My Interactive Project targets the people of Texas and the Federal Government. As mentioned in the very first slide of my Storymap, in the last 5 years Texas has had three of the worst mass shootings to date. This is not acceptable and there needs to be reform in how the Government is handling these heartbreaking situations and how Texans view their gun privilege's. My project makes it clear how many fatalities and injuries were in each mass shooting to force my audience to realize the destruction of firearms. This project communicates to the audience that this cycle of homicides should not be happening and puts into perspective how poor gun control laws are in Texas. Near the end of my project, I include a few real solutions to battling this ongoing issue like gun control, red flag, and safe storage laws. Implementing these into Texas’ laws can decrease mass shootings and keep citizens more safe.
To create this Storymap, I first started researching about the recent Udalve shooting and learned that Texas has been a prime area for mass shootings. As for the first slide, I included an image of a gun violence protest to show the audience what the message is. Moving forward, I found images that corresponded with each shooting and used that as their front cover. I put the names of each shooting in bold and included the year of each shooting to provide a cohesive timeline. Also, I am a firm believer that the caption underneath these titles play an important role as they stand out to the audience, so I decided to put the death and injured counts there. I then included a brief overview of what happened in the shootings in case my audience was not sure of what happened in these situations. Moreover, I incorporated the locations of these shootings into the project. Lastly, I changed the “Map Type” to “Stamen Maps: Toner Life” to match the serious tone of my message. I believe using the Storymap effectively portrays my message as it geographically shows that all these mass shootings occurred in a close proximity and within one state.
After completing the final project in this course, I learned that change in gun laws need to be prioritized for the safety of not only Texans but in all regions of the world. The thought of being able to easily have a firearm in certain parts of the world seems terrifying. With recent events, it is difficult to feel safe or feel that your relatives are in a safe space. Even regular day activities like going to school and grocery shopping are not safe with the lack of gun law enforcement. Approaching these mass shootings, I’ve learned that the Government needs to step up and do better at handling these laws. We can no longer afford any more tragedies and it should be a top commitment to diminish gun violence. I have provided just a few solutions on how to come about this.