By Kylie Ruffino.
It’s hard to imagine that a country as great as America, as developed, faces one of the worst injustices of all: children can no longer safely go to school.
Since Sandy Hook alone, over 400 students and faculty have been injured or killed due to an active shooter. But if you don’t think that is a worthy enough cause to take up arms against the violent epidemic plaguing our country, and our country alone alone, think about this: we, as students, can no longer feel safe.
The first thing I notice walking into my classroom at Arnold Hall, is that the doors open outwards and cannot be barricaded. So I think about whether or not I would be brave enough to hold the door closed, to risk my life in order to protect my peers. The next thing I notice is that the desks aren’t big enough to cover my body. So what would I do? Would I break a window to escape? Try to use books to cover my head? Every morning I tell my mom I love her because there is a chance the unthinkable could happen.
We should not have to consider these things. But we do. To say I am over dramatizing the issue or to say this wouldn’t happen to us, well, why don’t you go ask the survivors of Parkland if they expected to lose seventeen of their classmates and teachers. Thoughts and prayers are no longer good enough, because thoughts and prayers did not save a single one of their lives.
March 24th.
March 24th we are taking to the streets. From Wright Square to Forsyth Park, 1pm to 3pm, we are taking our voices to congress. Enough is enough.
This should have ended in 1999 in the wake of Columbine, but it didn’t. Now, it is up to us. We are the generation lost down the barrel of a gun.
We are no longer letting our voices as students lay to the wayside. No more auto and semi-automatic rifles. Better background checks and comprehensive mental health programs. No more bump stocks. No more private gun show loopholes. No more losing the lives of the innocent.
This is not a matter of the second amendment. We are not advocating to take away America’s right to bear arms, but we are arming ourselves with the power to say regulation is a necessity to the welfare of our children.
And it does not end at the march. Register to vote. Write to your senator. It is not enough to band together in solidarity, post your activism to social media and say you have done your part. That is called reactivism. We need to stop reacting. We need to advocate for change.
Join us; find March for Our Lives – Savannah on Facebook. I, along with two other freshman, Devyn Bauer and Hana Mahle, am organizing the movement in Savannah. Reach out and ask how you can get involved.
Our lives depend on it.
