Trigger warning: gun violence, mass shootings, murder, suicide

Since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of deaths and injuries caused by gun violence has continued to increase, causing concern among pro-gun and anti-gun advocates alike.

During the pandemic lockdowns enforced throughout 2020, over 19,000 gun deaths and over 39,000 gun injuries were reported. Many of these incidents happened in citizens’ homes and on the city streets due to the fear and uncertainty brought by the pandemic.

That same year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) processed over 3.7 million background checks for firearms just in the month of March. A year later, the number of background checks increased to over 4.7 million in March 2021.

According to Ann Gordon, an associate professor in Chapman University’s Department of Political Science, increases in gun sales and the amount of guns distributed throughout the nation are responsible for the visible increase in gun violence.

“Easy access (to) guns provide the illusion of power to people who feel powerless and blame others for their problems,” Arthur Blaser, a professor in Chapman’s Departments of Peace Studies and Political Science, wrote in an email to The Panther.

As of April 28, there have been over 160 shootings in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archives.

The month of April has already seen 53 shootings, three of which happened April 17: one was at an Airbnb party in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which resulted in the death of two minors and eight other individuals injured, another was in Boston, Massachusetts’ Chinatown neighborhood where two people were in critical condition (there have been no updates on the status of their injuries) and the last was the murder of one individual in a Sacramento parking lot. Most recently, there was a shooting April 22 in Washington D.C., which resulted in four injured victims and the shooter being killed.

Michael Schwartz, the executive director for Orange County Gun Owners, told The Panther that he is “highly concerned” about the spike in violent crime. Though, he explained he is not very supportive of gun laws due to the racial controversy surrounding their history in the U.S; before the Civil War ended, the Black population was prohibited from owning a gun.  

According to Schwartz, the Orange County Gun Owners organization as a whole believes that law-abiding adults of all racial, ethnic, gender and sexual identities should be able to have tools available to protect themselves from violent crime.

“Especially in California, where we have such a diverse community, it’s important that every community is safe from violent crime, whatever the root cause of that violent crime is and whatever the motivating factor is behind the criminal,” Schwartz said. “We want to make sure that everybody who wants to has the choice to defend themselves with the most effective self-defense tool ever created by human beings.”

Sayre Weaver, the policy advisor for Brady Orange County, said in an interview with The Panther that society has “just begun to start understanding” the different aspects of gun violence, and she also noted that California has been able to have lower rates of gun deaths compared to other states.

These lower rates, Weaver says, are happening due to the state having more gun violence preventative laws and attributing more funds to gun violence prevention. One way these funds have manifested is through the California Violence Reduction, Intervention and Prevention Program, which received $9 million in funding.

“I think there is (also) a much greater public awareness about gun trafficking and what contributes to gun trafficking and how trafficking is rleated to violence and to drug-related offenses,” Weaver said. “(California) has a lot of laws directed towards regulating the firearms industry, which don’t exist in other states and certainly not at the national level, and by that, I’m including retail dealers.”

Christian Grevin, a senior political science and history double major at Chapman, based his senior thesis off of people’s fear of mass shootings and the correlation it has with social media. In his research, Grevin found that this fear increased the more people used social media.

“Social media is a unique platform that’s differentiated from previous types of media in the sense that you have 24-hour access (and) you can access it pretty much anywhere,” Grevin said. “Even if you go on an app for other reasons like to connect with friends or maybe to look at different things, you’re most likely going to come into contact with whatever is trending at that period of time, which is often leading political events or stuff in the news like mass shootings.”

Grevin also found that the age group that was more fearful of being a victim of a mass shooting was college students, primarily due to having more social media consumption than other age groups as well as the places in which many mass shootings have occurred.

“A lot of mass shootings occur in places in which you find (college students): schools, movie theatres, malls, stuff like that,” Grevin said. “These are areas that are predominantly occupied by younger generations as opposed to older generations, which has an impact on (college students’) fear of being a victim.”

One solution that some experts, including Gordon and Blaser, feel could help combat gun violence would be requiring universal background checks, which would not allow domestic abusers and those with felonies to buy guns from unlicensed dealers. Currently, background checks only occur when the gun is being purchased from a licensed dealer, though a 2015 survey found that 22% of guns are obtained from unlicensed dealers in the U.S.

“It’s important to understand that (these background checks) are part of the picture and need to be truly universal rather than targeting (gun owners) and protecting (non-gun owners),” Blaser wrote to The Panther.

Currently, some cities like Charleston, South Carolina let individuals buy a gun if the background check does not come back within three business days. But a typical background check in South Carolina will usually come back within minutes or within days, according to the U.S. Concealed Carry Association. 

According to Gordon, the individual arrested for killing nine people at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, would not have been able to buy the gun he had if the state had closed the “loophole.”

Gordon recommends students who wish to combat gun violence take the time to educate themselves on the issues surrounding gun violence and also learn about the different organizations and campaigns that are pushing for change. One such campaign is Stop The Bleed, which focuses on teaching individuals how to apply pressure to a wound and pack a wound.

Schwartz, meanwhile, feels that requiring citizens to obtain a Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) permit through a local licensing authority, such as the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, is a good place to start. In California, CCW permits are issued by county sheriffs as long as the citizen requesting it meets criteria such as having a good reason to carry the weapon and having “good moral character.”

“It’s turned out that people who go through that process of getting a CCW as a subgroup actually commit fewer crimes than the general population or even other groups like police officers,” Schwartz said.