This impression column was submitted by Melissa Siig, a mother of three and a Tahoe Town resident.
Expensive pupil,
I know you once had dreams of studying overseas in the United States, of getting immersed in the culture you have come to admire from our motion pictures and Tv exhibits that we export abroad. You imagined you would arrive to The us to learn English, to reside near the sunny shorelines of California or the bustling metropolitan areas of New York or Chicago. You thought you would appear right here to expertise the newness and openness of The united states, to dwell in the country of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, of Wall Street and Disneyland, of Harvard and UCLA, of football video games and prom queens and kings.
Unfortunately, I am listed here to inform you one detail: Do not occur. It is not safe and sound listed here. We simply cannot guard you. Our universities have been sacrificed to the altar of guns.
I was a international exchange scholar when I was 16. I expended 6 months dwelling with a host household and heading to substantial college on the west coastline of France. I am now 50 several years outdated and to this working day I nevertheless worth the remarkable encounter I experienced living and finding out overseas. I came back to the states fluent in French and with a higher comprehension of one more state, Europe and how the world views my very own country.
Today, I would explain to all possible international exchange learners and their mother and father – do not choose The united states. Our colleges are not protected. Gun violence is now the major bring about of dying for children and young people in the U.S., surpassing auto incidents and drug overdoses. We have experienced 27 school shootings this yr by yourself, and the yr is only 50 % about.
If you want to understand English, pick Canada or Australia or the United kingdom. Right after dealing with mass shootings, these nations took decisive action like banning assault weapons, demanding qualifications checks and a ready period of time to purchase guns, and instituting a gun amnesty application. These countries have observed several to no mass shootings because. The U.S., on the other hand, has experienced more mass shootings than any other state in the environment due to the fact 2009, there have been 274 mass shootings in The united states.
So inform me, expensive university student, do you truly want to come to the U.S. to study? Do you genuinely want to go to university in a place that values its guns extra than its kids? Do you want to live in a place the place immediately after a mass capturing that killed 19 innocent college small children and two teachers the NRA still thought it was a great thought to hold its yearly conference just 300 miles from exactly where the massacre took spot?
I, for just one, do not. And nevertheless I feel helpless to transform our gun laws, I experience helpless to combat from a gun foyer that has this kind of a limited grip on this place that not even the death of young children, over and over and above yet again, does anything to move the needle on reasonable gun manage laws. Pricey university student — do you know that The united states has a legislation that shields gun suppliers from lawsuits? We, as citizens who desperately want to safeguard our individual small children and liked ones, at present do not have the ideal to sue firearm providers from their fatal contribution to mass shootings.
Dear overseas exchange college student — do not arrive to The united states. Our faculties are not secure. Our grocery retailers and bars and concert halls are not harmless. We can not shield you. We have preferred rather to defend the correct to bear arms about all else, even above the most innocent and precious among us, our children.
Melissa Siig is the mom of 3 young children — two in superior university and one in center school — and lives in Tahoe City, California. She has been a journalist and editor for 20 many years.
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