A Students Perspectives on Gun Violence
By Amarilis Rivas
I still remember the day of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, it was on Valentines Day, on a Wednesday, and I remember my friend telling me that there had apparently been a shooting in Florida. It was Valentine's day but the only thing in the news and that everyone was talking about was the shooting and how students around my age had been killed. The next day at school, everyone was so tense, everything felt so silent yet it felt like there was no tranquility.
As a 12th grade high school student this is my perspective on mass shootings and gun control.
As a fourteen year old girl at that time, I was finally able to process and understand what had happened. When Sandy Hook happened I was too young and I didn’t understand what had happened, but with Stoneman Douglas I was able to fully comprehend and I was just terrified. Many teenagers, like myself, have their own opinions on gun control, and many of us believe in stricter gun control. March For Our Lives was an organization created by the survivors of the Stoneman Douglas High School, they advocate for gun safety and gun control. The March For Our Lives organizations and other teen gun control supporters are constantly criticized, derogated, and told that they have no idea what they are talking about. They think that because we are children, we don’t know anything about guns, or that we’re too young to have a say about gun control legislation. In reality, we are too young to be worried that there's a possibility of us being shot and killed at our school, we are too young to live in fear, and we are too young to have trauma due to gun violence. I find it unbelievable, immature and reprehensible how people, mostly opposers of gun control, will invalidate the feelings and beliefs of gun violence victims. I can’t imagine being a survivor of gun violence and people thinking they have a right to tell you that you're too young to have an opinion of gun control. Most of my friends feel the same way as I do, they are terrified of a school shooting happening. One friend even has a very explicit and detailed plan of what she’ll do in the situation that a school shooting does happen. Another friend of mine expressed how the school shooting drills can sometimes be useless because what if the shooter is a student at the school and knows all the “safe spots”, in that case we’d just be helpless.
I know and admit that I am young, I've always been sheltered and protected by my parents, so owning a gun has never crossed my mind and I don’t see the need for it, but I do find it reasonable when some people own guns. For example, it's reasonable in my opinion when a woman that lives alone owns a gun, or when someone has been threatened or their family has been threatened. What I don’t find reasonable in any situation is owning an AR-15 or any other automatic firearm, I simply don’t understand why anyone needs an automatic firearm. It also baffles me how easy it is to get a gun in other states, such as in Texas, it's been said buying a gun in Texas is just as easy as buying a bag of apples. It should not be that easy to buy a gun.
I personally believe people need background checks and psychological evaluations when buying a gun. I do acknowledge the second amendment and I do know that owning a gun is a constitutional right but the constitution was written over 200 years ago, society has much progressed and changed, we are no longer in the 1700’s. Thomas Jefferson himself even said “the earth belongs in usufruct to the living, the dead have neither powers nor rights over it”. What Thomas Jefferson here was saying was that the original constitution should be changed and should be modified to fit today's society, not society in the 1700’s. I strongly believe in stricter gun control. I hope one day our country will realize the severity of gun violence. Gun violence has become something so common in our country, I hope soon that Americans will realize that gun violence is a serious epidemic in our country.