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Monday was a sad day not only for Nashville, but all Tennessee and the nation.
Three students – nine-year-olds – were shot and killed at a private Nashville school in addition to three members of the school staff.
It’s a story that we cannot grasp, and understandably so. School is supposed to be a safe haven for children. Children are our most precious resource, our future. And, if school is not safe for children, where can they be safe?
It always sends us into a flurry of actions. In some states, we pass gun reform laws and red flag laws and other measures designed to keep guns out of the hands of unstable people who are likely to gun down our children. Other states spend more money putting police in the schools and metal detectors inside school doors and closing campuses to outsiders – essentially converting our schools into armed fortresses.
Today’s generation of school children have come of age with gun violence. School shootings have grown up alongside them. From elementary, to middle, to high school, and even college, students have seen their peers shot down with increasing frequency. Today’s students have experienced lockdowns and fear from the outside world – people who choose the innocent to kill and maim.
For today’s students’ parents and grandparents, it was smoking in the bathrooms that got you into trouble – not shootings. We had fire drills. Today’s generation are taught to hide and drilled the proper actions to take should an active shooter ever enter the building.
We mourn for the students and staff members who lost their lives in Monday’s tragic shooting. We offer our deepest condolences to their families and friends, who have been added to the ever-growing list of loved ones whose lives will forever be scarred along the contours of gun violence.
We must demand solutions. Mass shootings are uniquely an American problem. We must have “common sense” gun legislation. In every case, these mass shooters have more than one assault weapon. Monday’s shooter reportedly had two “assault-style” weapons and a pistol when she entered the Nashville school. Investigators found a sawed-off shotgun, a second shotgun, and other unspecified evidence during a search of the shooter’s home.
Why? The fact they shoot and kill tell us why.
Fewer guns mean fewer shootings. Other countries like Australia have successfully combatted these tragedies with legislative force. When will we do the same?
Time and time again, we have heard our government’s message loud and clear: guns over lives. Today’s generation is asking for change. When will enough be enough?
When will enough lives be lost to recognize that this is not a debate about the right for lawful citizens to own a legal firearm?
All around the United States, students hear gunshots ring in dorms, classrooms, school bathrooms and all around their campuses. No one deserves to feel that fear, especially in a space that is supposed to be a safe learning environment. Gun violence has been a deadly, yet preventable plague on our society and especially on our youth. Gun control has never been more necessary.
Society is not fulfilling its function when students are not protected. It’s clear something has to be done. But, people have been saying this for years, and have advocated for better gun control laws every time a tragedy occurs. Nothing changes. We should not be worried that experiencing a mass public shooting is a very real possibility. Our government is, as such, directly responsible for the fact that we are raising entire generations of people that have been traumatized by unchecked gun sales and nonexistent mental health screenings for potential threats.
It is clear that gun ownership is the real issue: Why do peace loving people need assault weapons?
Yet, the “right to bear arms” is what people consider a fundamental right, instead of the right to live in general. Anti-gun control people blatantly refuse to accept that the Second Amendment was created at a time when assault rifles did not exist and that those who wrote it probably did not imagine the right to bear arms would lead to mass killings of children. So, how many more people have to pay for political agendas?
We need to make a change in our society to stop allowing this to happen, and laws and policies put in place that make a real difference.