My name is Marissa Knodel and I am a sophomore at Century High School, and am here to discuss the student viewpoint on the new conceal carry handgun law. The only place in the new law where guns are explicitly prohibited is on school grounds. However, as history as shown us, this does not prevent guns from entering our schools. The school shootings at Columbine, Jonesboro, Paducah, Pearl, Springfield, and Thurston, demonstrate that teens are more likely to violently express the anguish and frustration they feel in their lives, whether it's inflicted by peers, failings, society, or other factors. School shootings, along with adolescent suicide, as numerous studies and statistics state, is almost certainly increased with the presence of guns. Disregarding American culture and its fascination with guns in movies, TV, and video games, teens are more likely to commit suicide or use violence if a gun is present, partly because it's simpler than poison or hanging, and partly because 90 % of gun suicide attempts are successful. This is very alarming considering that the adolescent suicide rate tripled between the 1950s and the 1980s and in 1992, suicide was the leading cause of death in older teenagers. However, teen suicide and school shootings lead to the broader issue of gun availability that will surely be increased with this new law. Guns tied to crime come from four main sources: licensed dealers, private transfers or straw purchasing, theft, and the black market. Recently, gang-related violence has been escalating in the Twin Cities area, and a man was arrested because the gun store owner became suspicious after selling him his 55th gun. It turned out this man, who seemed to be a law abiding citizen with a clean record, was re-selling these guns to criminals and gang members. Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters, obtained three of the guns used in the killing rampage from his girlfriend who had purchased them for him. The thing with conceal-carry is that law-abiding citizens carrying their guns will become targets for theft, giving thieves a wider availability source and increasing violence. Margaret Carlson of TIME magazine wrote after the Columbine and Jonesboro shootings,

"In town meetings and talk radio, the public has had its fill of politicians talking resignedly about our gun culture, as if there's nothing to be done about a subgroup that finds schoolyard massacres an acceptable cost for its right to be armed to the teeth. But if the Constitution speaks of a "well regulated militia," why don't we regulate it? Surely the sanest teenager isn't militia material. Just a year ago in Jonesboro, teacher Shannon Wright, mother of a two-year-old, stopped a bullet for another mother's child. Two weeks ago, Dave Sanders bled to death after directing kids to safety. Without guns, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were menacing misfits in trench coats feasting on Internet swill. With guns, they became merciless mass murderers. We're hungry for a politician who can stand up to the gun lobby and convince it that burying Isaiah Shoels last Thursday in the graduation gown he would have worn to his commencement this month is unacceptable in a civilized society."

     Of the major industrialized countries, only in America do parents have to worry about their children not coming home alive from school. Only in America, where over 40% of homes with children have a gun, do parents receive brochures like this one from the American Academy of Pediatrics, urging them to ask if their neighbor has a gun before sending their children over to play. Only in America are the spread of hand guns and handgun violence compared to that of AIDS and SARS by the World Health Organization. Guns are the silent epidemic that has been haunting this country for decades, but instead of finding a vaccine, we are spreading the disease with laws like this conceal carry gun law, and worsening the effects.