My niece is 6 years old. What do you tell her when there is an active gunman threat in her school district? How do you prepare her for that without giving her nightmares? Without making her afraid of going to school?

There has been a lot of debate over gun reform, once again, since the most recent mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida. 17 kids/teachers were brutally murdered with an AR-15. Now, I have my own opinion on gun reform which tends to be more liberal. Though I could defend my beliefs with a bunch of statistics, case studies, and other research, I am going to ask questions instead.

How are you going to protect my niece and her classmates and teachers without gun reform? Do you want to install further security measures, making school seem even more like a prison? Will that actually work or will it just deter potential good students from attending school? Will a madman not ever be able to slip through the cracks? Do you want to arm teachers with weapons? What about the ones who are uncomfortable having a weapon, even if they are trained? Are you going to stop great educators from practicing their profession because they are uncomfortable wielding a weapon? Also, what about the kids caught in the crosshairs of a mad gunman and the teacher? Or what about the kids who get ahold of the weapon and use it purposefully or accidentally?

I’m scared. I’m scared for my niece and siblings who are still in elementary through high school, but I’m also scared for me. I’m in college. I walk between buildings to get from class to class. There are no intercoms to tell us that there is an active shooter on campus or in a certain building or in the tunnels that connect all of the buildings underground. There is no way to lock the doors of classrooms from the inside. What are we supposed to do? We have never been informed of a protocol for those situations. Is there even a protocol?

However, although I believe in common sense gun reform, I do not want my fears to take away all of your guns. I don’t want a ban and neither do most of us advocates. I grew up in a home with guns, used for hunting and home defense. I believe that people have the right to carry handguns with the proper licenses to protect themselves. However, I will allow my fear to advocate for a ban of semi-automatics and the accessories that make them fully automatic (which are banned federally). No citizen needs a weapon that powerful. Those weapons are meant for war. We are not in war with one another. We are just trying to live our lives. Kids sitting at their desks trying to get an education are not doing anything that warrants them to get shot down. Those are weapons meant to kill a large number of people in one area, as we have seen time and time again. Only murderers need that weapon.

I thank the teenagers from Parkland and around the US who are trying to make this change for the better. Adults have failed you and I. Thank you for taking this tragedy and turning it into change for the better.