School Shootings

    If you're reading this post, chances are you've been to school before. Now, usually you'd worry about if you got your homework done, or if you got a good grade on the recent test. But in recent years, we've had to worry if the current school day is going to be our last. 

    Currently, I'm in middle school, the awkward in-between stage between elementary and high school, which means I thankfully don't have to worry as much about an attack on my school, at least not until I get into high school. But even despite that, the looming threat of a shooter at my school puts me on edge. The idea that it could start out like any other normal day,  with nothing hinting that anything unusual would happen... and it could all end in tragedy. 

    If I was still living in the United Kingdom, I wouldn't be worrying about this. I was just cast it away as a one-in-a-million occurrence that would almost never happen to me. But I don't live in the UK anymore. I live in America, the country where anyone, regardless of training or mental state, could buy a deadly weapon and put a hole through a person's chest.

    Now sometimes, I go down some of the darker rabbit holes of the internet, and indulge in some horror stuff. Horror, to me, is kind of like a drug. I know it's not good for me (because I'm a wuss, and it's going to give me nightmares) but I still indulge in it regardless. However, no kind of eldritch abomination or skinwalker could ever make me more scared than real life horror stories, or true crime stories. 

    Hearing stories of people being brutally murdered or kidnapped in tortured makes me fearful because that could happen to me or my loved ones one day. But one of the scariest kinds of true crime, for me, are school shootings. 

    The idea of a massacre occurring at a place that's supposed to be a safe haven, a place where parent can drop off their kids and not have to worry about them, is terrifying. And the idea that this could happen to me, at my school, one day makes it so much worse. But when I look at the stories of these massacres, I'm not just afraid for my own life, I'm sad for the loss of life. Seeing the faces and stories of these victims just makes me feel sad about how all of these lives were cut so short.

    And worse still, I know my school would be woefully unprepared if a shooter were to enter my school. Our school does code red drills, which have us hide in a corner (marked by a red ceiling squares), turn off all the lights, and go silent (or as silent as a group of middle schoolers can get).The thing is, there is nothing barricading the room, so a school shooter could easily just barge in because school shooters, like most humans, can still enter dark rooms, and they could just turn on the lights if they had trouble seeing. It's even worse if the school shooter is a student at the school, which they often are, because they'll already know the procedures and the code red would become even more useless.

    I've seen some videos online about what to do in the case of a school shooting, like running out of the building immediately upon hearing the first gunshots and not going back for any belongings, and to barricade all entrances with furniture like chairs and tables. While it's good that videos like this exist, they shouldn't have to exist. Everyone should be able to go to school, and not have to worry about if they'll be able to see their loved ones when they return home from school. No matter which way you slice it, gun laws need to change, soon. 

    I'm sorry if this got a bit preachy towards the end, but it's something that I believe really needs to change. Anyways, see you in my next blog. It probably won't be as serious as this one.