UNC Charlotte Shooting

On May 1, 2019 Tristyn Andrew Terrell a 22-year-old student at the University of North Carolina took 2 students’ lives and injured 4 others. He had little presence on social media, held no ideologies and appears to have no known motive .

As a child, Terrell was known for being distant, stubborn and withdrawn from his peers, typically known as“that quiet kid” the one no one talks to or wants to hang out with. After his mother passed away, he moved to North Carolina with his father, enrolling at his local high school. After finishing up there, he moved onto Central Piedmont Community College in Mecklenburg County, attending a total of 2 years. He then transferred to UNC Charlotte and began taking classes like anthropology and philosophy of science. Students with relations to Terrell said that he tended to wear dark clothes and supposedly hadn’t spoke much to them even when put into small groups to complete important projects. Terrell’s professor, Mr. Johnson, portrayed him in a different light,  stating that Terrell seemed engaged in class, he would ask questions and answer problems, it really seemed like he enjoyed the class. He withdrew from the class in January without any explanation, leaving his professor assuming he probably was just prioritizing his other classes.

A couple of months later, Mr. Terrell came into class on exam day and opened fire following through with his horrible plans to hurt and destroy people’s lives and scar them forever. Both Ellis R. Parlier, 19, and Riley C.

Once apprehended by police, Terrell offered no insight into his motives.

There appears to be more and more mass shootings in the most recent years than have ever been seen in the United States. Schools, Churches, Day-cares, hospitals, no place seems to be safe anymore. The nation as a whole needs to address what’s causing so many people to want to commit these acts.

Guns are inanimate objects, meaning they cannot inflict harm on their own. Disregarding this fact, the United Kingdom have still banned the usage and ownership of guns in their country, but people have found alternatives.  Acid attacks have become common, along with people running each other over with vans, and knife attacks. If someone wants to commit harm to a large group of people, they will find a way to do so, the answer isn’t banning these objects.

The answer is to provide people the mental help they need so they don’t feel as if the only solution they have is to take another persons’ life. Banning a device someone uses only provokes people to find a new way to kill, and history tells us time and time again people will always find a way. In ancient times the Romans would use daggers, clubs, swords and their bare hands to kill people. It isn’t a gun problem, nor a knife or society problem, we have a mental health crisis on our hands. These people constantly give all the signs that they are craving out help, attempting to seek a friend, and as a collective, it appears that they don’t receive enough pay attention. If  this problem is address, and society reaches out to those quiet kids, make friends with them, make people feel wanted and loved than we this problems will practically resolve. Lafayette High school junior Drew Ramos, when asked how he thinks colleges can prevent these events, states “For college universities they need to make stricter

gun laws and improve their security.”

It’s sad that students have to fear for their life when they go to college campuses. Contrary to popular belief, more gun laws don’t actually make a place safer, studies show that 98.4% of mass shootings happen in gun free zones.

Does this mean we need more guns on campus with trained people protecting our students? It’s up to the people and states to decide matters such as this, hopefully the country as a whole can solve this problem. Lafayette High School senior Matt Zayas, when asked if he is worried about a mass shooting at his college (Virginia Tech) states, “Yeah the college I’m going to has already been shot up, it’s not a strong fear it could happen anywhere, it’s like driving a car, it’s safe for the most part but there’s always the small chance you can die.”

If someone wants to do harm they will, therefore, it’s our job as a collective to make that person who may appear odd and different feel welcomed, as if they have a friend to turn to. Terrell is facing two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder, none of which carry a light sentence. This young man essentially just signed his life away for committing an evil crime that could have been avoided if he had just sought out help.

Terrell was also diagnosed with autism at the age of 4 like many of the other mass shooters we have seen in recent years such as Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold (the two columbine shooters) and Cho Seung-Hu (the Virginia Tech shooter) just to name a few. There is no link between autism and violence, in fact the majority of people diagnosed with autism are highly intelligent people, but there is evidently a trend that more and more shooters have been diagnosed with the disorder long before they committed these sinister acts.