By Matt Calhoun 

It is only early March, yet 2016 has been one of the most politically and emotionally charged presidential races the United States has ever seen. Candidates, both left and right, have been fiercely arguing over many positions. However, one topic unique to this country has not made a huge splash on the debate floors: gun violence.

Since 2000, the U.S. has seen more than 137 mass shootings, the highest of any developed nation. Next on the list is Germany, with only six mass shootings since 2000. Coincidentally, 42 percent of the world’s privately-owned firearms are in the United States, making up for less than five percent of the world’s population, according to Vox.

Seeing as the U.S. is clearly a stand-alone amongst developed nations, one would think candidates would be intensely debating the issue. Sadly, it appears that we could not be further from finding a solution on the campaign trail. In fact, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the only candidate who has published literature on her online campaign website supporting tougher gun control and acknowledging that the U.S. has a gun problem.

Clinton’s last fellow Democrat remaining in the race, Senator Bernie Sanders, supports tightening gun control, but is not interested in making it a centerpiece of his platform. He instead prioritizes regulating Wall Street, expanding government social programs and combatting wealth inequality.

On the Republican side, all four remaining candidates promise to repeal President Obama’s executive orders that increased gun control and expanded background checks. The two more moderate Republicans on the issue — Governor John Kasich and Donald Trump — only support expanding concealed carry policies nationwide. The two are also the only Republicans in the race supporting an expansion of mental health resources, noting a link between psychological conditions and shootings. In 2015, Kasich helped push bills through Ohio’s legislature that expanded concealed carry rights in places such as schools, daycares and airports. Last week, Ohio saw its second school shooting under Kasich’s governorship in which a 14-year-old boy shot four of his classmates in Middletown, Ohio. The previous incident occurred during Kasich’s second year as governor in Chardon, Ohio where six students were shot and three were killed.

The other two GOP candidates have been more outspoken on their positions to defend gun rights. Senator Marco Rubio has vowed to “protect the sacred rights of American gun owners.” Senator Ted Cruz believes that “as radical Islamic terrorists seek to attack Americans on our own soil, Americans’ right to protect our families and communities is all the more critical to our safety and freedom.” Both senators have an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association and are gun owners.

GOP front-runners, as well as Senator Sanders, see protecting the right to bear arms as a defense of the Constitution. However, there are far deeper problems with defending a Constitution that guarantees the right to life, liberty and property while simultaneously granting the right to bear arms. To start, when the founding fathers drew out the Constitution, the most advanced firearms at the time would not even kill someone with one shot at point-blank, a far cry from today’s automatic assault rifles that can end a life in milliseconds.

Though it is highly unlikely the second amendment will be repealed or even modified in the near future, the urgent matter facing the American gun crisis is the inefficiency of current background checks and gun control policies.

The fact is that only one remaining candidate in the presidential race has promised to tighten gun control measures and not weaken them. While the second amendment does guarantee the right to bear arms, there is no evidence whatsoever that carrying weapons makes America safer. State by state, it seems that there is a clear correlation between the amount of guns in the state and the number of gun deaths. States with more guns circulating, such as Mississippi and Louisiana, also see the most gun-related deaths. Even Rust-Belt states like Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, which have been scrutinized for inner-city gang violence contributing to gun violence, have much lower rates of gun deaths than states with the loosest gun laws and more guns circulating the population. In fact, when Missouri loosened its gun control laws in 2007, the homicide rate in the state jumped 25 percent the following year, with shootings being the leading cause of homicide. No matter how you organize the facts, access to guns is America’s unique flaw that has attributed to its horrifically high rate of gun deaths. Evidently, there are still far too many loopholes around the system, and access to guns in America is already out of control. As of 2015, there is almost one gun, excluding military and police weapons, per every one person in the United States.

America’s gun crisis is not something we can keep sweeping under the rug for much longer. While mass shootings and racial bias shootings often stir up national awareness about America’s gun issue, attention often dwindles away in a matter of weeks. The protests and media coverage often lead to little or no new preventative legislation. This lack of legislation is why mass shootings occur more and more often, and why they no longer bring the same shock value they did in 1999, when two school shooters in Columbine, Colorado brought our entire nation to its knees.

If you look at previous Gallup polls, it is not an understatement to say that guns will most likely kill more than 40,000 Americans on our own soil this year. If you are bothered by this statistic, I urge you to take that into consideration when going to the polls this year. In the words of President Obama, “our thoughts and prayers for the victims are not enough.” It is clear now more than ever that something must be done — time is running out.

Matt Calhoun, GSB ’17, is a finance major from Cincinnati, Ohio.