"School shootings continue to be a PAttern in america, what's it like to walk school hallways knowing how likely it is you could be the next victim?" -- Lola Christ, 9th Grade
In 2022 alone thus far there have been 40 school shootings that resulted in injury and or death, in 2021 there were 35. In 2020, 2019, and 2018 however there were only 10. The levels have been rising consistently since these years and likely will continue to, since guns have been the leading cause of death in teens and kids for a while.
All of these statistics are obviously scary, because none of them can be refuted, and all of them affect me seeing as I’m a student. Even though currently I’m not one of the 31,000 students who have experienced school shootings, the lingering fear I will be looms over my head throughout every day.
Since I was in elementary active shooter drills were a thing we regularly experienced, equally as much as any fire drill. Maybe even more regularly than fire drills. They are designed to have kids aware of what to do when someone enters the school armed. It’s probably not the worst idea, right? Better prepared than unprepared.
In the beginning, you feel a little cautious and anxious about the whole situation but at some point that becomes normal. You have so many drills, you feel like it’s normal that at any point someone could come in guns blazing. That’s how I’ve spent most of my time at OSA – all too aware, and all too comfortable with the reality. The idea of being shot lingered in the back of my mind for years, but now it comes all too close with every school with more victims and closer proximity. The reality of things doesn’t sink in until there's a loud boom or a drill over the intercom. It doesn’t feel real until it almost is. Finally, it almost feels like it is. I knew as soon as I could become aware that I could at any moment in my education be just another statistic.
Shootings -- especially school ones, are the type of thing you never think you’ll experience until you do. The parents of Lexi Rubio, who was a victim of the recent Uvalde shooting, said, “It's difficult. I feel like the kids have changed. It's - we're not the same. We're missing her. And so we're just - we're broken.”
Parents are obviously one of the most affected demographics, as well as affected students. One survivor of the Uvalde shooting said she and a friend smeared themselves in blood to escape detection- quite literally within a blood bath.
Anyone involved with or attending public schools are victims of gun violence, and even if you haven’t directly experienced it you’ll hear about and fear it every day. Knowing the high possibility of shootings in America, with lax gun laws, I am often faced with the fear I will be one of those students forced to smear myself in blood to avoid notice. Or worse, that I’ll be the student whose blood is being smeared.
The culture schools have come accustomed to is the kind that normalizes and takes zero precautions to avoid this kind of culture. This type of culture is where schools will be shot up and instead of trying to prevent that with laws and regulations, you have to implement school shooting drills– and you have to prevent children from becoming victims. Rather than cutting the cord where it starts, you're trying to teach the end to adapt, which shouldn’t be the case.
School isn’t a safe place for children anymore, it probably hasn’t been for nearly a decade. Large change would need to be enacted to deinstitutionalize these ideas; to create the ripple effects necessary to change these things would be laws, not words.
All of these statistics are obviously scary, because none of them can be refuted, and all of them affect me seeing as I’m a student. Even though currently I’m not one of the 31,000 students who have experienced school shootings, the lingering fear I will be looms over my head throughout every day.
Since I was in elementary active shooter drills were a thing we regularly experienced, equally as much as any fire drill. Maybe even more regularly than fire drills. They are designed to have kids aware of what to do when someone enters the school armed. It’s probably not the worst idea, right? Better prepared than unprepared.
In the beginning, you feel a little cautious and anxious about the whole situation but at some point that becomes normal. You have so many drills, you feel like it’s normal that at any point someone could come in guns blazing. That’s how I’ve spent most of my time at OSA – all too aware, and all too comfortable with the reality. The idea of being shot lingered in the back of my mind for years, but now it comes all too close with every school with more victims and closer proximity. The reality of things doesn’t sink in until there's a loud boom or a drill over the intercom. It doesn’t feel real until it almost is. Finally, it almost feels like it is. I knew as soon as I could become aware that I could at any moment in my education be just another statistic.
Shootings -- especially school ones, are the type of thing you never think you’ll experience until you do. The parents of Lexi Rubio, who was a victim of the recent Uvalde shooting, said, “It's difficult. I feel like the kids have changed. It's - we're not the same. We're missing her. And so we're just - we're broken.”
Parents are obviously one of the most affected demographics, as well as affected students. One survivor of the Uvalde shooting said she and a friend smeared themselves in blood to escape detection- quite literally within a blood bath.
Anyone involved with or attending public schools are victims of gun violence, and even if you haven’t directly experienced it you’ll hear about and fear it every day. Knowing the high possibility of shootings in America, with lax gun laws, I am often faced with the fear I will be one of those students forced to smear myself in blood to avoid notice. Or worse, that I’ll be the student whose blood is being smeared.
The culture schools have come accustomed to is the kind that normalizes and takes zero precautions to avoid this kind of culture. This type of culture is where schools will be shot up and instead of trying to prevent that with laws and regulations, you have to implement school shooting drills– and you have to prevent children from becoming victims. Rather than cutting the cord where it starts, you're trying to teach the end to adapt, which shouldn’t be the case.
School isn’t a safe place for children anymore, it probably hasn’t been for nearly a decade. Large change would need to be enacted to deinstitutionalize these ideas; to create the ripple effects necessary to change these things would be laws, not words.
