not pick America. Our educational facilities are not harmless. Gun violence is now the main lead to of death for youngsters and youngsters in the U.S., surpassing auto mishaps and drug overdoses. We have had 27 school shootings this 12 months by itself, and the yr is only 50 percent in excess of.
If you want to find out English, decide on Canada or Australia or the United kingdom. After experiencing mass shootings, these nations took decisive action like banning assault weapons, demanding track record checks and a waiting around period to purchase guns, and instituting a gun amnesty plan. These nations around the world have noticed couple to no mass shootings since. The U.S., on the other hand, has had more mass shootings than any other country in the environment because 2009, there have been 274 mass shootings in The us.
So tell me, expensive scholar, do you truly want to occur to the U.S. to analyze? Do you seriously want to go to college in a place that values its guns a lot more than its young children? Do you want to stay in a region exactly where after a mass shooting that killed 19 harmless college small children and two teachers the NRA however considered it was a good notion to maintain its once-a-year conference just 300 miles from wherever the massacre took put?
I, for one particular, do not. And still I really feel helpless to transform our gun legislation, I experience helpless to combat towards a gun foyer that has such a tight grip on this place that not even the loss of life of kids, over and over and more than again, does anything at all to transfer the needle on sensible gun control laws. Dear pupil — do you know that The united states has a legislation that shields gun makers from lawsuits? We, as citizens who desperately want to safeguard our own kids and loved ones, now do not have the ideal to sue firearm companies from their fatal contribution to mass shootings.
Expensive overseas exchange college student — do not come to The us. Our universities are not secure. Our grocery retailers and bars and live performance halls are not protected. We are unable to protect you. We have decided on as an alternative to secure the appropriate to bear arms over all else, even more than the most harmless and precious amongst us, our small children.
Melissa Siig is the mom of 3 little ones — two in large college and just one in middle faculty — and life in Tahoe City, California. She has been a journalist and editor for 20 many years.
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