News of the Brown University shooting suspect’s death wasn’t even 24 hours old, but the editors of the fellow Ivy League Columbia University student paper wasted no time in calling for stricter gun control.
“As students ourselves, we watched as the shooting shattered any sense of safety our peers at Brown once associated with their campus,” the editors write. “At the same time, any assurances we had about our own security at Columbia slipped away, replaced by a familiar and sobering reality: No student at an American university is entirely safe from the threat of gun violence.
“[T]he shooting at Brown—a community that appeared to share the same assumption of safety—reinforces the notion that there is no shield against gun violence. Columbia’s campus is no more protected from our nation’s greatest threats than any other academic institution in the United States.”
Referring to the “nationwide gun violence epidemic,” the editors call for the public to “recognize the structural conditions that enable these threats and subsequently advocate for their deconstruction.”
Ultimately, Columbians must “mobilize with fellow college students for gun reform and stronger background checks […] and advocate for your right to safely pursue an education.”
