Guns do not make me feel safe

I know this blog is called "Mixed Race America," and I've tried to really keep this as a blog rather than a journal--which means, I try to stay "on-point" and to write about things that fit the topic of this blog.

But I've been saddened and disturbed for the last few months over what feels to be an increase in senseless gun violence, particularly on university campuses.

I suppose that as a college professor, this cuts close to home for me--that I feel this issue because I realize, all too clearly, that what happened at Virginia Tech or Northern Illinois University could happen at Southern U. I don't know what I'd do if someone came into Southern U. and began to randomly shoot people. I'd like to think I would act heroically, as so many teachers and students did at Virginia Tech and NIU. I'm reminded, particularly, of the professors in the science building at Virginia Tech who literally used their bodies to shield students from gunfire. I hope I never have to find out how I'd react in such a situation.

And I suppose I'm thinking about this, this week, because two young women were found murdered near campus in their respective Southern college towns: Lauren Burk, a freshman at Auburn University in Auburn, AL, was shot in the head and left for dead on the side of a highway Tuesday. And Eve Carson, a senior at UNC Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, NC, a woman who was also the Student Body President of that school, was also found dead due to multiple gunshot wounds.

I know there are people who believe that if we made guns more accessible to everyone--if we allowed everyone to carry a concealed handgun, we'd make the world safer because we'd be able to defend ourselves better and that there'd be less violence, potentially, because people wouldn't know who was packing and who wasn't.

I just don't buy it. The simplest and sanest solution seems to be more handgun control.

Again, I know this doesn't relate directly to the topic of this blog. But with every news story that I read about senseless murders--especially young people--it just makes me feel heartsick. And it makes me realize that I wouldn't feel safer owning a gun. I wish more people would take away that message every time they read about a senseless murder. And there are, unfortunately, a flurry of stories in the last month about senseless murders--particularly domestic ones: a man in California murders his family in their sleep, a teenage girl murders her family in their sleep, and today in Israel, a gunman opened fire on a Jewish seminar and killed 8 and wounded 9 others.

(sigh)

I suppose there's nothing more to say to this except to hope that one day, we may actually wake up as a world and become civilized and stop this madness.