Again. I’m scrolling on TikTok and see students fleeing their school again. I see individual accounts of what happens when their life is threatened in a building they were once comfortable in/I hear “students dead and injured” and I know what’s coming.

“Send prayers,” “My heart hurts for their families,” “Devastating,”  “What a terrible tragedy,” flood captions and comments on social media platforms and news outlets. It still happens again. 

Just this past week three more people lost their lives during a shooting on Michigan State University’s campus.

We mourn, we recognize, we learn, but we move on. America has fallen into a vicious cycle of innocent deaths taken by broken people. This isn’t normal. 

We call for action and say we’re done seeing students die, but we’re still here. Still sitting, waiting to see who will make the first move to make the tragedies end. The solution hasn’t been banning guns, giving them to teachers, making more elaborate drills to always feel ready, so what is it?

I call out to my Washington D.C. politicians, Jason Crow, John Hickenlooper, and Micheal Bennet. You represent me and here’s what I need you to do: stop the fear.

 People love their guns too much to give them up, but also love their child’s innocence too much to weaponize a teacher. So come up with something new. You have the opportunity to protect the students whose parents voted you into office. I’ve gone through the bullying programs and participated in anti-hate clubs that gave me hope to make my school a place that I feel safe, but now it’s up to you. The violence hasn’t stopped, so neither can we.     

Three million kids witness a shooting every year, that means 3 million kids will never see their school the same. 4% of American kids will have to carry the effects of a school shooting with them for the rest of their lives. Isn’t that enough?