On the night of Oct. 8, I held a candle light vigil dedicated to the nine lives that were lost at Umpqua College when an active shooter entered a class room and slaughtered nine people like cattle.

The morning after the vigil, there were two school shootings, this time at Northern Arizona University and Texas Southern University. Two people were killed in these shootings and five are injured all together. Two people have had their lives cut short today.

Their hopes and dreams are no more.

We stand here today as a nation that does not have universal background checks at a federal level. We have a Congress, that at the instruction of the gun lobby, refuses to fund research on how to prevent gun violence.

By doing this, our Congress is condoning this slaughter. We, as a nation, must do something as our children, our friends, our families and strangers are being gunned down en masse.

We must demand common sense gun reform at a federal level. We can do this if every single ISU student goes to the polls, and if they write to and call their Congress members. We, as a student body, can end this before we too, become a headline in the news.