“Mom, help me. Mom, I don’t want to die. Mom…I love you” *Call Ended*.

Every parent’s fear, every child’s fear, it’s everyone’s fear. You hear about a school shooting states away and all you feel is a little empathy but then you hear about one closer to you and you get antsy.

Imagine calling your parents thinking it would be the last time you would ever talk to them. All the memories during your childhood come flooding back to the phone call thinking that’s the final call you will ever make. You thank them for all the memories and money they’ve spent on you. You apologize for yelling at them, saying “their bad at parenting” last week but it’s not enough time. You hear the door open in the classroom, say I love you to your parents and close your eyes hoping for the best.

Picture what’s happening on the other side of the phone. Your mom can barely breathe from crying, and your dad is trying to hold it together. Your little sister doesn’t know what’s going on. She just sees the horror on your parents’ faces while they hear their older child whispering on the phone apologizing for anything and everything they’ve done wrong. Then the phone call ends. That’s an image no one will ever forget.

We always wonder as a kid why our parents would be hesitant to bring us to school. In reality, they have no control over what happens at school. They can’t protect their little ones, so they have to trust the teachers and faculty to protect their kid. Then you also have to remember there’s 19 other kids in the class who need protection, too. Those other parents who expect the staff to do the same thing you expect them to do.

We always hear about a new shooting that took place on the news but we rarely know the stories of the parents and kids that experienced it from a first-hand perspective. We hear how scary it was but never how terrifying it is to sit silently in a corner praying the shooter doesn’t come near you. We never feel the goosebumps on our skin at the sound of a gunshot. We never hear how it affects them and their families. We never hear it gives victims PTSD and anxiety. That part of it is hidden.

There have been over 125 mass shootings this year alone, and it’s only April. According to insider.com there were 647 mass shootings in the US in 2022. We claim this should stop and come to an end, but do we do anything about it? We all say how horrific school shootings are, but then we go back to our normal lives. The people who have experienced a shooting can never go back to their normal routine. They live in numbness and pain never knowing if it might happen again. Their paranoia controls them.

Each day, 12 children die from gun violence in America and another 23 are shot and injured. Since Columbine in 1999, more than 338,000 students in the U.S. have experienced gun violence at school according to sandyhookpromise.org. Whether you support gun control or not, the innocent lives that are put at risk should be protected.

Whenever you see a chart or an article about the new school/mass shootings in the US, you only see the number rise. It is very rare to see the number drop and stay low. If you hear about a shooting, don’t stand around thinking about what somebody could have done to stop it; share what you heard and do something about it. Be the change you want to see in the world (Mahatma Gandhi).

What about the people who survive the shooting? How do you think they feel? They won’t feel safe anymore at school, all the security and police just makes them more uncomfortable but without them, who’s there to protect them? They hear a single pin drop and jump, they can’t trust anyone anymore. They live in fear.

Studies have shown at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that guns are now the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the U.S. 85% of all school shootings in the world happen in the U.S. That’s scary to think that much of school shootings are concentrated in the area of where we are.

It never affects you until it does.