New School Year

September 4th.

The second day off of the Labor Day Weekend break. A new school year. Kids go to school excited for the new year ahead: new experiences, events, and friends. Two 14-year-old students won't be able to experience any of these happy memories this year or any future year.

Not even a few weeks into the school year, we once again see the news blowing up with the tragedy of yet another school shooting. The place where students should be heading carefree, with no worry about whether they will live, has become the target of mass shootings in recent years.

What about the rest of this school? What about the students and teachers who saw their friends and colleagues killed? The trauma of this incident will stay with them for their entire lives. Their lives will be forever changed. According to a Stanford study, "Students exposed to shootings at their schools are less likely to graduate high school, go to college, and graduate college, and they are less likely to be employed and have lower earnings in their mid-20s."

Some might argue about how there are regulations to having a gun, but it is essential to point out that the person who was taken into custody was a 14 year old student who took his father's assault weapon. The ways that anyone can access a gun are so simple that even a teenager obtained one and used it. One could also purchase a gun in a different state, with fewer regulations, and keep it with them. Without federal regulation, what are we actually changing? Gun violence and school shootings have become uniquely American.

This is what the future is going to remember: the casualties, the injuries, the mass impact on mental health, and lives changing forever. These effects will be seen by society as a whole as we grapple with the loss of our sense of safety.

As mental health has gotten worse in our nation, we shouldn't add oil to a fire that has been continuously increasing. Adding guns increases violence by giving mechanisms by which people can release, only harming society as a whole. But we must remember that it doesn't have to continue like this. These tragedies aren't inevitable. The power is in our hands to create change to ensure this doesn't continue where we are scared to send the next generation outside, whether our future kids or grandkids. The indoors and outdoors aren't safe anymore, and I doubt they will be safe if change doesn't occur. In the last 50 years, there has been more than a twelve times increase in school shootings, with the death rate increasing by more than six times.

It's time for change.

• https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/health/surviving-school-shooting-impacts-mental-health-education-and-earnings-american

• https://www.facs.org/media-center/press-releases/2024/study-quantifies-dramatic-rise-in-school-shootings-and-related-fatalities-since-1970/

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