Lasting Effects of Gun Violence

Gun Violence in Raleigh: My Experience

Guns are a normal part of life in America—at least that is how it seems nowadays. You see a basketball player you admire, like Ja Morant, waving a gun around in a social media video, having fun, not thinking anything about it—and you don’t stop to think anything about it either. You become desensitized to it. Guns are like shoes, like a pullover, like a prop—something there to add to your status. Then one gets used. All of a sudden a gun is a life taker. Gun violence becomes real. The danger that guns represent strikes like a venomous snake, and all the consequences come crashing down. The fact is, guns are no laughing matter. People on both sides of the gun laws debate in this country need to step back and breathe, and we as a people need to realize that we are talking about self-restraint, limitations, accountability—things that matter—personal responsibility. Guns are not props or magic wands that make life’s problems go away. They don’t make you look big when you wave them around and smile for the camera. They aren’t anybody’s ticket to a golden palace of safety and security. Guns have a very real use, and they should be used for that purpose only. Sporting around with guns out in public means we have fallen a long way as a society.

My own experience speaks to this in Raleigh. I have seen gun violence first hand. I had to run to get away when the shots rang out. I know someone who died. It was not a friend or anything, but I knew the person. I went to the funeral. No one thought about gun violence at the funeral. People instead were sad because the kid was gone, and they were sad that the ones who got into the gun battle showed so little concern for others. They were sad that people were letting themselves go that way. They were sad and hurt and angry because there was so little personal accountability on the streets. Why were people acting like such inconsiderate imbeciles? That was what made everyone sad. I felt it, too.

When the shots rang out, however, I just remember feeling this need to run and get away. It wasn’t anything like fear, really. There is no anxiety—just a trigger mechanism, like you heard an alarm—now go! That is all it was, and then later you hear about what happened, and you think, “I was there, that could have been me,” and that is when you feel afraid. The fear comes later. It doesn’t ever really leave, either. It is there everyday because now it has been given a reason to live in the world. That is what I don’t like about gun violence being something I have experienced. It means now I have to live with this fear that crawls around like an unwanted guest. I wish it would go, but I doubt it ever will.

I don’t get mad at people who like guns. I understand that everyone has his own reason for wanting a gun. I don’t even dislike guns myself. What I don’t like is people who act as though they are props and play things. A gun is a serious instrument. It requires a serious mind. There are too many kids running around who are not serious about anything. Or, maybe they are serious about crime—and that is a bad thing. Too many kids caught up in the wrong things. What happened to everybody?

The research shows that people who use guns do so for different reasons—hunting, or because they feel it’s their 2nd amendment right and duty to own a gun, or because they think they need it for protection and security, or because they want it for fun—which means just to show off—like Ja Morant (Blocher, 2005; Carlson, 2015; Harcourt, 2010; Silva & Greene-Colozzi, 2019). That is where the problems come from—that carelessness. People also want guns to commit crimes—I know that, too (Blocher et al., 2020). I have seen them do it. I have seen videos all over the Internet of some young person pulling a gun on another person to commit some crime, some theft. I have not seen it so much personally in Raleigh, because I try to stay out of settings and situations where that kind of thing might happen. But I have seen gun violence all the same. It is not like I went out looking for it. It just ends up finding you.

In "Trigger Points" Follman looks into the psychological and sociological impacts of gun violence on survivors and communities. One point Follman makes is about the ripple effect of gun violence. It does not affect just the direct victims but entire communities. This is true because I know it from personal experience. I saw directly how gun violence hurt a family and made everyone afraid—not because we necessarily thought we might get hit by a bullet—but because we sensed an overall decline in the way people were acting towards one another. It felt like it was a funeral for society—not just one kid who died. It felt like manners and morals and sanity and good behavior were being buried in the ground. That is what it felt like. I think Follman gets to that point in his book—but you don’t every really understand it until you have experienced it directly.

So what have I learned from this project? From this project, I have learned that gun violence is nothing you should ever want to be a part of—but like it or not, it can find you just as easy as anything else. It is not just a series of isolated incidents but a reflection of bigger, worse social problem—a problem of what has happened to people—to families, to schools, to neighborhoods, to the idea of being a responsible person—someone who follows the law. Maybe it is because there is no respect for the higher law that comes from God. Maybe that is the ultimate problem. Talking about gun violence being bad is fine and all, but really there are deeper problems that no one is talking about because it means actually making changes in one’s own life and being hard on oneself, and putting limitations up. People don’t want limitations—I can see that. And the consequences are profound, and they range from loss of life to the psychological trauma that survivors and communities feel and will continue to feel for all their days.