My University Could Have Been Next

This post was published on April 6, 2018 on my old blog, samplesizedwriting.wordpress.com

My university could have been the site of the country's next mass shooting.

Syracuse University, the place I live, work, attend school, and roam for nine out of the twelve months of the year.

I could have become one of so many high school and college students before me who experienced the sheer terror of the place they were meant to feel safe and get an education suddenly become a place of death and devastation.

My friends, classmates, professors, and I could be in therapy, hospitals, or caskets right now.

But we aren't. And that's because of luck, gun control, and everyone doing exactly what should be done.

A news story broke yesterday evening that a former SU student was stockpiling ammunition and gun accessories, made threats about carrying out a mass shooting, and even attempted to buy an AR-15. He was caught because of a combination of sheer luck and many, many people working together and doing their jobs.

He was stopped because a gun store owner refused to sell the former student a gun and reported his suspicious behavior to the police.

He was stopped because authorities were able to find out that he had a history of mental health problems and feelings of violence and had previously sought psychiatric care on multiple occasions.

He was stopped because a maintenance worker in his building found ammunition in his room.

He was stopped because his friends reported his threats and suspicious behavior to the university.

He was stopped because through all of this, police had enough to obtain a search warrant and issue an involuntary order to commit him to a psychiatric hospital.

He was stopped because all the precautions that are meant to happen in cases like these happened. He was stopped because of background checks and because his friends were worried and because police investigated and the school took action. Everything miraculously worked, and I am so grateful for that. I am so grateful that people I care about and see every day are still safe, and I am so grateful that I am still safe, and that we didn't have to experience something so tragic. We didn't have to be the next mass shooting reported on the news this year.

But we got lucky.

Even the authorities and the news article itself said that we got lucky. If his friends hadn't reported him to the school, if an alarm hadn't gone off in his apartment, if the gun store owner wasn't so careful, everything could have gone so differently, and so badly.

And this is why I am going to fight for gun control and I am going to fight for the kids who were gunned down in their schools and universities and why I am going to elect representatives who believe in gun control and better background checks.

I am going to fight and vote because I got lucky and I still can, and there are kids just like me who didn't get lucky.

I want to make our country safer. The reason my university is safe, the reason I am safe, is because of police and background checks and people reporting suspicious activity, and that needs to happen everywhere. And I don't want to leave my personal safety up to luck again. I need to know this can be prevented, not by a convenient set of circumstances, but by 100% concrete laws. And I need to know that my siblings and my nieces and my friends both here and at other universities will be safe because of those same laws.

Next time I might not be so lucky. Our country needs to change.