School Shootings: Startlingly becoming more and more common
      
         A Southern Polytechnic student drove himself to the hospital this past Tuesday after being shot on campus. Jason Moore, a student at the university, left the hospital late Tuesday night without any life threatening injuries. However, this resulted in a two-hour lockdown within the Cobb county university. Although this situation was said to strictly have significance between the victim and the suspect, the school took precaution and did not let any students return to normal activity until 7:30pm that evening.
       Alarming enough, this happened a mere 29.4 miles away from the Johns Creek area. If It can happen there, then why can't it happen here? The fear associated with the recent school shooting has sent a streak of caution throughout families of students throughout the metro-Atlanta area- specifically those of students at the university. I heard about this situation because I was in the local grocery store late Tuesday night picking out bananas when I overheard a woman talking to her son in an abnormally concerning tone. "Are you ok? Is everyone at school ok?", she continued to bombard her son with a plethora of questions. After she muttered the words "shooting" and "Southern Polytechnic", I bought my produce, drove home quickly, and immediately searched the web. I assume that this woman was the mother of a college student at the local university who was sent into shock when discovering about the local shooting. This occurrence is a prime example of what is seemingly becoming a more and more common incident: university shootings are alarmingly arising across America.
     Just like all of our parents remember exactly what they were doing on the tragic day of 9/11/01, we all probably remember what we were doing when the Virginia Tech shooting occurred on April 16, 2007. The massacre of 32 students and the wounded 23 is noted as the biggest college massacre to ever occur in the United States. Alarmingly enough, it happened also at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999; in this case two teenagers killed twelve fellow students and a teacher before then killing themselves.

     These mass and even single shootings at universities seem to occur in a unique pattern throughout history. The question is- where is next? Should we live our lives in a constant fear of these fluke occurrences?  I can only imagine the sense of fear that parents must have when sending their "baby" away to college. They're living alone, risk becomes higher, situations seem to be more dangerous as a whole. However, one must not live in fear of these situations, because if they do, then fear will soon control their life. Although this shooting at  Southern Polytechnic was only a few miles from home, we must not panic- despite what some people (grocery store lady) may feel about the situation. Living in fear and in constant worry is no way to live one's life. 

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/possible-shooting-reported-at-southern-polytechnic/nSfQW/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0