Solution to gun violence

Across the nation, students demostrated in support of gun control by participating in the March for Our Lives and its sibling events. Amidst the discussion of tighter gun restrictions, students like Senior John DeBoer hold their own opinions on the matter. As someone who has been using firearms since his childhood, DeBoer believes in a different solution to gun violence than gun control.
“Dealing with gun violence is a big question, most of the stuff that happens comes from the people who slip through the cracks of the system,” DeBoer said. “Most of the times they shouldn’t have had the gun in the first place, so there’s not really a way to deal with that outside of banning every single gun.”
In addition to his belief that gun control shouldn’t be ended altogether, DeBoer believes that to stop gun violence, people need to start at the root of the problem.
“It all starts with the parents, it’s not really an issue of taking every single person’s gun away because there’s always going to be people who get them,” DeBoer said. “If you want to completely end the issue of gun violence, we need to bring up kids right so that they know gun violence isn’t okay.”
In addition to his belief in better parenting, DeBoer believes treating others in school better is another factor in preventing gun violence and another potential mass shooter.
“If there are signs of mental health problems, you need to work on dealing with that. For the Florida shooter, it was apparent that he had issues and people bullied him,” DeBoer said. “Treat people with kindness and don’t laugh at someone because they have problems. That’s the whole part about helping the issue, not hurting it.”