On April 17th, 2023, Ralph Yarl, a sixteen-year-old black teenager was shot. While trying to pick up his younger siblings Yarl accidently went to the wrong house and rang the doorbell twice. An 84-year-old white man named Andrew Lester opened his door and shot the young boy because he thought he “was getting robbed” according to the statements he gave to the officers. Yarl didn’t have a chance to even speak before Lester fired his weapon. After the gun shots he stated, “Don’t come back around here.” There are many problematic elements in this sitauion and understandably it has shaken many people across the world. Unfortunately, this is not the only shooting  of this nature that has happened recently.

In upstate New York a 20-year-old woman was shot for pulling into a driveway to turn her car around.  In Texas two teenage cheerleaders were shot for mistakenly opening the door to the wrong car. According to a New York Times article these incidents have become “It’s shoot first, ask questions later.”  This is the world we live in now, which is unexpectable. We can’t people ask questions and stop seeing the shooting of innocent people as solution. During 2021 in the US there were nearly 49,000 reported deaths caused by firearm.

Around campus students were asked and interviewed about the situations going on. “It’s very much racist, because if it was a white kid knocking at the wrong door, their first initial thought would be to respond by asking questions, as if it was a black kid they’d do the opposite,” said Senior LaNya Love. “It seems like society has come to a mindset of, kill or be killed,” said Junior Daizjah Shannon. The society itself is so judgmental and going through Covid -19 has made it worse because everyone is always expecting the worse to come. It has made people more scared and always in a fight or flight mode and with the rise of people buying guns makes it scarier.

The solution to this situation happening is taking action to reduce gun violence. Using guns for the wrong thing is a problem. Everyone that owns a gun should know when and where it is appropriate to use a gun as there’s always a time and a place for everything. So, students with this information, how do you look at things differently? And what can you do to make a change?