This belief column was submitted by Melissa Siig, a mother of a few and a Tahoe Town resident.
Pricey university student,
I know you the moment had desires of studying overseas in the United States, of staying immersed in the society you have appear to admire from our flicks and Tv set displays that we export abroad. You imagined you would come to The us to discover English, to reside in the vicinity of the sunny beaches of California or the bustling towns of New York or Chicago. You imagined you would arrive below to working experience the newness and openness of The us, to dwell in the region of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, of Wall Road and Disneyland, of Harvard and UCLA, of football game titles and promenade queens and kings.
Regrettably, I am below to convey to you a person issue: Do not occur. It is not safe and sound below. We cannot protect you. Our schools have been sacrificed to the altar of guns.
I was a overseas trade college student when I was 16. I invested six months residing with a host relatives and likely to significant university on the west coastline of France. I am now 50 yrs previous and to this day I nevertheless worth the incredible experience I experienced living and learning overseas. I arrived again to the states fluent in French and with a larger comprehension of yet another region, Europe and how the environment sights my individual country.
Nowadays, I would convey to all possible overseas trade students and their mothers and fathers – do not select America. Our universities are not secure. Gun violence is now the primary lead to of death for kids and young adults in the U.S., surpassing motor vehicle incidents and drug overdoses. We have experienced 27 school shootings this year alone, and the 12 months is only fifty percent about.
If you want to master English, decide on Canada or Australia or the British isles. Just after dealing with mass shootings, these countries took decisive action like banning assault weapons, necessitating qualifications checks and a waiting period of time to get guns, and instituting a gun amnesty application. These nations around the world have noticed couple to no mass shootings considering the fact that. The U.S., on the other hand, has had much more mass shootings than any other place in the planet considering the fact that 2009, there have been 274 mass shootings in The usa.
So convey to me, expensive college student, do you genuinely want to appear to the U.S. to study? Do you seriously want to go to university in a country that values its guns far more than its kids? Do you want to are living in a region in which just after a mass taking pictures that killed 19 innocent college young children and two teachers the NRA still imagined it was a good notion to hold its annual conference just 300 miles from the place the massacre took spot?
I, for just one, do not. And nonetheless I feel helpless to alter our gun laws, I sense helpless to battle against a gun lobby that has this sort of a tight grip on this state that not even the dying of little ones, in excess of and in excess of and more than once more, does everything to move the needle on reasonable gun management legislation. Dear student — do you know that The united states has a regulation that shields gun companies from lawsuits? We, as citizens who desperately want to protect our own young children and loved types, presently do not have the correct to sue firearm providers from their deadly contribution to mass shootings.
Pricey foreign exchange college student — do not appear to The usa. Our colleges are not safe and sound. Our grocery shops and bars and concert halls are not harmless. We cannot defend you. We have picked in its place to guard the proper to bear arms around all else, even over the most harmless and cherished among us, our young children.
Melissa Siig is the mom of three children — two in large school and one particular in center college — and life in Tahoe Metropolis, California. She has been a journalist and editor for 20 several years.
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