by Breanna Adamick

Gun violence has become an extremely common occurrence, and it does not look like that threat is going anywhere. Rates of gun violence continue to climb, making it clear and obvious that we have a gun problem. Anyone who says otherwise, respectfully, has no idea what they are talking about or what world they live in.   

Most of us are familiar with the recent gun-related lockdowns that The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill has faced in the span of a few weeks at the beginning of this semester. The first incident occurred with a highly stressful and confusing campus and community lockdown on August 28, when a shooter was reported at large. This event ended in the tragic fatality of a UNC professor, leaving the community bereft and angry. It also made many people wary; with such a tragedy occurring on the first day of the new semester, how many more times might they have the opportunity to experience something like this before the semester comes to an end? 

Just 16 days later, on September 13, there was an incident involving a man brandishing a gun at an employee in the Student Union, which resulted in the second lockdown of the semester. Fortunately, no fatality occurred, and yet the aftermath of another lockdown so soon after the first is undoubtedly taking a toll upon students. How can you focus on your studies, work or college experience when you cannot help but constantly scan your surroundings to assess an impending threat? 

Even our much smaller community at Greensboro College has not managed to remain untouched from gun violence. It was only last summer, July of 2022, when one of our own was killed in an isolated act of gun violence. I am speaking of the then rising-junior student, Shy’heem Clemons, whose life was taken senselessly and violently while he was at a mall near his home in South Carolina. While this occurred off campus over summer break, it was still an event that impacted many in our community who knew Shy—those who had been in classes with him, played football with him, watched him play or else just saw his smiling face around campus. Such a tragedy may not have happened if we had stricter gun laws and regulations.  

The United States averages 40,000 deaths from firearms annually. We are the only high-income country to report such an extreme death toll from gun violence. According to Gun Violence Archive, there were 692 mass shootings in 2021, which exclude the 20,000 or so other gun homicides, 25,000 gun suicides and 115,000 non-fatal gun injuries—18,000 of those being children shot annually, either killed or wounded. Other statistics include that roughly 321 people are shot daily in America, with around 22 of those being children 17 and under. Further information to note, is that from 2011 to 2020, there were about 160 mass shootings, with around 30% of them occurring in the workplaces and about 25% of them occurring in schools.  

There is such a vast divide about how to deal with this issue, however. So many Americans emphasize the need to revise gun laws to be more restrictive in order to prevent so much violence, yet still many others demand just the opposite—that their constitutional right to bear arms be continually upheld. Here is an eye-opener for you, though, if you did not already know: more people die by guns than by motor vehicle accidents. Fatal motor vehicle accidents are incredibly common—it is one of the leading causes of death, after all. Yet, gun violence beats it by around 3,000 people yearly.  

In 2021, 45,034 people died by gunfire while 42,915 died in motor vehicle accidents. There are an estimated 234.9 million licensed drivers and only 81.4 million gun owners. People will never stop driving cars until self-driving cars are completely mandated someday; it is not feasible to suggest the use of cars be restricted, due to how our society operates. Guns, however, are a different story. Are guns essential to the everyday functioning of the average person? Absolutely not. So, why should practically anyone and everyone be allowed to access them? 

No matter what, I believe it should be obvious that we need better restrictions and regulations as to who may purchase a firearm. It is far too easy to purchase a gun in the United States, as there are only a few simple steps you need to complete before you become a gun-owner. One of those is a background check by the FBI, but the only chance a person has of getting denied a gun is if they have a record of convictions exceeding two years or have been declared “mentally defective” by a court. That amounts to a less than one percent chance of being denied.  

That also relies on the person in question having ever been caught in an illegal activity that would make them ineligible to own a gun, or else having a court pronounce them of having a questionable mental state. All you have to do to be able to purchase a firearm is not have verifiable evidence against you. That does not exclude as many people as one would hope when it comes to the purchase of such a dangerous weapon.  

Even with the extremely easy way of legally obtaining a gun, there is also plenty of opportunity to purchase a gun illegally—without undergoing a background check at all. Therein lies a big problem, because this shows that even our basic regulations for gun-ownership could be easily avoided. Problems such as these are the ones we absolutely must turn our attention to and seek to remedy in the near future.  

I do not pretend to have the answers to solve this growing gun problem we have going on in our country, but I do believe there are people who have important ideas on how we can work to improve this situation. The key is to listen with an open mind. It is likely that we all share the common desire to see less heart-breaking headlines about more lives, young and old, continually lost due to the overwhelming presence of guns in this society. If we can only overcome the division our country faces on this incredibly important topic and work to find a solution that both compromises and improves—considering our rights but also safety regulations—we could do a lot of good. I believe such a solution comes with increased restrictions and regulations before purchasing a firearm, as well as increasing our attempts to eliminate illegal weapon distribution.