Recently, there have been two incidents involving guns that made me realize how we, as American college students, have become desensitized to gun violence. One was the church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and the other was when our campus went under lockdown because there was a gunman nearby. Fortunately, everybody at Skidmore is okay; the gunman never reached the campus.
During the Skidmore lockdown, it appeared as though people were concerned, to some extent, but pretty relaxed in context. My friends and I were watching a Harry Potter movie in the basement of our dormitory, which was safer than being on the first floor where I live with my roommate. We were receiving text updates, and when they opened the dining hall, students walked from their rooms to the dining hall, ate food, and left. Although I can’t tell you what everybody was thinking, I can tell you that besides the amount of students in the dining hall and the security, not much was different.
When the Texas shooting happened, I was in Washington, DC. Somebody had posted an article on Facebook, and when I told my friends about it, they seemed unfazed.
This made me think back to the first famous mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I remember watching it on the news and crying with my parents, and all we talked about in school that week was the shooting, and whether or not it should affect the gun laws in this country. Obama made his speech about it, about how we need stricter gun laws. Now there are mass shootings, and nobody is having any sort of conversation.
Gun violence has gone from a national story and a very emotional, disturbing event, to a story that gets scrolled through on Facebook. If people stop caring, nothing will change.