America’s youth are under fire, including those in Vancouver. We have all become too familiar with headlines about mass shootings, most recently the Buffalo supermarket and Uvalde school shootings. Sadly, today’s media coverage is dominated by such tragic events, and to be honest it stresses me out. Not just because of the obvious reason of innocent people being slaughtered, but because it tends to push aside the other forms of gun violence that actually make up the majority of gun-related deaths/incidents. In reality, mass shootings are just the tip of the iceberg of gun violence, especially when it comes to our youth.
Given the fact that deaths attributed to guns now account for nearly 30 percent of deaths among youth in the U.S., it is essential that we acknowledge the two major forms in which it occurs: homicides and suicides. Growing up in Vancouver, I have been fortunate enough to not know anybody killed or injured in a mass shooting. However, I have had multiple friends and peers killed or directly impacted by gun homicide and gun suicide.
Yes, mass shootings are a problem, but they are just a sliver of the epidemic that youth around the country, including those in Vancouver, face.
