Fifty innocent lives were recently taken in two different mosques in New Zealand.

Al Noor mosque was the first of the two mosques hit on March 15 where 42 of the 50 victims’ lives were taken and many others were injured. The next attack happened at Linwood mosque where eight other lives were lost.

Only six days after the terrible occurrence, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand took action against all military-style assault rifles along with all high-capacity ammunition.

When it comes to the citizens of New Zealand who own these now-banned weapons, they will be able to turn in their weapons with a buyback plan.

New Zealand hadn’t had a mass shooting since the 1997 shooting known as the Raurimu massacre.

Keep in mind, the United States has had mass shootings more often than New Zealand — so why is it that no action has been taken to enforce stricter gun laws?

Some may argue that it is the person who kills and not the gun. In some ways, those people are right — but stop and think for a moment. Wouldn’t fewer tragedies happen if those people didn’t have any way to get a hold on these weapons? Sure, you can argue that the killers still could have found other ways to kill but you can’t deny that it would be to a much lesser extent.

If we take a look at multiple statistics from 1966 to now, the United States has had too many mass shooting for no change to occur. When it comes to the Las Vegas Massacre — which is considered one of the most recent deadliest massacres in modern U.S. history — we can see that not much was done to achieve genuine and effective change.

According to a New York Times article, to obtain a gun in the United States, only two simple steps are all you need to get through — the first being passing a background check and the second being buying the gun itself. Although some individual states have further restrictions when it comes to obtaining a gun, the process still makes it fairly easy for anyone to get one compared to other countries.

Many times throughout history we have seen many of these tragedies get lost in the news cycle. The story becomes top news in every outlet, only to be forgotten about a couple weeks later. It shouldn’t be that way. We shouldn’t let issues like these become so normalized that we forget about them days later, only to move on like nothing happened up until the point where it happens again.

Whether some people agree or disagree with the actions that the Prime Minister of New Zealand took against the issue, it is appreciated nonetheless that Ardern proved to all New Zealand citizens, if not everyone who has heard of occurrence, that such tragedies are something that should not be ignored and forgotten.