This past week, Sandy Hook Promise— a foundation created by families that lost loved ones during the Sandy Hook tragedy, when a gunman broke into Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and killed 26 people, 20 students in the second and third grades and six instructors— released a public service announcement with kids going back to school. It features the children showing off their new equipment and school supplies, starting off innocently with a student showing off his backpack but quickly escalating to a kid with new noise-canceling headphones with a commotion in the back.
The video then transitions to the students during the shooting— a kid runs away from a shooter as he shows off his new sneakers, a girl flaunts her new sweater as she ties the door shut with the sleeves and a boy brags about a new skateboard as he breaks the windows with it while a multitude of students dash out of the school. It continues with two students adjacent to a door thankful for their new scissors and sharpened pencils and a girl showing off her new socks that she uses as a tourniquet around her friend’s blown leg saying, “these socks are a real lifesaver.”
The spot hauntingly concludes with a girl squatting on top of a toilet, proud of her new phone, but terrified as she texts her mom that she loves her before the bathroom door is flung open.
While many people may have responded by calling out the Newtown-based nonprofit for forcing these children to act out a trauma, most responses were positive, not simply because the students had portrayed the PSA so well, but because these are real fears that students and instructors deal with on a daily basis.
At this point while writing this article, I was tutoring at Olean High School, and there had been a lockdown. I was informed it had not been a drill, so I shut the door and shoved a table in front of it As a student who grew up in the Newtown area, this has been an immense fear of mine that occurs every time I step into a classroom— in high school and college. Students and instructors should not be scared to go to school because they do not want to get shot.
Over the past two months, there have been countless shootings. Most people have heard about the ones in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio that occurred on Aug. 3 of this year. Since then, lawmakers have all been trying to find a way to limit the casualties caused by firearms, but there is an obvious divide amongst party lines between what causes shootings. Many liberals continue to urge others about the dangers of firearms, while many conservatives continue to cite the Second Amendment and contribute the tragedies to mental health issues.
The way that the U.S. medical system deals with mental illness is flawed, and there needs to be changes to fix this. But while mental health is a major health issue that contributes to the epidemic of school shootings that has arisen since Sandy Hook on Dec. 14, each shooting has one common thread: guns.
As of July 22 of this year, there had been 22 school shootings throughout the country. 8 children die daily due to firearms, which are the second leading cause of death for children. As the rate of school shootings trending up substantially within this decade, there needs to be a change— 20 percent of all American mass shootings have occurred since Sandy Hook.
The Sandy Hook Promise minute-long advertisement is more than just a PSA about guns or the potential signs prior to a tragedy. It is a haunting realization of the fears that students go through each day as they walk through the school doors.
Matthew Villanueva is the Opinion Editor for The Bona Venture.
His email is villanjv18@bonaventure.edu
