School shootings do not seem faze us anymore, and that is very bad.
In elementary school, we’d have fire drills and earthquake drills. We’d hide under desks and cover our heads while lined up in hallways, preparing for a possible disaster that we knew would be unlikely. No one took those drills seriously.
We’d have bus drills, too. These, however, we felt more in the realm of possibilities, as vehicle accidents are more common than an earthquake in Pennsylvania. Each person would practice hopping out of the back of the bus or the side exit, as everyone else watched and helped lift others down to the concrete sidewalk outside of school.
In our intermediate school, we had the same drills.
By the time I got to high school, though, things changed. Instead of being focused on an earthquake in the middle of our valley, teachers told us to hide in corners, turned off the lights, propped chairs under doors and had every student remain silent as our principal checked and pretended to break into classrooms.
Our fears shifted away from that of natural disasters and fires to a student, professor or random outsider with a gun.
In eighth grade, we had our first real school lockdown on the matter. While in the men’s bathroom, a student noticed a bullet sitting on the ground. After alerting a teacher, the school went into lockdown mode, as teachers and administrators stressed over the idea of a student with a gun.
For three or four hours, I remained in my homeroom, playing Chess with my one classmate. Instead of being worried and hiding, we pretended that everything was normal. Our whole student body did.
Our parents, however, didn’t know what was going on, and many tried to reach out to students to make sure their children were okay.
During that time, all the male students in the building were brought out in groups into the hallway and were interrogated as a class, as administrators tried to understand the circumstances. Eventually, they deemed that a student most likely went hunting the day before, as it is a common sport in my area, and accidentally had extra bullets in his pants, spilling out as he tried to use the restroom.
After that day, everything seemed to go back to normal.
That same year, the high school in the district, where my sister attended, had a student threaten to shoot up the school. While nothing arose out of this, many students in her grade and the other grades in the building skipped school, worried about what would come out of that day. I remember seeing my sister crying, scared of what could happen if this had come to fruition.
When I ended up in high school, the building went on lockdown again, along with the middle school which was located close by. This time, it was said that an ex-faculty member was in the parking lot with a gun, mad about being fired. Or something of that nature. I’m not even sure if authorities truly figured that one out. All I remember is being numb to the idea of another gun.
Again, no one died, but we all knew it was a serious possibility.
Ever since middle school, every time I enter a new classroom, a new school or a new campus, regardless of whether or not it is my own, I think of these instances. I look for places to hide if necessary. I look for weapons to possibly use against a gunman. I look at all my exits and determine the best method to escape without getting shot.
And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about this more since last year’s armed robbery.
This year alone, there have been at least 11 reported cases of school shootings, according to the New York Times’ standards. And according to CNN’s guidelines, there have been 45 this year, adding up to nearly one shooting a week.
At what point do we draw the line between the Second Amendment and the lives of our children? At what point does our kindergarten, elementary, middle and high-school students’ lives matter more than citizens’ abilities to own AK-47s and other assault rifles?
My generation has known school shootings our whole lives. Columbine happened only a month after I was born, and before many on this campus took their first breaths.
Collectively, we have become numb to this thought. The words “school shooting” don’t instill fear into us anymore. As each day passes, we’ve all come up with our own escape plans, have looked for our own exits and have dreamt up the everyday objects we could use as weapons.
We, as a society, have come to terms that these things just happen. But they shouldn’t happen anymore.
And until we take measures to stop it, who knows how many of our innocent children will be killed.
By Natalie Forster, Editor-in-Chief
forstena17@bonaventure.edu
