As a UMass student, it's hard to ignore the news stories that are circulating on not only this campus, but also on the national news recently. Thursday's Northern Illinois University shooting is the most recent in a number of college shootings that have garnered national attention.
A few weeks ago, there was a shooting in Baton Rouge, La. And there were, of course, the Virginia Tech shootings last spring. A subject that perhaps hasn't made as much news as it should is the subject of gun control.
Even after the Virginia Tech shooting, which was the most shocking and deadly mass shooting in American history, there wasn't as much talk about gun control as one would expect.
This was particularly puzzling considering that, even then, political pundits were slobbering over the upcoming presidential elections. I have vague memories of the Clinton administration, and I remember gun control being more of an issue than it was last spring.
Senator Barack Obama has been the only presidential candidate as of Friday afternoon to even respond to the shooting in Illinois, his home state.
Upon reading up on this subject, it becomes very clear that perhaps the reason for this lack of any noticeable or credible debate on gun control is that there simply aren't two coherent, rational sides to the issue.
The NRA's Web site makes it sound like even the idea of registering and tracking gun licenses and guns themselves is a flagrant violation of the Second Amendment.
Apparently anyone who supports anything resembling such tactics is a "Lefty-Loon," as one blogger on the Chicago Tribune's Web site put it. How any self-respecting politician, Democrat or Republican, is supposed to respond or corroborate that in a mature fashion is beyond me.
To an individual like myself, who has had both positive and negative experiences with guns, the idea of having to obtain a license before buying a gun, and the idea of that gun being coded and capable of being traced by the federal government, does not seem to violate any of my rights.
We have to obtain a license before we can drive a car - a mechanism that is both an inseparable part of the American identity, and capable of destruction. I often hear jokes (stated a little less politically correct than in this column) that elderly people should have to renew their driver's licenses every year to compensate for failing eye sight, physical weakness, dementia, etc.
So why is the idea of a background check to own and operate something that was exclusively invented to cause physical damage to another living organism so "un-American" and apparently socialist, fascist, communist or, God forbid, liberal?
All the logistics of the gun control debate aside, one piece of the puzzle that has been starkly absent from the news recently is the response of college students.
I mean, sure, there's already been probably a half dozen interviews with eye witnesses and family members of the victims of the NIU shooting. But that's only the acute, emotional reactions from people who shouldn't be expected to dissect or contextualize their experiences yet.
Talking to UMass students who do have opinions and have contextualized what they've been seeing in national news, and on our own campus, there seems to be a general feeling of, "How long until this happens to us?"
Maybe it is na've, but I don't think a mass shooting is in our future. Most of the violence that occurs on this campus is mainly motivated by individual conflicts and is influenced by alcohol.
Demographically, there are too many people in this small valley for there not to be occasional upsurges in violence. But considering the emphasis the current presidential candidates (some more than others) have been putting on youth turnout, I think it's time we take our concerns and worries and place them in a political context.
Clearly, we represent a population that is becoming more and more vulnerable to the policy decisions of our elders, particularly when it comes to national security. Of the number of people who are killed every day in gun-related incidents in this country, 25 percent are under the age of 20.
Whatever justifications there are for these statistics - "Oh, more people die from choking than from guns," or "64 million gun owners didn't kill someone yesterday" - it is still unacceptable for college students, or anyone in this country, to be fearful of going out their front door.
And I guess one question all those UMass students who wholeheartedly support the Second Amendment should ask themselves is, how would that off-campus fight between lacrosse players, or the attempted rape and murder in Southwest, have turned out if any or all of those individuals happened to have had guns?
Gun control, whether we like it or not, is becoming an issue that we are being forced to think about. So next time MASSPIRG hands out one of those little presidential candidate communication post cards, why not step outside the box and ask "What do you plan to do to quell gun-related violence in this country?"
Katy Bruck is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at kbruck@student.umass.edu.
Be the first to comment on this article!