Noah Fitzgerel

AHS established a memorial in Canterbury Woods Park, at the corner of Braddock Road and Wakefield Chapel Road, in the neighborhood where Mary Read lived with her family.

I have experienced the distraught mentality of victimized families ever since the passing of my sister Mary Read, who graduated from Annandale High School in 2006. She was one of the 32 innocent people tragically murdered at Virginia Tech six years ago on April 16, 2007 by a mentally unstable gunman named Seung-Hui Cho.

I was only eleven years old at the time when a couple of cops showed up at the door in the middle of the night to tell my family that my sister was dead. At my young age, I did not have many opinions and hardly knew what the whole gun control issue was actually about, but I knew that Cho found a gun and killed some people; although, the situation definitely gave me a terrible impression of guns in this country at an extremely early time in my life.

I have grown up considerably since the tragedy and have learned to accept the absence of my sister in my life. It is a personal experience deeply wrought with grief and many other mixed emotions. It has shaped my perspective on many issues in the United States, especially domestic violence and gun control, but that did not occur until many years later.

In the six years following my sister’s death, I wanted nothing to do with anything related to the Virginia Tech massacre and gun control because I found it hard to cope with a depression that struck harder than I had expected. I even turned down a chance to meet Derek Jeter at a Virginia Tech baseball game due to my anguish and aversion to the situation; I honestly just did not want people to feel sorry for me. Eventually I did come to grips with my situation and felt a little more comfortable handling the topic, and now half a decade later, I have just started to conjure my opinions and join the public debate.

At first I began with this: a mentally unstable man gets his hands on a gun and murders over thirty people inflicting pain to many more family members and friends; therefore, from this specific situation, I concluded that guns have the ability to kill innocent people and any old person can obtain access to guns and an abundance of ammo. Despite the counter arguments, there are still some coherently erroneous points to this story.

One point is the background of the perpetrator who allegedly purchased a gun legally from a pawn shop in Virginia despite his medical record calling for mandatory mental health treatment and his past mental health issues earlier on in his life. I do feel that if one had looked a little deeper into Cho’s background, he could have received the attention the hospital ordered and would probably been have denied the ability to purchase a gun.

The nonchalance and ease in purchasing firearms in this country is fairly alarming especially in Virginia considering the “gun show loophole” and the opposition to gun control legislation in the Virginia state legislature. Another point is how tragedies like this and Columbine rear a nation and everyone seems to mourn together. However, congressmen and politicians are still arguing about the same issues and nothing is changing.

Last year was a hallmark year for gun violence across the country from the Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado to the quaint Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Mass murders due to gun violence are occurring at an alarming rate and it is truly heartbreaking to see families ravaged by the murders of their children who will never have the opportunity to grow up and experience a fulfilling life.

I do believe we as Americans wholly need to check the culture of guns in this country because the safety of our citizens is at risk. I had a great opportunity to attend President Obama’s latest speech during Spring Break and he put it bluntly: “Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.” It truly is a shame if these horrific incidents do not incite action in our legislature and our citizens. Change is not only blatantly necessary, but also long overdue.