Essay 1

When I was just a little boy, my family went out regularly probably once a week to pick up trash. Perhaps due to our Buddhist religion and my parents wished to clean up the area for good karma. Of course, I did not really think much of it at the time but just a chore to do and it wasn’t like I can say no. What I did think about a lot during these travels though, is the absurd amount of trash and the range of what people threw out. Maybe 40% of it just to be generous is just the wind blowing trash out of garbage cans, but what about the other 60%?

As we took our walk through the cool evening wind with our supermarket plastic bags which at the time didn’t cost anything at all, and our cheap BBQ prongs bought specifically for trash picking. We start picking, one by one, into only two bags set for one travel. One for me and my little brother, and another for my dad and stepmom. I practically tried to rush it to fill up our bag as soon as possible to go back or just wait for my parents to finish theirs. While they finish however, I start to notice the different kinds of trash being thrown, plastic, paper, metal, the three main things being thrown out into the streets. Even nearby playgrounds and parks have trash everywhere. Especially after rainy days when we go out to pick trash. I jump back as the plastic bags with water puddle splashes everywhere when lifted, the muddy water sometimes covering other trash beneath it. From broken glass to empty soda cans and plastic junk food bags. They don’t decay out in the mud or grass and yet some people still decide to just throw them onto the streets instead of holding onto them until they find a public trash can.

The Bronx park’s river filled with trash. I remember it well. While bicycling with my family through the park, I noticed the shine in the waters glaring into my eyes. Where the dirt meets the flowing waters, a soda can stays right between slightly buried into the dirt. The park benches littered with paper drink cups spilled onto the floor. The grass in the park hides various thrown and dropped garbage waiting for people to accidentally step on them. Where can I rest when every place feels filthy.

So back home we go, till another day comes and find our backyard towered with unwanted plants sheltering bugs. Now brought to my dad’s attention we were forced to clean up the backyard. Equipped with large garbage bags, gardening gloves, hedge shears, and a powered grass cutter we get to work. In the middle of working however, the cut grass started revealing different garbage that had either thrown or flown to our backyard, once again a nasty sight to see a dirtied plastic bag. Used aluminum containers buried a few inches deep in the soil. A rusty wrench? A lot of potential danger to the powered grass cutter.

Natures beauty ruined, the surface of the earth littered with trash. How can people allow themselves to throw these types of unperishable objects onto the roads, the rivers, the grass. I simply wish to enjoy nature, breathing in that fresh air, not greeted by that muddied and decaying food on the ground. Accidents happen, trips and falls are common, dropping wastes on the floor along with it, but it is not unreasonable to clean up quickly instead of dashing away as if they were not the culprit. Is there no guilt that comes when dropping that empty plastic bottle who had fulfilled its purpose of quenching thirst onto the floor, knowing that it will be kicked a million times around until buried in the rivers and soil where it will remain for centuries.

People drop their garbage thinking others would take care of it, and eventually teach their kids unknowingly or perhaps knowingly and just don’t care. So simply by going with that train of thought, from one person to ten, eventually reaching hundreds to thousands with the same action and belief of others taking care of it, the ground would be littered with tons of trash with only a few to throw them away. It absolutely hurts to see the streets and what people have done to it.

I simply see trash as a threat and only wish for it to be solved which in the simplest way is just telling everyone to throw their trash away, but the issue there is that it has already been done. There are even laws which says no littering. Perhaps some see this law as a form of strict control on their lives by the government which is such an absolute idiotic thought and analysis. Or perhaps some want to be that cool person who doesn’t care, maybe they even think that life is too short to worry about throwing away trash. There are many thoughts and yet none of them viably proves to me why people are incapable of following an extremely simple action of throwing or cleaning their mess in a publicly accessible garbage can.

In my architecture college class, we learned about the history of certain parks in Manhattan, and in that lesson, a particular idea was presented. The idea that people wanted a place to escape, to leave the city life and go onto a countryside and enjoy the greenery and fresh air. Thus the park was created for a place for people to easily go to for that quick escape of stressful city life. But do we see a lot of trash in the countryside? No, so doesn’t that quite literally destroy the image and idea of what a park should do? When the area is filled with garbage to break that illusion for people, a place in a city and not a untouched patch of fresh air and grass.

 

Op-ed

Should the government ban guns? Well according to the Second Amendment “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”, in other words, the government can’t take away people’s legally owned guns from their hands. Although many may argue that taking away guns will allow criminals to not have access to a mass murder weapon thus killing fewer people, I however, disagree with that because criminals don’t follow the law. They steal, rob, kill and much worse have been done so why would they follow the law? They can simply get guns illegally through other measures and when they do, what can we as citizens protect ourselves with? In an article by Fox News “Where do criminals really get their guns?” A survey found 43 percent bought their guns from the black market, 6 percent stole the guns, 10 percent bought the guns from retail while less than 1 percent bought it from a gun show. A combined 26 percent got their guns either from their family or friends, purchasing to give guns to criminals. This is the main usage of having guns, to protect ourselves, our family, and friends from harm and danger. To have a gun is to have a responsibility to take care of the gun and protect the people around you. What the government should do is to enact a stricter gun control law such as more thorough background checks on not only the person who wants a gun but also the people around them who may potentially try to use the gun as proven before where criminals sometimes get their guns from their relatives and friends. They should also do more check-ups on the psychological health of gun owners regularly perhaps monthly. I also believe more funds and resources should be put towards cracking down on illegal gun sellers in the black market, cracking down on the source of where people can get guns, and letting everyone who owns a gun keep a very hard security on it. Part of the problem as well is the security, where sometimes kids can get access to guns. Of course, if that happens obviously the parents who owned the guns should get their gun license taken away permanently but before that let’s talk about the immense variety of gun locks and such. There are so many bad gun locks out there which I’ve just learned about after watching “thelockpickinglawyer” youtube videos, some of which showed a gun lock being opened with a child’s Lego toy figure. Instead of having so many options where people don’t know what to buy, why not have just one really well-designed gun lock where only the owner can operate it.

In IndyStar.com, Beth Walker researched that in 2017, nearly 112,000 people had failed the federal firearms background check. She continues with saying “passing more gun control will only make it harder for the honest, hard-working Americans to defend themselves.” I do not particularly agree with this. I think getting a gun should be hard, not only does that show how carefully you should treat your guns if the process of getting them is really difficult, but it will also prove to be harder for criminals to get them easily through regular purchasing or from their family and friends. In QNS.com, Gregory Meeks proposed an answer to reduce gun violence through setting gun safety measures such as the universal background checks, requiring a license to purchase a gun and such ideas which I also believed should have been done. These different ways can easily restrict people who has a history of let’s say domestic violence to get a gun.

There are so many solutions to one thing that people keep blaming on when a mass shooting happens. Guns. There is a very common saying which I believe everyone has heard about already. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” If the weak want to use guns to defend themselves and their family, they can go through the hard work to get a gun or simply get a taser as a second option. Guns should not be banned but it also shouldn’t be available that easily to people either. So, the government should work on knowing where all the guns are being sold and who they are sold to.

Sources:

McKay, Hollie. “Where Do Criminals Really Get Their Guns?” Fox News, FOX News Network, 19 Feb. 2020, www.foxnews.com/us/where-do-criminals-get-guns.

Meeks, Gregory. “Op-Ed: We Must Act Now to End Gun ViolenceGre.” QNS.com, 2 Oct. 2019, qns.com/2019/10/op-ed-we-must-act-now-to-end-gun-violence/.

Walker, Beth. “Op-Ed: ‘Firearms Are a Way of Life for Many Americans’.” The Indianapolis Star, IndyStar, 25 Apr. 2019, www.indystar.com/story/opinion/2019/04/25/op-ed-firearms-way-life-many-americans/3567035002/.