February 14th, 2018, a day meant to be filled with love and admiration, marked the day that seventeen people in Parkland, Florida woke up for the very last time. This is the eighteenth school shooting that has happened in 2018 and nobody is talking about it. On April 20th, 1999, 13 people were killed in a school shooting at Columbine High school. This, until yesterday was the biggest school shooting that has happened. Our parents had wars, and we have shootings.
According to most, the main problems that have caused these are mental health and gun control. According to U.S. news, America is ranked third for overall worst mental health. However the government has not acknowledged this. Mental health, worldwide, has never been taken seriously. If one goes back to the Holocaust, if someone had a mental disorder, they were ranked as subhumans and sent to concentration camps. This problem needs to stop, people need to be taken seriously, and jokes need to be eliminated. Getting help also needs to be cheaper and more accessible, cheaper, and not looked down upon. Gun laws need to be stricter but that won’t fix the problem, and neither will improving mental health, the problem starts and ends with society. The dark truth is people will talk about this just like they did with the hurricanes or the Orlando shooting, for a couple weeks, donate money and make an uproar. However measures will not be taken and soon another Kardashian will get married, or divorced, or get plastic surgery and this will sadly been forgotten. When nobody is truly making a stand, the government won’t take action. Sad but true, the conversation needs to start. Too much blood has been shed, and not enough people have been educated.
According to BBC world news, Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in Parkland, Florida, commented on a youtube video saying, “I am going to be a professional school shooter.” The FBI and school knew about this comment, no actions were made. The problem isn’t happening 1,000 miles away from us either. Problems like these are happening in our hometown. Kids laughing or joking about this or other shootings. People joke about shooting up the school or carry around books about guns or spend their time during class looking at guns. When kids don’t feel comfortable coming to school, because they are afraid of dying, there is a major problem. Kids that make a joke about something so serious need to be suspended, educated, and spend time considering if they would make those jokes in front of a victim’s family.
If these problems are so serious, why does nobody seem to know what exactly to do in case of this happening. Many people think that the protocol is to hide and lock the doors, but the problem with this is that they can find the way in. The Marion High school protocol is to throw anything near you towards the shooter, and run as fast as you can to your closest window or door. People need to know this, because with how disgustingly common this is becoming, we cannot be clueless in the case of the event. Drills need to be more common, and teachers need to be more vocal.
