This is how gun violence has shaped my future | Opinion
Editor's note: This essay won a recent contest held CeaseFirePA and The Peace Center.
When I was in fifth grade, my elementary school held a routine school shooting drill with one key exception — they failed to tell anyone it was happening. Further out of the norm, they chose to invite local police out to this drill. The date or the details of the day have faded from my memory with time, but I remember hunkering down in the class closet — holding my backpack in front of me protectively. My teacher and her assistant sat in front of us watching all of us with wider eyes than normal. Generally these drills were full of the occasional giggle, but the overwhelming silence of my peers is memorable.
I remember hearing a bang from down the hall — looking back it definitely wasn’t loud enough to be a gunshot — but to my juvenile ears it might as well have been a machine gun. I realized how possible it was for a “bad man with a gun” to be prowling the halls of my bright elementary school. Quietly, so as not to disturb the delicate, deadly silence of my classmates, I pulled open the front of my school bag, fingers searching for a pen. Hands shaking, I wrote “I love you Mom,” on one arm. Just in case. A tear escaped my eyes. Just as I was finishing drawing a heart next to her name — someone pulled on the handle of our classroom door. They shook it, knocked three times, jangled some keys, and walked away. My teacher turned to the assistant next to her and mouthed “I think there’s someone in here.” Normally, that type of incendiary comment would send our class into a frenzy, but we sat there silently as shivers rippled down our little spines. I will never forget the way my heart dropped to my stomach — or the indescribable feeling of trying to communicate with my mother via my own potential corpse.
This memory slipped into the back of mind for a while, but resurfaced after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The age of the children murdered struck a deep chord. I remembered the terrifying drill. I realized I’d felt only a fraction of the fear that the children in the school felt that day. I feel as though I could have felt a mirrored sense of helplessness. Similar to the children in Uvalde — there was no hope of help on the horizon.
The sad part is that this is the reality of every student who lives in a country where gun regulation and reform is hidden behind a culture war. There have been a few times where my high school has gone into a modified lockdown thanks to police activity in close proximity to the school. During these events, the tension in the school is palpable. Every student has had an experience with gun violence that has affected them in a long-lasting way. Whether it’s the shooter drills, the local shooting over a drug deal gone bad a few years back, or just the simple knowledge of the accessibility of these highly dangerous weapons. Every student is connected through this shared fear, every student killed in a school shooting feels like a friend. Everyone thinks “that could have been me.”
This fear presents itself in different ways — it just boils over in modified lockdowns or active shooter drills. Culture in high school is defined by our experiences with these types of shooter drills and our shared awareness of how dangerous learning can be. The collective jump when a bag of chips pops too loud — the fear that constricts our stomachs when we participate in a drill. The unsettling feeling of school assemblies with a speaker who makes us “aware” of the dangers of shootings, like we haven’t been aware since Kindergarten.
For me, a large solution to this problem is policy change. Gen Z, when we reach our prime, can pursue grater reforms for the American people at every level of government. Our generation will be passionate about protecting the second amendment while limiting the amount of assault rifles and guns on the streets. We will be motivated by our shared traumatizing experiences of gun violence. We will also pursue the decriminalization of drugs that will limit the amount of drug-related gun crimes, aiding addiction through love and not violence. There are a million places to start and thousands of paths to research, all of which will create a nation built not on a bullet, but by love. I’m just looking forward to getting started.
Robin Reid is a senior at Pennridge High School in Perkaskie.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Pennsylvania student: This is how gun violence has shaped my future
