1999: Columbine, 15 people; 2007: Virginia Tech, 33 people; 2012: Sandy Hook Elementary School, 28 people. In three school shootings, 76 people were shot and killed. These numbers do not include the 46 people who were injured.
School used to be a safe place for kids. It was a place for learning; a place where the thing that mattered most was how much you wanted to succeed. Today, schools are about so much more. School is about learning and creating. It is about making friends and being a part of activities that make you happy. But as great as schools are today, they are no longer a safe place.
Nobody ever thinks it will be their school. Nobody imagines what they would do if someone walked into their school with a gun. Lock down drills and evacuation drills are a joke because nobody truly thinks that their school will be the one on national news. At Sandy Hook, the oldest child killed was seven years old. Without a second guess, these kids woke up and went to school that day. They thought it was going to be another normal day.
Since January 1, 2016, there have been 29 school shootings -- 29 schools where students thought it would never be them. At Virginia Tech, 33 families lost loved ones. A majority of the people killed in that shooting were students, students who had been sent to college by mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. So what is to say that the next school shooting won't be one that your family member is involved in?
It is time to give kids their schools back. It is time that something is done to stop these deadly attacks on innocent people. It is time that school is once again a safe place. Yes, measures have been taken by many schools to prevent an act like this from happening, but the truth is that these precautions should have never become necessary. I should not have to see an armed police officer walking around my school every day. There should be no need for scan cards to get into a school building. There is no reason that anyone should have to practice lockdown drills.
Guns are dangerous. There is a time and a place for guns, but school buildings are not one. School is the place we go to learn what guns have done to people. History class is where we talk about the wars that have happened; wars that were fought with guns. School is where we go to see friends, not the place we go to fight a war.
The Constitution may protect our right to bear arms, but when the 2nd Amendment was written there was no fear of school shootings. It is time that something is done about the easy access to guns. It is time that we take a stand against excessive gun access, and time that we start protecting students again. Every person may have the right to bear arms, but for now, it is time to give us back our schools.
