In Parkland, Florida on February 14, Douglas High School suffered a mass shooting, the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hooks Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, according to a TIME article dated February 18.

The Florida School shooting could have been prevented if laws made harder for everybody to have access to guns in the United States. Not only for people with mental illnesses and disabilities, but for everyone.

Some people think that the problem with school shootings is people with mental illnesses and young people, but that’s not the only problem. Anyone could have the desire to shoot up a school. This could be caused by being outraged, depressed, or just because they have one target, but doesn’t mind killing anyone else. For example, a person that bought a gun and starts to practice shooting, could get the desire to shoot at a somewhere because they have the feeling that they have so much power. According to a politics article from the New York Times dated February 16, in an analysis made of 235 mass killings, many of which were carried out with firearms, 22 percent of the perpetrators could be considered mentally ill. This is proving that not every shooting or school shooting have been caused by a mentally ill person.

School shootings are bad news, but do not happen with much frequency, or that’s what we think. According to BallotPedia, there have been 185 school shootings, there have been 185 school shootings since 1990 up to this year, 336 injured, 176 fatalities or deaths.

How are we going to solve this? Well, some states don’t require anything in order to purchase a gun. In Florida, they don’t require special permits, fingerprints, or background checks. You can walk into a store and walk back out with a semi-automatic weapon within minutes. According to an article in USA Today, Cruz bought the gun 1 year before he allegedly opened fire. Nobody thought he was going to do this, but at the end he ended up doing it.

When we say “bye, I love you”, it should never be the last time. We shouldn’t have to worry about ‘last times’. What we should worry about is grades, what college we are going to in the next few years, what we’re having for dinner. Anything but ‘last times’. Prayers don’t help. What we need is attention to gun laws. Getting guns is far too easy to get. Draw attention to what matters, we need stricter gun laws.

Douglas High School, located in Parkland, Florida, was shot up by Nikolas Cruz, 19, charged with 17 accounts of premeditated murder.