We're not asking for a gun ban. We're asking for gun control.

If your gun is more important than the lives of your kids or your family members, there's a problem. Us "liberals" get it - protecting yourself is important, the second amendment is important. No one wants to take that away from you. But, the system is faulty, background checks aren't always necessary, and the type of guns available aren't responsible. There shouldn't be a gun show exception for background checks, and no one needs an AR-15 to protect themselves.

A gun used for hunting or to help you sleep better at night isn't the gun we're talking about.

We're talking about guns like those used Shandy Hook or Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Guns like the AR-15 and the Bushmaster XM15-E2S. They aren't necessary to have as your second amendment right. There's also no need for bump stocks and silencers. None of these are necessary for protection, hunting, or leisure.

Stop arguing that is is a liberal thing; this is a human thing. At the age of ten, I learned that I needed to tell my parents that I loved them every day before I went to school because I wasn't sure if I'd come home. At the age of thirteen, I began to search for escape route and hiding place whenever I went somewhere new, incase of an active shooter situation. By the time I got to college, I had a mental plan drawn incase I got caught in a situation like that.

You argue that laws like this won't stop the violence, but statistically, countries with stricter gun laws have fewer tragedies then this country does. You argue that these people will just obtain them illegally. But if it had not been easy for Nikolas Cruz to obtain a gun he probably wouldn't have to know how to obtain one illegally, or he may have just given up, or there may have been more time to stop him. A gun law won't stop all crime because unfortunately there are evil people in the world but it'll surely make things more difficult.

You argue that this is a mental health issue, and I agree, but you also blame the kids for picking on the people who commit these crimes and that's unfair. I got picked on, bullied, I got called things like Retarda (a combination of my name and an extremely offensive word), I even had a shoe thrown at my head once. But I grew up and I realized that it was just kids being kids. These people do have mental health issues but it isn't because they were bullied because even the weird kids have friends. If these kids were completely alone it was due to the fact that there was much more wrong then sitting with him at lunch could fix. These kids had more problems at home then you could fathom to think. So along with new gun control laws, we do need to take a look at mental health, and how we can make it better.

This isn't about the left and the right, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat. It's about lives, lives of the future, because whether you like it or not kids like Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, Sarah Chadwick, Jaclyn Corin, and many others are your future, and they will not stop fighting for the lives of those that you refuse to fight for.

This isn't about you and your guns. This is about lives, like those Josephine Gay (7), Allison Wyatt (6), Ana Márquez-Greene (6), Dawn Hochsprung (47), Lauren Rousseau (30), Alyssa Alhadeff (14), Nicholas Dworet (17), Luke Hoyer (15), Joaquin Oliver (17), and many others.

This isn't about political standing... It's about being human.