![]() What is most important for us now is figuring out what comes next. I know I sound cynical, but I promise I hope to be wrong. And - on cue - the cycle will continue once again with similar cries for change. Nevertheless, the news media will move on like they always have, until there is another incident that is perhaps more grave and calamitous, as there always seems to be. The investigation will make clear how much gun laws, or the lack thereof, shaped the destructive actions that took place this week. While I’m sure the shooting will spark local and national headlines on gun laws and gun control, I have little faith that anything will come out of it. We often want to resume a “normal” after such occurrences, but how can we when there has just been so much loss? How much time is enough? I’m finding myself stuck on how quotidian gun violence has become, how little is being done to prevent it and how we are expected to move forward.īecause these incidents occur so frequently, we can become desensitized and numb to them – even when they're so close to home. Though it was removed by House Speaker Tim Moore, the fact that this legislation was introduced and supported demonstrates a dismissal of the continuous outcry for more strict gun control - including the student-led March For Our Lives movement on our campus. Constitutional Carry Act, which would’ve allowed individuals to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Earlier this year, North Carolina lawmakers debated over the N.C. This cannot be what students’ parents had in mind when they dropped them off in Chapel Hill earlier this month.ĭespite these alarming statistics and decades of harm, both federal and state regulations and gun laws remain stagnant. Worse yet, many children who survived or were the same age as the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, one of the deadliest in the nation’s history, are now in college - only to face the same kind of debilitating fear once again. We grew up hearing about Columbine, and the list of school shootings only increases every year. The history of gun violence in American schools is too devastating to reproduce. Gun violence has become a seemingly permanent fixture in our everyday lives, and our flagship University is no different. It seems there is no place untouched by this tragedy. Just this past weekend, a gunman in Jacksonville, Fla., opened fire in a Dollar General. Locations include churches, restaurants, supermarkets and clubs. These acts of violence have happened everywhere, with various motivations. These statistics - and the people behind them - are just a fraction of a longer history and pattern of immense death and loss that spans decades. Nearly half of these are categorized as homicide, murder, unintentional or defensive gun use. These instances are among increased cases of gun-related violence in Chapel Hill and numerous acts that have occurred in other states.Īccording to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been over 28,000 deaths by various forms of gun violence in 2023 thus far. The next year, a report of an armed individual near UNC-Chapel Hill triggered campuswide emergency protocol, though that report was determined to be false. In 2019, two students were killed and four injured when a gunman opened fire in a classroom at UNC Charlotte. While this is the first time I have ever been in this situation, it is, unfortunately, very familiar to so many across the United States. I heard about barricaded classrooms, frightened students and conflicting reports on the status of the shooter. ![]() I, too, was frantically reaching out to my friends and graduate student colleagues who were teaching, in class or in our grad office. My phone lit up with calls and text messages from concerned family and friends worried about my safety. I was home after a morning meeting on campus when the alerts about sheltering in place were sent out. This tragedy, which ended with the death of a faculty member, is a sobering reminder of the prevalence of gun violence in our country. On Monday, not even two full weeks into the fall semester, our University was put on lockdown under the threat of an active shooter. TW: This article mentions gun violence and death.
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