Gun violence claims nearly 100 lives every day in the United States. No other developed nation experiences gun violence of this magnitude. 

In 2020 there have already been 26,000+ deaths from firearms. There were also 417 mass shootings in 2019 which is almost 100 more than in 2018. That number has steadily increased in recent years with mass shootings almost doubling since 2014.  

There are reforms that can be put in place to help curb mass shootings and shootings in general. These policies include ERPO’s which are also known as ‘Red Flag Laws’, mandatory background checks, making gun trafficking a federal crime & getting military style assault weapons off our streets.  

All those reforms are supported by gun owners with 60% supporting ERPO’s (American Public Media) nearly 85% supporting mandatory background checks (John Hopkins Bloomberg school of public health study) and more than 60% of all Americans supporting a Assault weapons ban (2019 Gallup Poll). 

These should all be common sense reforms if not because of how much support they have but because of how many lives could be saved by such easy reforms.  

Nathan Schleiden is the executive director of Chi-Town GVP Summit, a youth-run nonprofit project dedicated to helping youth activists working to end gun violence not associated with larger groups. Their website is chitowngvpsummit.com and can be found on Twitter; @chitwngvpsummit, Instagram; @chitowngvpsummit and Facebook; Chi-Town GVP Summit.