Paranoia, Paranoia, Everybody’s Comin’ To Get Me!
The world can be a terrifying place – there’s no denying it. And the increased amount of mass-shootings happening around the country are not helping.

Did you know that as of Wednesday, Dec. 2, there have been 335 mass shootings in the United States this year alone? In case you were wondering, that’s 335 shootings in 336 days. That’s insane.
And what I would really like to know is how the hell I am ever going to feel safe now.

Burlington is a pretty tame city, but I don’t really feel safe here anymore. Especially as we’re getting into winter and it gets darker sooner, it’s scary to walk around.

I have to pretend to be on the phone when I walk across campus at 7 p.m. and I’m still hyper-aware of my surroundings.

Sometimes when I’m in my dorm room and hear people outside, I pray they don’t suddenly rush in and attack me, and sometimes I even check my closet when I come back from a shower, just to make sure no one is there.

Now, granted, I’m probably slightly more paranoid than the average person, but the point still stands! This is getting out of hand and we can’t pretend it’s not affecting all of us.
No activity is safe anymore. Want to go to the movies? Oops. Thinking of running a marathon? Maybe not. Want to just attend college as a woman? Sorry, some crazy guy who couldn’t get a date is going to come shoot you.

And the most ridiculous example: sending your kids to elementary school. Not even that is safe anymore. How did it become a possibility that while your seven-year-olds are learning their multiplication tables, a twenty-something with a rifle could burst in and kill them?
We can no longer shrug these off as impossibilities because they can and have and probably will happen. That is horrifying.

With news of this latest shooting in San Bernardino, California we’re having the same feelings we always do: sadness for the victims of this tragedy and frustration that these events keep happening.

But this is not an isolated incident, and we need to start working to fix it. When people try to talk about gun control after events like these, others swoop in and push it under the rug and say “I can’t believe you’d try to use this tragedy for your political purposes!”

Surely we shouldn’t be insensitive, but we need to start having intelligent conversations about gun control. I should be able to feel safe doing everyday activities, not paranoid I’m going to become another mass-shooting death statistic.