As I live in England, lifestyle choices are pretty different from America. These include Thanksgiving, religion and most importantly, guns. Guns aren’t available to buy in the UK, but they are in America. In fact, there are more gun stores in America than grocery stores.

I switched on the news this evening, listened to the local information, then the World News.

“2 TEENS AND 4 OTHERS HAVE BEEN KILLED IN A SHOOTING IN CHICAGO,” the headlines blare at me. At this point, my Mum walks in the room and says with a calm tone, “Oh, another shooting?” This is when it hits me. If people ask, if they even THINK that a shooting should be inquired about with a calm and so-what’s-new tone, then something is not right. Especially since there are two teenagers, two young adults who had their whole life stretched ahead of them, gleaming with adventure and love. Snatched away. With one bullet.

Mark Mardell, a North American editor tweeted “A shooting in Chicago. Another night, like any other.” Is a loss of 6 lives in a night like any other? Probably, when barely days before this incident, a student arrived at his school with a gun, then injured a fellow classmate. Fortunately, two teachers calmed the gunman down, persuading him to put the gun aside. Do teachers now have to take a course to calm down students with guns? It wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t think I even have to get started on how appalling the shooting that happened only a month before this in a school at Connecticut.

Whilst researching this very recent shooting, I typed in “gun shooting Chicago” on Google, and countless titles in murderous blue popped up. For instance, barely 5 lines down “Chicago Shootings: At Least 19 Wounded by Gun Violence ...” and “Chicago Shootings: 8 Killed, At Least 46 Wounded by ...” both of which occurred in 2012. Similar titles carelessly bob up and down, one which catches my attention. It tells me that in Chicago alone, there have been 2,364 gun shootings in 2012, most of which have their deaths unmarked. You think it’s bad what you already see on the news? Multiply that by 47,000 and you’ve got the total number of people killed by guns in the space of 6 years in America.

47,000 individual people. With lives. With family. With love. But without guns.

The leader of the Rifle Association announced after the Chicago incident that “the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun, is a good man with a gun.” Well, now he’s wrong. The only thing that stops a bad man with a gun, is not giving them guns. And even if a good man had a gun, would that man really be good if he would take the life of the bad man? I’m not sure I could do it.

As I finish this report, which has made the keyboard steam with my aggression of these horrific facts, I would not be surprised if another shooting is happening at this second, with the consequences unmarked. I wouldn’t be surprised if I turned on the news right now and found out that more Americans had died from gun-shootings, and that headline would disappear quietly so no more questions would be asked. I wouldn’t be surprised if a further importation of guns was being processed at this second, and this importation would sell out within a few days.

But I would be surprised if someone turned to me and said “Oh, another shooting? Perhaps we should end this now.”