Julie Parker, a Prince George’s County Police spokeswoman, addresses the media at the scene of February’s murder-suicide, in which a student suffering from a mental illness killed his roommate and himself.

Gun violence has been a very prominent topic in the news since the Newtown, Conn., shooting. It seems like every day you hear about someone on the street, at a mall, a movie theater, or a school being shot and injured or killed.

The worst part is that now, it has hit way too close to home. Tuesday morning, a graduate student allegedly shot two students — one of them fatally — and then himself in an off-campus home. We’ve now seen tragedy in our own little college bubble, so now more than ever, we should talk about gun control.

The national gun control debate is massive and strongly divided. Understanding both sides is important, but I believe something needs to be done. All of us deserve to walk around our campus, our neighborhoods, and feel safe while doing so.

In Tuesday night’s State of the Union Address, President Obama discussed gun control. He did not say there has to be something done, but he did say that there needs to at least be a vote on gun control proposals.

“Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence – they deserve a simple vote,” Obama said.

Gun violence has made far too much of an impact on innocent people in this country for us to continue without any attempt at reform.

I understand that some people feel safer by owning a gun. And I know people at the NRA say the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun — but why can’t we imagine a world where the bad guy doesn’t have a gun to begin with?