It’s Time to Act
Picture this- you just got your quarter pounder with cheese at McDonald’s. You unwrap this holy creation sent from God himself and take a bite. However, to your horror, you realize they forgot the pickles. What would you do in this situation? Most of you would probably either go up to the cashier and ask for a remake or carry on because you’re too shy to confront a minimum wage worker for marinated cucumbers (not speaking from personal experience). I’ll bet none of you decided to pull out a gun and shoot up the place. Unfortunately, this was exactly the case last June in Atlanta. Two employees at a Subway near the Mercedes-Benz Stadium were shot because the customer got upset over there being too much mayo on his sandwich. One of the workers, 26-year-old Brittany Macon, sadly died in this incident. The other worker, an unnamed 24-year-old woman, was left in critical condition, and her 5-year-old son was in the store at the time of the shooting. Co-owner of the Subway Willie Glenn said, “It just breaks my heart, to know that someone has the audacity to point a weapon and shoot someone for as little as too much mayonnaise on a sandwich.”
As most of you are aware, when I’m writing one of these editorial commentaries, I usually like to take a comedic satirical take on these articles I find. However, I feel like it wouldn’t be remotely appropriate this time around. We as a nation need to take action on this issue that takes the lives of 12 children every single day. The prevalence of gun violence in America is a problem that’s not found among other first world nations. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, “Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the US are 13 times greater than they are in France, and 22 times greater than in the European Union as a whole. The US has 23 times the rate of firearm homicide seen in Australia.” Why should we be the outlier? In Wind Ensemble, we’re playing a piece called An American Elegy, written to commemorate the Columbine High School shooting. Columbine took place nearly 25 years ago. In 25 years, I’ll be 42. In the same span of time it’ll take me to establish myself as an adult, absolutely nothing has been done to solve the issue of gun violence in America. No legislation has been passed; no policy enacted that has deterred people from committing these atrocities almost every day. We’ve become desensitized to the pain and suffering felt by thousands of families, seeing just another death being added to the statistic. We’ve held off on confronting this issue for far too long. It’s time to remember. It’s time to act.
