By BRIANA SPINA
News Editor
The topic of gun control has always been contentious, and with the increasingly violent shootings, the debate has come to the forefront. The Black Student Union (BSU) organized a dialogue for Saint Rose students to engage with this topic. Three signs on different walls of the classroom read “pro-gun control,” “neutral,” and “anti-gun control.” Students were instructed to sit on the side of the room which corresponded with their current perspective on the topic.
Khia Duncan, president of BSU, told the audience that “by the end of the debate, you may switch sides.” She also established ground rules, centering on “respect” and “let[ting] people speak.” The debate was originally supposed to be about hate speech, but Duncan and the rest of the executive board decided to change it to gun control due to it being a hot topic.
A series of questions were presented to the students, and they ended up being so thought-provoking that there was not time to go through them all. The debate started out with a question of whether gun control is embedded within American culture. Student Lasha Ellis immediately pointed out that “there’s gun violence everywhere, not just America.” In response, Victoria Bryan reminded her that “Denmark is the safest country in the world, and guns are totally outlawed.” Tariq Wiggins, from his neutral perspective, said that he “wouldn’t blame it on the whole culture” because that implies that “these values are shared across the entire culture.”
The students also discussed the concept of it being human nature to want to protect oneself. While Bryan said that she agreed, she noted that “it’s uniquely American to be able to go to Walmart and buy a gun.”
Isaiah Vallejos countered the mentality that shooters are ‘lone wolves’ by saying “It takes a lot of thinking to go to a school and shoot seventeen people.”
There is also the excuse of the school shooters having been bullied in school. Vallejos asked the group if any of them had been bullied, and nearly everyone raised a hand. He used this to prove that “people react to being bullied in different ways.”
“People grow up with silver spoons in their mouth,” he continued, “and they feel like they can commit crimes and get away with it.”
The students also noted the privilege of white shooters to be able to play the “mental illness card” or being diagnosed with the fake condition of “affluenza” and how that simply does not exist in communities of color.
“If a black person commits a mass shooting,” said Jaylen Parker, “they’d get killed by the police before getting to trial.”
Another major topic was the access to semi-automatic assault weapons.
“If someone came to a school with a pistol,” said Vallejos “they wouldn’t be able to kill seventeen people. That’s why we need gun control.”
There has been quite a bit of coverage regarding this call for gun control. Bryan had some criticism for it.
“It’s annoying to see people make one gun sign and think they made a difference,” she said. “If you want to actually do something, contact your legislators.”
Vallejos had a more positive perspective, saying that “the fact that people have remembered it this long is hopeful. It’s much more than just a protest.”
