Once again America is tragically reminded how gun violence torments lives, families, communities, and society.
Yesterday, students at Florida State University in Tallahassee were victims of an active shooter on their campus who was one of their own. The gunman killed two and injured six others after entering the student union building on campus around midday.[1] It was a familiar sight we have seen before, streets filled with emergency vehicles, officers staged with rifles, and students and faculty fleeing to safety across grassy lawns.
It’s hard to accept the cold truth: everyday people commit crimes and do bad things. It’s also true that access to a gun creates worse outcomes when a crime is committed with that weapon. Are these the experiences we dream of for ourselves and our children? How many more hours of images of carnage among American children and young adults on their school campuses must we endure before our apathy turns to action? How many more lives must be broken, traumatized, or lost? How many more bullets will it take before America wakes up to the solutions that already exist?
Guns are not the cause of our social malaise, but effective gun policies are one of the many holistic approaches necessary for creating a better tomorrow.
Hope and change are about the whole person interconnected with society and our environmental systems. We cannot assume every problem can be solved with a single solution, but it doesn’t excuse us from making steps toward meaningful action and relief. If life is valuable and violence against humanity is abhorrent, then we should seek to use every tool and resource available to us to protect life, reduce violence, and pursue peace and goodness. Gun violence, incidents, and mass shootings can be prevented and reduced almost immediately when meaningful gun safety policies are implemented. According to one study, nearly 300,000 lives can be saved in the next decade if action is taken today.[2]
We cannot continue down an unsustainable pathway where our peers and children grow up in a time defined by the traumatic impacts of gun violence. It’s irrational not to take action when, by every measure, we can dramatically reduce rates of gun violence with effective policies. Apart from action, our violent existence will continue to take its unseen toll on mental health, physical health, economic well-being, and society.
Guns are not the cause of our social malaise, but effective gun policies are one of the many holistic approaches necessary for creating a better tomorrow. Universal background checks, red flag laws, comprehensive training and permit requirements, and assault weapon bans are just some of the tools available to us today.[3] However, it shouldn’t stop there. We need a universal infusion of social capital for everyone. Investment in education from Pre-K through college, public-funded healthcare, non-discriminatory affordable housing, guaranteed minimum incomes, and reversing the impacts of climate change are just some of the forward-thinking solutions on the table. They promise to alleviate poverty, reduce hardship on individuals and families, decrease substance abuse, prevent mental health conditions, and protect the most vulnerable among us—especially women, children, and the impoverished—from abuse and exploitation.
We cannot assume every problem can be solved with a single solution, but it doesn’t excuse us from making steps toward meaningful action and relief.
Furthermore, we need bold ideas to support and empower the human soul. We should reward people and companies when they are active members of community programs from social clubs to service organizations, neighborhood centers, civic committees, activist groups, religious communities, libraries, and community colleges. These are the small but vitally important institutions that uphold society by providing individuals with purpose and meaningful relationships outside of the home and their work. Independent and diverse social institutions are the lifeblood of a thriving and free society.[4] Rather than intimidate, change, dismantle, or replace them to conform to a particular ideology or public agenda, we should support and celebrate the re-localization of independent community institutions where tangible community is fostered and people rediscover their shared humanity.
The well-being of our society is at stake. Addressing the ever-increasing access to guns is an urgent place for us to begin. Hope values holistic thinking because it elevates our perspectives and creates spaces for open dialogue, ideas, and equitable solutions. We must not settle for regressive beliefs about ourselves and each other that further breed apathy and nihilism. This is the time to press into hope, change, and work toward a better tomorrow resolute in our potential for goodness.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/17/nx-s1-5368177/fsu-shooting-injures-multiple-people
[2] https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/
[3] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/examine-gun-policy-in-the-unit-nPRNudkUQ5ScyPrE4icGXg
[4] For further reading, see Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam (2000, 2020).
Hope and Justice For All
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Matt Till 