A day after a teenage gunman shot and killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., Kim Kardashian reiterated her earlier call for more gun control by resharing a blog post she had written in 2017, in honor of National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
“Unfortunately it has not aged,” Kardashian posted Wednesday on social media. “In it I asked ‘is it more important to protect the second amendment than to protect our own children?’ Yesterday 19 children were murdered by an 18 year old, and I find myself heartbroken, disgusted and furious about how little has been done by law makers to enact gun laws that protect our children. There is no excuse and no justification for what happened yesterday. The current laws in our country around gun control are not protecting our children. We have to push law makers to enact laws that are fitting in today’s world.”
Five years ago, almost to the day, I wrote an essay for my blog about my thoughts on gun control in honor of National Gun Violence Awareness Day.
— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) May 25, 2022
Kardashian called for a ban on semi-automatic weapons, which she described as “designed to kill.”
“Assault weapons didn’t even exist when the Second Amendment was written,” the mother of North, 8; Chicago, 4; Saint, 6; and 3-year-old Psalm, said. “We have to stop allowing people to use a sentence written centuries ago when technology, times, humanity were completely different, to dictate how we regulate gun ownership, & how we protect our kids today.”
She spoke against 18-year-olds being allowed to buy guns legally.
“The Parkland shooter, the Buffalo grocery store shooter, the Texas shooter yesterday, they were all under 21 and reportedly purchased weapons legally. These are teenagers,” she wrote. “Someone who is not old enough to buy alcohol should not be allowed to purchase a firearm. There is no world in which an 18 year old needs a semi automatic weapon, or any weapon, and no world in which the outcome can be anything other than tragic. As I even type these words I am seriously dumbfounded that this is something considered normal, acceptable and legal.”
While she acknowledged that factors such as mental health and hatred, including racism, have driven people to commit mass shootings, she noted that communities can do more to combat that. Lawmakers have another role.
“The one thing that law makers can and should control now is access to weapons,” wrote Kardashian, who’s advocated for prison reform and is studying to become a lawyer. “There are of course people over 21 who buy guns to cause harm, and other mass shootings in recent years have been carried out by people over 21, but if we increase legal age to purchase, coupled with a ban on assault weapons, we can without a doubt reduce the number of senseless tragedies and save children’s lives.”
She urged people not to become numb to mass shootings, of which there have already been more than 200 in the first five months of 2022, averaging about 10 a week, at schools, at grocery stores and even at churches.
“We can’t accept this as normal anymore. It’s not normal for a teenager to kill children. It’s not normal for our kids to be practicing active shooter drills in schools. It’s not normal to be shot while shopping for groceries. I’m not numbed by it. I will never be numbed by it,” Kardashian wrote. “We can’t accept it. We can’t have another five years go by without effective, impactful laws put in place to protect our kids. We are parents, we are mothers, we are begging and pleading for action.”
Even survivors, she noted, will have trauma for the rest of their lives.
“Words can’t express my heartbreak for the parents whose babies didn’t come home from school yesterday,” she wrote. “I’m urging our leaders to come together and put politics aside and put children first.”
The suspected gunman, Salvador Ramos, had turned 18 on May 16 and purchased the rifles he used at the school on May 17 and May 20, according to ABC News. He was fatally shot by officers during his attack.
