On our historical tour of Ireland today, our tour guide Sylvie discussed many events throughout Ireland’s history. She related history through buildings and other architecture but she also mentioned that there were moments throughout Ireland’s history that she was embarrassed to talk about. Today as I look into and reflect on the United States’ history I thought about what’s embarrassing being an American today. The one thing that I reflected on was gun violence, more specifically school shootings. Seeing a school shooting on Twitter today, as an American, seems like any other day. But for another country, these events wouldn’t be believable and never occur. These events are embarrassing to me, as an American, because we preach the right to bear arms, while preaching safety and opportunity for all but yet fail to realize the irony.

Trying to describe these events to an outsider is difficult because guns are something that are an extreme to most countries. Countries like Ireland and Germany, make guns extremely difficult to purchase and as a result have extremely low homicide and gun violence rates. If I were to describe these events to outsiders I would have to make sure they understand the 2nd amendment and how crazy it is and the inability if our political system to stop these events from constantly occurring.

I believe that these events are embarrassing but every country has them in their history. The important things is to understand the problem and try to make effective changes towards fixing these problems.

P.S. Having a great night. Thanks Liz!