Maddie Berrien
Marketing management major
I come from a gun-friendly family in a small Northern California town, so there is a lot of gun culture there—guns for hunting and home protection. I don’t personally own a gun; it’s not necessary. I think there should be regulations on semi-automatic guns, and they should be heavily regulated by background checks. There is a difference between having a gun for hunting game and sports, and guns used for mass destruction.
Taylor Hines
HVAC work
Mental-health issues should be addressed early and often. Kids are being sucked into today’s technology online. There are so-called online communities, and often, it’s not really a community; rather, it’s self-isolation, and it’s desensitizing. When the mind doesn’t have a real community to engage with, it goes to a “final solution” stage, and does something possibly bad to get recognition. Society glorifies celebrity. People want to be “somebody.” Violence is glorified in the media, and the media makes money from it.
Alice Hafer
Writer
It would be good to have some laws about open-carry. In the other countries that I’ve lived in, like the United Kingdom, there isn’t really that much gun violence. People aren’t afraid of gun violence like we are here in the U.S. It’s something that our children should not be afraid of.
Mohammed Sultan
Sales
Make it so that only the right people have access to guns. (The laws can’t be) too strict, because people will then complain about their freedom and their rights to have arms, but if the laws are too loose, then anybody can have access to guns. There needs to be some kind of a happy medium. There is also the issue of mental and emotional health. People can get angry and go out and shoot. Better access to therapy is needed, with more anger management.
Sara Cardoza-Orellana
Illustrator/writer
There need to be restrictions on purchases, and the intent and purpose of a sale. More background checks—not only for mental illness, but for criminal histories that may be an indication of possible future gun violence—(are needed). There should be more comprehensive countrywide laws on guns. Laws vary from state to state.