A Day in the Life

**IMPORTANT: This article contains mentions of gun violence, death, and mental health. If you feel uncomfortable with these topics, please refrain from reading.

August 28, 2023. A student at the University of North Carolina shot and killed a professor in the Applied Physical Sciences department. (1) Luckily, during the proceedings, I was sitting comfortably in my lab at the UNC medical school. While I was situated a good 10 minute walk from where the shooting occurred, I was nonetheless surprised at how little was being done in the case the shooter came near. The windows remained un-boarded and the lab doors remained open, all while a wave of terror spread throughout the rest of campus.

For hours, I stayed in the lab, checking social media and wondering what was going on. The lack of information was concerning. Every hour, Alert Carolina (UNC’s emergency alert system) sent the same message: “Remain sheltered in place. This is an ongoing situation.” Meanwhile, rumors were circulating online, rumors suggesting a hostage situation, multiple armed individuals, multiple students and faculty dead…

After four hours, it came to an end. The shooting resulted in a lockdown at UNC Chapel Hill and most of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools; the violence also took place on the 6th day of classes at UNC and the 1st day for most Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools.

Following the incident, UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz released the following statement: (2)

"I am devastated and saddened by today’s shooting in one of our campus buildings, a place where we conduct our important work of teaching, mentoring and research every day… This shooting damages the trust and safety that we so often take for granted on our campus. We will work to rebuild that trust and safety."

Unfortunately, events like this have become just too common over the past decade. We have all seen the graphs of mass shootings or school shootings or lives lost due to gun violence trending exponentially upwards, and upon first hearing of the violence occurring on campus, I admit I was worried of being part of yet another statistic. (A graph showing this trend is included below). (3)

Yet now I realize that there are two sides of this issue. On one side, people who have never experienced/been affected by an act of gun violence who see this issue as one about data, statistics, and numbers. On the other side, people who have been affected by gun violence and see this issue as a matter of life versus death. Now, I believe that this may be a spectrum (people who have been affected may not always care and some may care even if unaffected), but the point is this: you do not realize until you have been there and been affected.

Who decides gun policy? To many the answer is obvious, policymakers and gun rights associations (namely the NRA). The argument is simple: the people in power who are responsible for creating gun control policy have not experienced or been affected by gun violence and thus do not fully understand it. Ironically, the people who have been affected, representing an astoundingly significant portion of the US population, do not have much power to change the laws that actually affect them.

This is why we see a similar trend when it comes to gun violence: someone somewhere commits an act of violence, the community affected experiences a period of collective grief which turns into anger and outrage, that community then begins advocating for change, ultimately creating little to no political momentum in the long run. Then, another act of gun violence occurs… Below, I provide a list of the most recent school shootings in the US with of course the most recent being that at UNC Chapel Hill. (4)

The gun control opposition, backed by the NRA, is strong. Research shows that in 2021, the NRA spent $4.2 million on lobbying efforts focused on eliminating gun control measures. (5) Additionally, since 2010, the NRA has provided over $140 million to political candidates who oppose gun control, effectively making it harder for those who support regulation to stay in office.

After speaking to my friends after the shooting, I’ve begun thinking: was this really another “school shooting” or a symptom of another (perhaps even larger) crisis in the US: the mental health crisis. We know now that the shooter at UNC was struggling with mental health issues: is this an issue with academia and PhD programs in general or something else uniquely American? I posit that while it is absolutely essential for academic administrators to take a hard look at education systems (improve well-being by reducing competitiveness), it is scarily easy for people in America to acquire a weapon and use it to commit acts of violence. Thus, gun violence may be the result of governmental inaction and also a poor environment cultivated by school administrators. I raise two questions that I believe, if given bipartisan attention, could reduce the number of mental health and gun violence related incidents across the US:

• What safeguards can we implement to ensure that gun-purchasing individuals have good intent?

• How can we protect the health of all students and faculty, be it physical, mental, spiritual, and social?

In my previous article titled “Treating the Untreatable,” I discuss ways to improve mental health amongst adolescents. (6) As I conclude this article, I want to discuss some ways to limit gun access and ensure those who purchase guns have “good intent” (Question 1). To do this, I will compare US policies with those of South Korea. I chose South Korea simply because the nation has a very low rate of gun deaths per capita (roughly 1-2 people per 10 million). (7)

The South Korean government limits the types of weapons civilians may possess: in South Korea, non-military individuals may not own pistols, machine guns, and automatic or semi-automatic weapons, whereas in the US many of these are commonplace. (8) In South Korea, gun owners must be at least 20 years of age and must register their weapons and undergo background checks to gain and renew their gun license. (9) Finally, individuals in South Korea who own weapons illegally (even toy weapons) face harsh punishments of up to 15 years in prison. (10)

In North Carolina, while most gun-buyers must be background checked before purchasing a gun, as of March 29, 2023, individuals no longer need a permit to purchase a handgun and the government is thus not capable of storing information about each gun owner. (11) Even more worrying, potential buyers do not need to be background checked if they purchase from private dealers or buy certain exempt weapons. Many of South Korea’s strict policies seem sensible to reduce the violence we see in the US and clearly they are working, so why haven’t we adopted a similar agenda?

More and more of the American population is affected by gun violence everyday; UNC is but one example. Although the American people clamor for gun policy change, it is important to note that a change in gun policy alone will not solve this issue. Cases like the violence that occurred at UNC show that improving mental health is a crucial part of the puzzle to eliminating violence throughout the country. However, after years of NRA lobbying and a constant agenda that prioritizes the profits of the few over the lives of the many, a change in policy agenda will not only increase momentum for further policy changes to address the lives lost due to violence, but it will also create support from the common people, a population growing more and more vocal with each passing day. Enough is enough #TarHeelStrong. By bridging mental health support networks, structural changes to the education system, and stricter gun ownership laws, the US government and school administrators can build safer communities for students to live, work, play, and grow into responsible citizens.