On Sept. 5, my high school in O’Fallon, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis, practiced an intruder drill. The next day, my little sister’s middle school practiced the same drill. The day before the drill at my school, there was a shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, where two 14-year-old students, required by law to be at school and expected to attend on a regular basis, were killed. Two teachers, who were just doing their jobs, were killed. Eight other students and a teacher were hospitalized.
After my school’s drill, my history teacher talked with us about how we would beat the intruder over the head with history books if they got into the room. No one questioned her or acted as if this was a new concept. At that moment, I realized how messed up the current situation is. I am a 17-year-old who never misses school, has a 3.8 grade point average, is a member of the National Honor Society and participates in extracurricular activities. I walk into my school every day with the expectation that a shooter is not going to walk through the same doors I used that very morning, but every single day, I am faced with the very real possibility of the unthinkable.
There is absolutely no justification for schoolteachers to have to explain an active shooter threat to their students. As an older sibling, I more than hate the thought of my sixth grade sister learning how to bash an intruder’s head in with a textbook or how far away someone needs to be in order to safely run away — all because there are people walking around our country with weapons of war. Why should my education be put on pause to allow time to talk about this threat to my life? I’m a child who has her entire life ahead of her. Those 14-year-old kids, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, still had their entire lives to live. Those teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie, still had full lives to live. That’s a basic human right. How can we be a nation of freedom and choice when our schools, our so-called safe places, are tainted by the threat of a deadly intruder?
Santa Fe High School in Texas. Ten dead, 13 wounded. Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen dead, 17 wounded. Rancho Tehama Elementary School in Reserve, California. Five dead, 18 wounded. Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-six dead. Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Fifteen dead, more than 20 wounded.
After reading the tolls of those shootings, how can a person, a living, breathing, morally conscious human being, be OK with that? Knowing there have been countless other school shootings around America with varying death and injury tolls, how can anyone accept that that’s just how it is? As American citizens, we have become too comfortable with the idea that gun violence is just a part of society. How is someone’s right to bear arms more important than the lives of so many children, teachers and staff members?
When our Constitution was written, flintlock pistols and muskets were the arms it referenced. These weapons are single-shot guns and were used to form a well-regulated militia. At that time, the United States was a fledgling nation without a powerful, organized military. A militia is a fighting force made of civilians, usually as a last resort. The military we have now is well equipped and more than capable of handling battle. There is no need for citizens to bear arms to form an organized militia. Our Founding Fathers could not have predicted what kind of high-powered rifles Americans would have access to in the 21st century.
So I’ll ask the question again: How can our nation be so inclined to allow Americans to possess assault-style rifles knowing the consequences and our history with mass shootings? Our Second Amendment rights would not be compromised if assault-style rifles were banned, so how can this defense hold up for so long?
Jerald McNair: There has been a paradigm shift in how we respond to school shootings
I am only a high school student. A student who has a long academic road ahead. A student who is passionate about social justice and issues that are very real and relevant to the people of our nation. A student who cares about others deeply, who fights for the people and causes she believes in.
I am no scholar. But it doesn’t take a scholar to realize that people are dying. People who don’t need to be dying. People who care and love, who have passions and interests. It doesn’t take a scholar to know we can be better than this as not only a nation but also a human race. Human rights are the bare essentials for a fulfilling life. Why should those bare essentials be taken away so carelessly?
I could compare our rates of gun violence to those of other nations, but what good would that do? This is America. We must do what’s best for our nation. We must fight for our nation and show that we aren’t as arrogant as the record shows.
The best way to be patriotic and fight for our country is to keep our people safe and secure. When children walk into school every day not knowing if there is going to be an attack, we as a nation become less united.
America, this is my plea as a human being: Let’s support the ban on assault-style rifles and save the lives of countless men, women and children.
Hannah Kypta is a senior in high school in O’Fallon, Illinois.
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