Drop Your Guns - Blue Marble Review

If you were given the opportunity—paint can in hand and all—to graffiti anything you please, what would you paint? If you had the power in your hands to cover a public, highly visible fence with inappropriate imagery and hateful slurs, would you pounce on the opportunity? Are you a person who would rather spread hate than spread love?

This fence I stumbled upon in the outskirts of San Francisco, California was not vandalism nor graffiti but uplifting street art. This was done by a person who couldn’t bear sleeping another night imagining another person falling victim to gun violence. This was a person who might’ve lost a close friend or family member to the ongoing violence in our nation and finally had enough. But most importantly, this person wanted to spread love rather than hate.

America faces an epidemic. It is an epidemic of gun violence. With gun laws varying from state to state, the ambiguity of the matter makes it ever so dangerous in our world today. It has gotten to the point where mass shootings on the news are no longer shocking—they’ve become normal. No elementary school should already be practicing lockdown drills multiple times a year. No human being should have to constantly fear for their life wherever they go.

We must end the violence immediately. We must spread love rather than hate.

Drop your guns. Drop your mace. Join the rest of the human race.

Charlotte loves using photography to get involved in social justice issues, building applications with computer science, innovating ways to save the environment, and helping her community. She runs a Bay Area Initiative called the Community Photobooth that combines family photoshoots with philanthropy, and hosts an annual Photoshoot-Fundraiser every summer to rally even more support for local nonprofits. She also created and regularly contributes to the Focus Photo-Journal, an online photo-blog that aims to spread awareness on important issues through photojournalism. She loves to express her creativity and unleash her curiosity whenever she can–whether that’s behind her Nikon camera, through coding, or getting on her hands and knees to plant more trees around her community.