As of today, it is illegal for students to carry a firearm, concealed or not, on campus grounds at Georgia State. While the fight to change this law is underway, we must consider the following:
In an episode of “The Golden Girls,” Rose, one of the four elderly roommates, gets a gun because she is afraid of a neighborhood robber. One night her roommate Blanche comes in late with a gentlemen and a startled Rose aims and fires the gun in the dark. The shot hits a vase about a foot away from Blanche’s head. This seemingly funny sitcom moment is a reflection of America’s stalker: fear.
In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre where the gunman left 20 children and six unarmed adults dead, fear is expectedly heightened. We saw this very same reaction following the VA Tech massacre and Aurora theatre shooting. While these events are calamitous, they are not as frequent as we think and the chances of us becoming victims of such events are unlikely.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “60% of the things we fear will never take place.” This statistic is not surprising considering our recent “end of the world scare.” If we took a look back at the last 10 years we’d find a number of “promised” events that did not come to pass within the nation or our personal lives. Yet, fear is ever present. While self-defense against potential danger seems to justify gun-presence we must first ask ourselves if our campus has created such a setting that would induce fear. Let’s explore this.
Students will find that the statistical report on the Georgia State University Police page reports that from 2009-2011, no homicides were reported on our campus. The page also reports a significant decrease in both aggravated assault and rape. It has also been found, in a U.S. Justice Dept. study, that 93% of violence against college students aged 18-24 occurs off campus. Given these stats it would seem amiss to claim that our campus creates a setting of fear. If our campus does not present fear to us then what would the presence of guns on campus present to it?
While violent crime rates have decreased in recent years, the FBI Uniform Crime Report revealed that between 2006 and 2010, 47,856 people in the U.S. were killed by firearms, MORE THAN TWICE as many people that were killed by all other means combined. This is alarming evidence that the presence of a gun increases the chances of murder. Students with guns present an otherwise obsolete presence of danger and fear. Fear, albeit justified sometimes, does not make every action out fear justifiable.
By no means are we solely responsible for our fear and nor are we for the removal of it. Through mass media we have created a monster that we can no longer control. We, as students of higher learning, must join together and take up the arms of reason against this monster. First, however, we must consider.
