Silence fell over Evergreen High School on Sep. 10, 2025, when the lockdown alarm went off blaring. The school was attacked by a shooter. That same day, right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on a college campus while answering a question regarding mass shootings in America. Two tragedies that were separate, yet connected by the same thread: the accessibility of guns in America.
School is where I am supposed to be safe. It’s supposed to be a space where I can learn, not silently fear for my life. Up until now, I regret to say I never thought it could happen to me; I thought I was somehow an exception. I never thought that one day I would be looking over my shoulder in the hallways I comfortably walk down every day, wondering if I would leave this school alive. Now I am afraid. You should be, too.
I started to ask myself the hard questions. The day before the evergreen shooting, schools nationwide protested via walkout, a protest I took part in. But are walkout protests enough anymore? Will anything ever get better if we don’t start protesting untraditionally? For too long, we’ve relied on marches, boycotts, and speeches to send a message, but the cycle continues: another shooting, another tragedy, another headline. The truth is, we don’t have a choice anymore. No matter how you identify politically, you must understand one thing: this has to stop.
The root of the problem lies in the availability of guns—guns that can be accessed by children, brought into schools, and used to turn public spaces into places consumed by fear and catastrophe. According to the pew research center, a majority of Americans (61%) say it is too easy to legally obtain a gun in this country. I am not asking for a total ban. I am asking for control. I am asking for safety.
Evergreen High School is less than an hour away. ”I was scared and I felt sick,” evergreen student Brenner Johnson said, in the aftermath of the attack. While we pretend these things never happened, that there’s no way it could happen to us, the surviving students are scarred for life. Urging for gun control is not about politics. It is about survival. It is about advocating for ourselves, our friends, our teachers, and our communities.
We can’t enable the habits our society has developed to reduce victims of gun violence to statistics. According to Sandy Hook Promise, each day 12 children die from gun violence in America, and another 32 are shot and injured. When a student is hospitalized or killed, too often their story is quickly integrated into a growing list of “incidents.” Shot in the head and chest, 18 year-old Mathew Silverstone narrowly escaped death. His recovery was said to be “nothing short of miraculous”. These students are more than numbers in a report. They are individuals, classmates, siblings, friends. Their lives were cut short or permanently altered due to the irresponsibility of our government regarding gun protection. They should be remembered as martyrs of a system that resists change, not just as another data point in the endless cycle of violence.
Gun violence will never end if we don’t do something. I am tired of waiting for adults to fix what they believe is free will or a “god-given” right. I am tired of empty promises, of “thoughts and prayers”, of hashtags, and of hearing “never again” only for it to happen again the next week. I am tired of being told to be resilient when what I really need is change.
No one has the luxury of ignoring the risks of gun accessibility. Your inaction is a sign of approval.
If we don’t act, who will? If we don’t raise our voices, who will speak for us? The truth is, this is our reality, and it is on us to demand change until those in power finally listen.
