I made 'Bowling for Columbine' in the hope the school shootings would stop and that we would address the issue of how easy it is to get a gun in the United States, and tragically, those school shootings continue.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School three years ago, we have lost over 90,000 Americans to gun violence. This is a manmade crisis that needs to be treated as the public health epidemic it has become.
After every massacre in a school, Americans grasp at quick cures. 'Let's install metal detectors and give guns to teachers' Let's crack down on troublemakers, weeding out kids who fit the profile of a gunman. Let's buy bulletproof whiteboards for the students to scurry behind, or train kids to throw erasers or cans of soup at an attacker.'
Columbine was so frightening. And the media took off with it, like everything else, so it instilled more fear in people. You're looking around at school for kids like the ones who committed the shootings, and you feel wrong for doing that, you know?
I think that we should take the tragedy that happened in Newtown and have a full comprehensive dialogue about all issues, whether it has to do with mental health, whether it has to do with the social decline of our young people and some of the things that they are exposed to, whether it has to do with the firearms and guns.
How many more school shootings do we need before we start talking about this as a social problem, and not merely a random collection of isolated incidents?
The Newtown massacre created a tipping point on the gun debate in America.
The time has come to end the deadly experiment of disarming peaceable, law-abiding citizens near schools.
No American should live in fear of going to work or sending their kids to school. Let's end the fear. Let's enforce existing gun laws.
The last thing we need is efforts by some politicians and the NRA to arm educators and allow more guns in our schools.
I was so affected by the tragic shootings that took place in Newtown, Connecticut, as we all were.