Mass shootings have sparked fear and outrage among students across the nation. Jaedyn Brockway is one of these outraged students. She is a freshman at Iowa State University and said that she doesn’t feel safe at all times on campus.

“I definitely don’t really feel safe walking home at night or anywhere on campus if the sun has gone down just cause that [mass shootings] is a constant fear in the back of my mind.” Brockway said.

Sen. Kamala Harris also identified this problem during a meeting with Moms Demand Action in Ames last September.

“There are just some basic truths at play here. And one of those is our children should not be living in fear,” Harris said.

Notable shootings that have caused outrage over the last decade include; Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida, Pulse Nightclub in Orlando Florida and the Las Vegas Strip shootings.

Investigative magazine Mother Jones defines a mass shooting by, “indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by the attacker.” This definition helps cut out acts that are more conventional and less random.

Mother Jones has collected data from mass shootings since 1982, and the data is current through Aug. 31. In the last 37 years Mother Jones has recorded over 100 mass shootings that meet their definition.

The shootings resulted in 2,372 victims. This has spurred strong activism movements like the March for Our Lives after the shooting in Parkland. These movements expressed the outrage from students and demand stricter gun laws. March for Our Lives resulted in stricter gun laws in Florida, but groups are now pushing for nation wide reform.

Students Demand Action is one of these nationwide groups pushing for reform on the federal level. Grace Johnson is the founder of the Students Demand Action club at Iowa State University.

The club is new to campus and hopes to help students organize on campus in regards to gun reform. While the club is still in the process of being formed, they hope to begin organizing in the near future.

“I hope that I can mobilize students who have even a small fear in the back of their mind of a school shooting or mass shooting or something,” Johnson said. “It’s also just a really good way to connect and know we aren’t alone in this fight, because it can feel that way sometimes.”

Groups like this have shown that the outrage by students is not exclusive to areas affected by mass shootings. The outrage has spread across the country leaving many students in fear.

Currently, there have been no major changes to gun laws however, this does not mean that legislators have not attempted to pass gun reform bills.

The United States House of Representatives passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 which would require a background check be completed before the purchase of firearms. However, the bill is currently being blocked by Republican senators making the bill unlikely to see a vote.

Apart from this bill, many presidential candidates have offered their own solutions to this issue. One of these solutions is a buyback program in which the government would buy assault rifles back from all owners of legally obtained weapons.

Dirk Deam, associate professor of political science, said he believes the country could see success with a buyback program, either mandatory or voluntary. He said a buyback program would likely make a ban on assault weapons an “easier pill to swallow.”

“If they’re declared to be a public menace under compelling state interest theory, you know, a danger to public safety, the government could confiscate them in the first place,” Deam said. “So in a situation of a buyback it makes it more seemingly commercial, and maybe a little bit easier to swallow under the theory of interstate commerce. The soul constitutionalists stuff framing this, but can they do it, I think so.”

Deam also said that the original intent of the second amendment was to provide the states with a well regulated militia. This definition has changed over the years due to two major Supreme Court decisions.

In Heller vs. District of Columbia, the court ruled that the term “militia” used in the second amendment was not exclusive to the military and therefore the restriction the District of Columbia had placed on firearm purchasing was in violation of the second amendment.

The second case, McDonald vs. Chicago, determined that the right to self defense was a fundamental right and should not be infringed by the government. This helped position the right to bear arms with also being a fundamental right making it incredibly difficult to regulate.