The Sunset Statement: A Call for Action by: Natalie Clarke King of Prussia, PA– A city of around twenty-five thousand people. Another community was devastated. Two people legally armed to the teeth murdered forty-two men, women, and children and injured another seventy-nine. More children would’ve been killed if not for the brave action of seventeen-year-old Brooke Matthews. She stepped in and saved the lives of those kids. She risked her own life and safety to save the children. It should not have been necessary. Both shooters legally purchased an arsenal including semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines. As one senior federal officer according to CNN, stated “This entire tragedy was preventable. They were able to stockpile enough weapons and to wage a small war, all legally. It's a tragic reflection on our current gun laws.” Why are we allowing citizens to buy weapons that have only one real purpose to unleash terror and death in their wake? As I’m writing this, I am struggling to find the words. I look at my own kids, they are going to start school soon. I cannot believe in this country I am going to have to hope that if something awful happens they have someone brave like Ms. Matthews willing to risk her life to save them. Or am I one day going to get a call that will tell me that my child has been shot in her school or at the mall? Why is being a parent in America like this? Why are these the questions we must ask ourselves as parents and be prepared for? All the lives that have been cut short. All these preventable deaths. Another community stating, “I can’t believe this happened here.” It has become too common too acceptable for them to be a mass shooting in this country. How many more massacres of children is it going to take for us to be allowed to finally have a needed conversation about how lax our gun laws are? We did not have one after Sandy Hook and then we had Las Vegas. We didn’t have the conversation after the Las Vegas shooting, and then we had Parkland. We did not have the conversation after Parkland, and then we had Uvalde. We did not have the conversation after Uvalde and now we are here. Are we seriously going to need more victims to talk about Gun control? How many will be enough? How many more children must die upon the alter of the second amendment? Parents around this country must know. Does their kid have to be next for us to finally wake up and realize that we have a gun problem? I do not know how anyone can look at the details of this tragedy and shrug their shoulders and pretend this is anything but a failure in gun policy. We can look around the world, no other western country has this problem, and in no other western country is it easy to buy a gun. This is a call to action. This is a call for us to look beyond the gun policy that have been called for by Democrats for over a decade. It is time that we go further. We must finally do universal background check and closing the gun show loophole, I am not arguing against that, but neither of those solutions would have prevented this tragedy. It is time to bring back the assault weapons ban. It is time to ban high-capacity magazines. It’s time to get weapons that are not designed primarily for hunting and specific self-defense weapons off the streets. But if our nation is not ready to step up and implement broad measures that will prevent weapons of war from being used on Americans by other Americans than let me suggest an unconventional solution. Why is it easier to own a weapon of war than a car. In many states you cannot drive a car off the lot without having insurance. Let’s put in place a national rule that you cannot bring your gun out of a gun shop without insurance. That you cannot own a gun without insurance. You want to own a gun; you must have insurance, and the gun owner should be held liable if their gun is used to murder or harm an innocent person. This would have limited effects on people who are buying weapons that are designed for hunting, or for self-defense and instead make sure that the weapons of war have extensive insurance coverage, designed to help the families of the victims of tragedies like this. There are people that are going to say that now is not the time to talk about gun control. They are going to tell you that we cannot have this discussion after a tragedy. Then when are we ever going to happen Over six hundred people died in a mass shooting in every year since 2020. Everyday three-hundred and twenty-seven people are killed, and twenty-three minors are killed. Last year there was nearly two mass shootings every day. If we cannot have a discussion on gun control after a tragedy, then we are never going to have the conversation we so desperately need because there is a new tragedy every day. Please reader hug your children and your loved ones. Do it for the people that cannot hug theirs today because two nihilistic people were able to buy a small armory before heading into a mall in small town America and senselessly murder mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends. (This article contains a list of every person who lost their life in the shooting)