Opening social media and seeing news all over my screen about Charlie Kirk getting shot was something unexpected. Everyone was talking about it for days all over social media and in school.
Yes, someone can disagree with a political figure, but going out of their way to celebrate his death is inhumane. Now, while I don’t believe that he should have gotten shot, what I do believe is that people are focused on the wrong thing. They are more focused on him getting killed than the way he was killed. He was shot with a gun and the fact that gun violence in the United States is so normalized is crazy.
If you found out he got shot and thought nothing of it, you are part of the problem. Many people online were joking about his death and celebrating it. You can’t say you are against gun violence and then celebrate when someone dies from a gun– all gun violence is bad.
Even though all gun violence is bad, not all gun violence is equal.
The same day Charlie Kirk got shot, there was a school shooting in Evergreen High School in Colorado. It got very little media coverage and not as many people know about it because of how much Kirk’s death overshadowed the incident. Two students were shot and critically injured. The 16-year-old suspect later shot himself after the incident.
Photo by RJ Sangosti, published in The Denver Post
With the consistent news of gun violence affecting campuses, many teachers here at HP have shared their opinion on the matter.
“The media is often called the “fourth branch” of the U.S government because they play a major role in what the general public is exposed to, shaping their views and opinions. Some major media outlets are for-profit like Disney, Fox, New York Times, The Washington Post, and Comcast which owns NBC and MSNBC to name a few. This means that they need to focus on retaining large audiences to make profit, which means that they will always prioritize the news stories that are in alignment with what they know the audiences are going to want to hear about, ” said Ms. Lopez, Social Studies teacher.
The media controls exactly what we see online and on TV. This is a way that the government manipulates us. They get to push out what they want people to talk about. By pushing the Charlie Kirk situation, it distracts people from the school shooting that happened that same day.
When I got on my phone and opened TikTok, the first thing that appeared was a graphic video of him getting shot. Again, people were talking about him and not the actual situation.
Gun violence in the U.S. is getting too normalized and being exposed to videos like that online is not okay. Young teens see these videos and get ideas and the cycle continues. We need to stop gun violence propaganda while claiming it as “protecting the second amendment.”
It is not protecting and using the second amendment right. No where in the constitution says you have the right to kill people. We need to stop gun violence and stop the media from promoting it.
Written by Vanessa Delgadillo, Editorial Editor.