Since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he has had to address mass shootings 11 times. In the year 2015 alone, there have been 297 mass shootings, which is defined at four or more people shot in one event.

“That means there are more American families – moms, dads, children – whose lives have been changed forever,” Obama said in a statement on the Umpqua Community College.  “That means there’s another community stunned with grief, and communities across the country forced to relieve their own anguish, and parents across the country who are scared because they know it might have been their families or their children.”

The United States leads the world in mass shootings, and even with that fact, nothing is being done to lower the statistics. The amount of times we see shootings in this country numbs us to the horror of this tragedy that strikes much too often.

Frankly, we have no excuse to continue having more people dying because the powerful few cannot face the facts. The ability to acquire a gun is way too easy and it’s hurting too many people.

“We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston,” Obama said. “It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.”

The restriction of the acquirement of firearms won’t be a blow to constitutional rights, especially if no one has started to think about banning them. How can they if it’s not even possible to become stricter in who can and can’t get a gun? Placing the blame on mental illnesses is not just an argument with holes but offensive to people suffering from them. People who are mentally ill are not violent; people who are mentally ill are usually the targets of shooters. How easily a minor can obtain a firearm is unsettling. Just a little more money and a willing adult and they’ve gotten all they need to carry out their plan.

Instead of giving solutions to make sure children will get to go to middle school, all we receive are excuses. Excuses as to why we should not restrict the right to openly carry firearms in a Walmart and allow more Adam Lanzas (Sandy Hook Elementary School), more James Holmes (Aurora Movie Theater), more Chris Harper Mercers (Umpqua Community College). We truly do not believe in the facts that say the restriction of guns correlate to a reduction in mass shootings and deaths by guns

Although it hurts to admit it, the events at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, on Oct. 1, 2015, won’t be the last time that this happens in the United States. Deep down, we all know that we’ll have to hear it all over again. We know that if we don’t do something to amend gun control in the United States, we won’t be doing all that is possible to prevent mass shootings.