Opinion | A plea for peace after Parkland

Gracie Fleischman, Opinions Editor

We grew up in the era of mass shootings.

Wednesday afternoon in class on Feb. 14, I looked up and saw the person in front of me checking Facebook. He pulled up an article that said “Florida school shooting” and I barely blinked. I looked back at my notes and continued writing.

We are the ones who were taught to turn off the lights in our classroom, lock the door and hide behind desks if there was a shooter on campus. We were the ones who attended all-school assemblies that explained protocol if an active shooter approached – walk, don’t run, in an orderly line led by your teacher. I remember a teacher saying that, if someone ever attacked us, we all had to take off our shoes and throw them at the shooter.

Our grandparents were shown black and white footage instructing them how to “duck and cover” from nuclear bombs. Bert the Turtle showed them how to hide under their flimsy wooden desks. Their parents probably bought a survival kit in case they ever had to hide out in a bunker.

The modern-day version is much more real and likely. Mass shootings, defined as four or more people shot in the same general time and place, happen so often many of us are numb to the violence. So far this year, there have already been 7,045 gun-related deaths and injuries and 32 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

I’ve thought about what it would be like to and to lose someone I love from gun violence. In December, my sister’s high school received a tip about a possible shooting that would happen the next day at school. She called me to ask if she should stay home and miss her math test. She decided to go to her morning class because “the shooter would probably come later in the day anyway.”

This is the way we think. We have grown up with senseless violence and have become accustomed to the all-day news coverage of talking heads blaming mental health, underpreparedness or bad parenting. In a few weeks, the tweets from politicians asking for “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their families will slow and come to a halt. We will all forget about it – until the next shooting.

Once in a while, a Democrat or two will plead for a gun control law to be passed, and maybe C-SPAN will cover an ineffective filibuster with a politician pounding on a podium asking for change.

But that usually dissipates and with it goes any chance of improvement in the state of our country. For those who support the NRA or politicians who are funded by the NRA, for those who believe that more guns in the hands of “good guys” will solve this crisis, please picture this:

A classroom is full of terrorized teens on the floor. Some are crying next to a wounded or dead classmate. Others are pale and quiet in shock. Phones ring unanswered beside bodies of innocent people who don’t want your thoughts and prayers.