Following the recent increase in gun violence, President Joe Biden takes action against gun violence. // Photo courtesy of CNN.

Former NFL player Phillip Adams entered the home of Dr. Robert Lesslie, a prominent public health figure in the town of Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Wednesday, April 7, with two loaded handguns. He opened fire, killing Lesslie, his wife Barbara, two of their grandchildren and two workers on the property. 

A day after the Rock Hill shooting, another shooting occurred in Bryan, Texas, killing 40-year-old Timothy Smith. Five others sustained injuries from the shooting.  

These two back-to-back shootings prompted President Joe Biden to take immediate executive action against what he called a “gun violence epidemic” in the United States. Biden’s new orders include new restrictions on ‘ghost guns,’ firearms that can be built with parts and instructions ordered online. Ghost guns do not have serial numbers, which makes it nearly impossible for law enforcement to trace these weapons. Additionally, because they are not fully assembled weapons, there is also no background check required to obtain one under current rules from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  

“We should also ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country,” Biden said during a briefing in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, April 8. He said his executive orders are simply the beginning of what he sees as necessary steps to curb mass shootings in the U.S. 

Hofstra students who are well-versed in the subject of gun control policy chimed in about the mass shootings taking place across the United States, as well as Biden’s executive orders aimed at preventing them. 

“It’s not something you can solve with one bill or with one speech,” said Max Clegg, a sophomore public policy and public service and economics double major. “It’s a culmination of a lot of things.” 

Clegg wants to see both Republicans and Democrats come together to discuss a long-term solution to the United States’ gun violence problem. He added that solving the issue of gun violence will require legislators and politicians to address its complexity. 

“A lot of the political proposals people are trying to do are catch-all bills,” Clegg said. “I don’t fault Biden for that. I fault our political system as a whole.”  

Experts tend to agree that gun violence and gun control is a complicated problem. Thomas Abt, an expert researcher who focuses on gun violence in America, told NPR News in 2019, “We’re not facing one gun violence challenge [in] the United States. We’re facing at least four.” Abt identified the main types of gun violence as urban violence, domestic gun homicides, mass shootings and suicides. He said each of these will require different legislative solutions. 

“The issue of gun control is complex and contentious in American politics,” said Meena Bose, executive dean for public policy and public service programs at Hofstra. Bose cited other recent mass shootings as examples of America’s gun violence problem, such as the March 16 shooting in Atlanta that took eight lives – six of which were Asian American – and the March 22 shooting at a Colorado grocery store that killed 10 people.  

“The importance of seeing Congress and the White House work together to enact legislation is key for making this a national priority,” Bose said. “To have some path forward, there needs to be some legislative effort … to limit getting guns into the hands of people who will use them for violent purposes.” 

Clegg sees the gun violence issue in America as one of the symptoms of a tense political climate throughout the country, creating a disturbed, socially incohesive nation. 

Other students at Hofstra agree with this sentiment. 

“Part of [the problem] comes from … anger,” said Serena Roy, a freshman criminology major. “Anger can cause more crimes. I think that can be applied to our country in general, especially with how split we are over politics right now. The general unrest that I think we all sense and we all feel; it definitely has been getting worse and worse progressively.” 

Roy expressed support for more policies that aim to control high-capacity, automatic weapons that can easily and quickly kill several people.  

“I think the argument that because it’s our right to have a gun, we can’t do anything about [it] is ridiculous and it is not a good argument,” Roy said. “Our society as it is now, with the guns that we have, with how deadly they are and how widespread the violence is … clearly we need to do something.”