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Hundres of Guns, Thousands of Deaths

In my paper I studied the causes of gun violence in the United States. Before I started the research I knew some things such as the high rate of gun ownership, but after looking at statistics even that surprised me. For every 100 people in the United States, there are 120 guns, and the number of guns keeps increasing with thousands sold every month. There are also 30,000 gun deaths in the United States every year, with recent years showing spikes in gun violence. Studies have also shown the great link between being economically poor, and a lack of research due to lobbying by the NRA. In my research what surprised me the most was just the sheer number of deaths caused by guns every year, with each year consistently hitting in the tens of thousands. I knew through news stories I’ve heard and some very minor previous research I’ve done that the United States had a large amount of gun deaths, but the statistics I found really opened my eyes. Due to my limited informati

Think, Say as We Do.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me , had trouble in school. He saw no point to being in most if not all his classes, and felt a major disconnect in his life and his education. Still today, throughout the news we can see the differences between African and white Americans in our schools. According to an article by Vox , segregation in schools still occurs regularly. An example used in the article was a county school district that was effectively gerrymandered to segregate wealthy white families from surrounding minority group and poorer neighborhoods. The county that was separated had a makeup of 22% non-white students and 7% poor; the surrounding areas had a 22% poverty rate seen in schools and 55% non-white students. The segregates argued that schools were already too full, they argued, making this segregation okay On page 25 of his book, Coates writes, “If the streets shackled my right leg, the schools shackled my left… I suffered at the hands of both, but I res

On vaping

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Image from PBS.org Across the United States there are massive pushes to ban vaping. Weather banning just the flavored pods or trying to get rid of it all together, it shows an issue with politics in our own country. According to this CNN article , six deaths have been attributed to vaping. A line reads “ all reported cases have indicated the use of e-cigarette products and some patients have reported using e-cigarettes containing cannabinoid products, such as THC.” This shows that vaping itself is not actually the issue, as the main risk comes from aftermarket and bootleg cartridges bought and sold illegally without any restrictions. The push to ban vapes that are legal and tested shows a reactionary stance, where politicians don’t wait for the research and just say and do what might get them the most votes next election cycle. By trying to ban legal vapes, especially popular add ons like flavored cartridges, will lead to people either buying illegal products from completely
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