Words from My Screaming Heart

I want to talk to you about something that weighs heavy on my heart. 14 kids and 3 adults died a couple weeks ago. They were shot. In school. With a gun.

I’m sure you’ve heard. Or perhaps you’re wondering which time I’m referring to.

Parkland, Florida, this time.

The way I found out was by seeing “BREAKING NEWS” pop up on Youtube. The videos were all police being interviewed in the street that I later found out was in front of Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school. Behind them, caution tape criss-crossed the road, red and blue lights of ambulances flashing. Stretchers. People milling around, talking on their cell phones, crying. Under each video said how long ago it was posted, and they had all been up no longer than five minutes.

Shocked, I googled ‘Florida shooting’. There was an SOS alert on my computer, as well as directions to stay away from the area, all the roads were blocked and being patrolled by SWAT teams, ect. This was happening at that very moment. I texted my one of my best friends, because her family lived in Florida. It was real. It was so real.

There were several news stories, all saying how many people had died. The first said 1. The next said 2. Then it switched over to saying several. When I refreshed the page, I saw that the news articles had been replaced by new ones in the short thirty seconds I had been glancing over their headlines. The numbers were getting higher literally by the second, and I figured this would not stop for awhile. It hit me then that they were probably just now looking through the school and discovering the bodies, and I didn’t want to watch the number keep rising.

I did not check again for about an hour. While I waited, the number would reach 17, and come to a stop there. During that hour, I went to my room, and cried. I cried for my Americans, who had been unfairly, and brutally slain, and would continue to be. I cried for my country, the only one I’d ever known, for the way we let ourselves fall into despair. I cried for feeling weak. I cried for imperfection. I cried for not being able to take all the pain away. I cried for the 17. Teachers who went to college so they could educate. Teachers who died trying to protect their students. Teenagers who would never get the chance to be married, or have kids, or even graduate.

I cried because they were the children of God, fearfully and wonderfully made. Each with a family. Each with a mother and father who they would not return to that night. Sisters and brothers, boyfriends and girlfriends, and best friends. Each with a future, each with a past. Each with hopes, and dreams, and ambition, and fears, and heartaches, and quirks, and a smile, and a purpose.

In so many situations people ask, “Why me?”.

But that night, thinking of my fellow 17, I could only ask, “Why them? Why did it have to be them?”

I did not know a single one, but I didn’t have to. I’m the type of person who always feels like it is their responsibility to fix everything. I know that’s not right, but to be living in a country where our leader takes as little action as he does, it’s a rather hard feeling to fight off. And to watch this happen over and over…..it’s discouraging.

I want to suggest a video to you. A young woman named Emma Gonzalez spoke at an anti-gun rally a while ago. I’m sure most people have already seen it. She is a survivor of the Parkland shooting. She quotes a teacher in her speech, saying, “When adults tell me I have the right to own a gun, all I can hear is my right to own a gun outweighs your student’s right to live. All I hear is mine, mine, mine, mine.”

And her own words:

“I found out today there’s a website shootingtracker.com. Nothing in the title suggests that it is exclusively tracking the USA’s shootings and yet does it need to address that? Because Australia had one mass shooting in 1999 in Port Arthur (and after the) massacre introduced gun safety, and it hasn’t had one since. Japan has never had a mass shooting. Canada has had three and the UK had one and they both introduced gun control and yet here we are, with websites dedicated to reporting these tragedies so that they can be formulated into statistics for your convenience.”

I would like to point out, with all due respect, that this is what our president said: “To every parent, teacher, and child who is hurting so badly, we are here for you. Whatever you need. Whatever we can do to ease your pain. We are all joined together as one American family, and your suffering is our burden also.”

I shouldn’t have to explain why this is wrong.

The ridiculous thing is, he says “We are all joined together as one American family.” We’ve all read his Tweets, where he’s constantly slamming Democrats for their opinions. And I’m not just pointing this out because I’m biased. It’s terribly obvious that he’s lying to himself. If we had a Democratic president who was saying those same kind of things only about Republicans, it would be just as unacceptable. Bringing people together as “One American family”, as he likes to say, is pretty much the last thing he’s doing.

He also said, “Whatever you need.”

I, as a teenager who, though home schooled myself, watches my best friends leave for school every day in fear, because threats are being made, say the thing we need is gun control. And I don’t mean taking guns away. I mean more thorough background checks, and laws that will protect not only potential victims, but the mentally ill people who have access to as many guns as they please. Setting up realistic boundaries is not taking away your rights. But, keeping things the way they are now seems to be taking away a student’s right to get an education without fear of dying. And no, that’s not being extreme.  Freedom from fear is one of the four freedoms, according to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

*From Wikipedia* “In his speech Roosevelt formulated freedom from fear as follows: “The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.”

A worldwide reduction of armaments. This was something spoken by one of our own presidents, and I can say with much confidence he wasn’t saying it as as suggestion. I don’t know why more people aren’t referencing this in their arguments. It gives every teenager and child in America the backup information in order to say their rights are being disregarded. We have the right to live free from fear. It’s a human right. And no one gets to decide for any other individual if this applies to their life. No politician, or angry no name on the internet gets to decide if someone’s fear is worthy. If the students say they are afraid to go to school, that’s just it. No one gets to decide if it’s a publicity stunt, or if they are just angst filled hormonal teens who are going along with the trend.

When did our priorities get so self centered? Why is it such a hard thing to sacrifice the tiniest bit surrounding firearms if it means protecting our children? And when people talk about gun laws, they mean making it harder for sick people to get guns. They mean extensive background checks. If you don’t have anything to hide, why is it such a big deal to have to fill out some forms before you get your gun? Sure, it would take a couple hours. So what? Why is that more important than a life? “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” I’ve heard that so many times. And I suppose, if you take it very literally, it is true. A gun can’t very well get up and walk into a school on it’s own. But it doesn’t look at the whole issue. Why on earth would we be aware that there are people with intentions like that, but still let them have access to guns?

And I know, you just want to be able to own your guns. And you want to be trusted with your guns. And you want to acquire your guns hassle free. That’s one thing both sides should be able to agree on. Neither of us want any hassle.

But just for a moment, think about this. What about them? What about the 17 who just had to die because we didn’t do anything last time there was a school shooting? Will there have to be a next time before this becomes an issue? For how many years have people already been asking that? Parkland was the 25th major school shooting since Columbine. Think how many kids that is. When did this become normal? When did this become ok?

Right now, it is easier to buy a gun than get tickets to a Beyoncé concert. There are more gun dealers than supermarkets. In 2017 alone, at least 15,549 people were killed by a gun, and that is excluding most suicides. How much more do you need? How many more people need to die before we can start taking action?In my mind, even one life is more valuable than all the guns in the world. I used to think that was common knowledge. I used to think anyone would agree with that.

Just over a week ago, I went to a basketball game with some friends at a nearby high school a lot of my friends go to. That high school has had three threats in the past couple months. I forgot about this fact until I had entered the building, becoming hyper aware of the armed police officer standing guard.

Why do you think she was there?

If gun owning Americans want to say their rights are being taken away when we install gun control, then the people who are at the biggest risk, the students, are more than just allowed to say our rights are being taken away when we realize we live in a country where being shot while in school is actually something to be afraid of, and all our president can say is that his prayers and condolences go out to the victims families, via Twitter. Just for a bit of evidence to back me up on his….manner of handling things, he went on to refer to the mentally unstable people who do this kind of thing as ‘savage sickos’. He also said, referring to the students, “We must not let them down. We must keep our children safe!!”

Students who were there, hiding under desks and in closets, as their classmates were brutally shot and killed, have stated very clearly what they think the steps being taken next should look like.

I am posting this March 24th, 2018. Today in Washington DC, teenagers are marching for their rights, and their lives. This is what happens when the people in charge don’t take action; the victims do. And we, the teenagers who are saying they’re afraid to go/watch their friends go to school, aren’t going to go away. The teenagers who are there, marching today, are the future. And the adults who say teens don’t know what they’re talking about, that they’re too caught up in themselves? They can take away rights, and they can take away laws that were meant to protect us, but they can’t take away voices. A new future is coming. The future I dream about, where I don’t have to question whether or not it is safe for me to stop homeschooling and start going to high school. The future I dream about, where I don’t feel the need to pray that I won’t have to wake up one day and find that all my friends are dead. Right now, that’s reality.

But that is going to change. This is the way to remember those who were so unfairly killed. These students are stepping up. You can’t tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about, because they were there.

These are students who when going back to school for the first time in weeks, broke down because the empty desks around them make it too real.

These are students who were in the same room as the shooter and had to see their friends die, but not die themselves, because they were simply pawns in a twisted game.

These are students who sat through their first roll call since the shooting crying, because fourteen children were not there to say “here”.

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Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

#msdstrong #istandwithemma #marchforourlives #wecallbs #whatif #timesup #enoughisenough #neveragain