On January 23rd in Marshall County, Kentucky, two people were shot and killed in their local high school. Preston and Bailey. They were both 15 years old.
The day before that, multiple kids were shot in the cafeteria of a school in Dallas. The same day, a shooting took place in the parking lot of a school in New Orleans.
A few days earlier, there was a shooting on a school bus in Iowa.
Before that, a shooting occurred on college campus in California, and days before that, a high school in Seattle, Washington.
20 minutes ago, an active shooter was reported in a high school in Florida.
There have been more than a dozen school shootings this year. It's February 14th.
With only a small portion of the school evacuated, a population of over 3000 students, and the shooter still at large, the estimated injury count of 20 (so far) is only expected to grow.
I honestly don't know what to say.
As I'm watching live footage of children sprinting out of their school, holding hands with their classmates, passing SWAT teams and police officers, FBI officials, and dozens of EMTs, I am heartbroken. I am enraged, and you should be too.
The United States of America has a gun problem.
How many more people have to die before a change is made? How many more kids have to go to school one day, only to be murdered in math class and never come home? How many parents have to tell their kids they'll see them after school, not knowing that they would actually mean at their funeral? How many lives will we lose before the American people wake up?
We are desensitized to children dying.
I mean, just think about that. We are used to turning on our T.V's, on any given day, and seeing children being obliterated on the other end of a gun. Children are dying. Because of guns.
Did you know that active shooter training is a requirement for schools in most states? Did you know that police officers say that a school shooting is "inevitable?" Did you know that they teach us to use our backpacks as a bullet-proof vest? Did you know that students are taught to barricade doors and to throw text books at a shooter if they are approached?
Schools should be a safe space. They should be a place that fosters growth and learning and love and support. A school should not be a shooting range.
I have the hardest time understanding people that refuse to accept this reality.
Thoughts and prayers are not enough. Yes, you should think about what happened. Yes, you should pray for the victims and families if that is what you believe in. You know what you should do on top of both of those? Take tangible steps to fix the problem.
I just want to debunk something really quickly. Democrats don't want to take away guns.
Think more along the lines of closing private gun show loop holes, increasing background checks and precautionary measures in the licensing process, implementing some sort of psychological test, restricting or banning things like bump stocks or automatic assault rifles in the hands of civilians. The second amendment and "gun culture" are thoroughly ingrained in our nation's history, but they were also created when we were facing invasion by a foreign enemy, and the guns in existence were inaccurate, inefficient, and took many minutes to load, shoot, clean, and reload. The second amendment was not created when civilians could get their hands on weapons that could fire 280 rounds in 31 seconds, like the Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock did back in October. He killed 59 people and injured over 500 from 1,200 feet away...in under ten minutes.
Until actual progress is made, more people are going to die. More students are going to be shot in their own schools. More families are going to be destroyed.
Guns and mass shootings are an epidemic in our country, and nothing is being done to stop it.
The Florida shooter is finally in custody, after being active for over an hour. No one knows how many students and educators have been injured or killed.
There's so much to say, but for now I can leave you with this:
"The one thing we do know is that we have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world."
-Barack Obama
We need a change, and we needed it yesterday.
