On May 24th, a mass shooting occurred in a rural Texas elementary school, killed 19 children and 2 adults. According to New York Times, this was the deadliest school shooting in the past decade in the US. But prior to this, a partial list provided by NYT suggested that there had already been 8 mass shootings this year. This event is especially upsetting to the public and has drawn huge media attention mainly because the victims were young children.

I have been fortunate enough to stay away from gun shooting in the past four years of living in the US. But the fact that civilians are allowed to carry guns has always been distressing. I started boxing in high school, hoping that I could have more confidence when it comes to defending myself against violence; but what’s the point of fighting guns and bullets? In China, people feel very safe walking in the streets alone at night, but here many people avoid being outside after the sunset. During my first few days, I was told to get home before it gets dark, and to always have at least 20 dollars in my pocket in case I get robbed.

As a student at UC Berkeley, nearly every other day I receive emails from campus police notifying me of the various kinds of violent crimes that happened on campus or in the neighborhood: shooting, robbery, burglary, harassment, fight, arson, and so forth. These warning emails have only added to the concerns and anxieties we’ve had about our own safety, even though none of them has involved or affected me directly. I have felt like the danger is always lurking behind.

An incident happened on campus on a Thursday last month really freaked people out. At around 9:30am, everyone who subscribes to the campus security alerts got a notification that said this:

A Campus-wide Emergency alert has been issued. Campus police are investigating a credible campus-wide threat. Please go inside and move away from doors and windows. If you are not on campus, please stay away from the area. Facilities Services are locking buildings on campus.

Although no further official updates were available for several hours (we kept receiving the same vague message over and over again), people had a sense of what was or could potentially be happening: Shooting on campus. Within minutes, people started to discuss this on social media like Twitter and Reddit. A few pieces of unverified information all seemed to point to the same story: a student threatened to shoot the employees working at the food pantry (a campus organization that distributes foods and necessities to students based on their needs).

The campus went into shelter-in-place mode around 10 am, when the police came. Classes were cancelled, students asked to stay inside, buildings all locked. That morning I went to the campus library to work, and I was stuck there until 1:45pm when the shelter-in-place order was lifted. Fortunately, nothing horrible happened on campus that day, but that’s a time when shooting came very close to me.

The most recent mass shooting that has caused the death of 19 children is likely to trigger another serious debate about gun control in the US. But it is equally likely that no real changes are going to happen. It is simply sad that Americans can’t convert their emotions of sorrow and anger, trigger by events like this, into substantial policy change.

Why is gun control so difficult in the US? There is no doubt that an insanely profitable industry has been lying underneath, and the interests groups involved in producing and selling arms are so powerful that they can dominate the politics in ways that are resistant to changes that might harm their interests. Besides this, it looks like a considerable proportion of ordinary Americans are pro gun rights and gun ownership, and they do so often based on a deep distrust of governmental power. For them, the tyrannical power of the government is a much greater evil than what we’ve seen in shootings. Although there are institutional designs that do a good job of checking its power, they still believe that retaining guns is the last line of defense against the state power’s violation of individual life and property.