The first school shooting I remember was the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. I was 10 years old. I remember looking at magazines with my grandma. I remember seeing her facial expression of being so heartbroken looking through every face of every victim just saying how beautiful they were and what a shame this was.

At the time, I really didn’t get it. But, I remember the photos posted in the magazines of the shooting and the faces of the victims and reading their biographies on what they had aspired to be. I was sad, but I don’t believe at the time that my mind really registered what a school shooting was. I mean, at that time, they didn’t happen that often.

The next shooting I remember most of all was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. I was a sophomore in high school and I still remember being confused as to what had actually happened. “What was going on and why did this happen?” I started to ask myself this once I started to understand the extent of what had endured to this school, these students, these teachers, these families. It made me sick - literally.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares just crying and even sometimes just running straight to the bathroom to throw up because the heavy realizations I was having and the feeling made me physically sick.

I would have nightmares of a shooter coming to my school, but the loss of my life never made me scared. Yes, it was a terrible dream, but what shook me more were the nightmares I had of a shooter going to my brother’s elementary school and my brother getting - God I can’t even bear to finish that sentence.

Such young, beautiful, innocent lives - all of them were taken. They were taken unfairly, unjustly, unexpectedly, and ever so cruelly.

Ever since the shooting at Sandy Hook, that was when I started registering more and more that this can happen at any time and at any place and I needed to be prepared.

I needed to be aware of my surroundings and scope out different options I can take in order to get out of a building if, God forbid, it ever happens at my school. I’m in college now and I still do this. I will sit in a room or space sometimes in sheer silence and I will - unwantingly - start to imagine a scenario where my school is being shot up. What do I do? Where do I go? How do I react?

Most times I tell myself if this ever were to happen that I’m breaking and jumping out the nearest window. I think to myself “My school is very low. Only 3 floors. If I am on the highest floor and I jump, the worst that will happen is that I break my leg or something, but I’ll still be alive.”

It’s easy to say this now, but granted you never know what you’ll do until your in that situation and I pray to God I never am in this kind of situation - along with my brother, my friends, my family, anyone ever that these tragedies are something we will never endure and we should never have to be in. A school is a safe place. A school is where differences should be made - not tragedies.

Now within the recent light of the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School, this re-rises the controversial topic of gun reform and the level of necessity there is for a teacher to have a firearm in the classroom.

Personally, I believe teachers yes, should have guns in the classroom. I believe teachers who are willing to get properly trained, obtain a FOID card, apply for concealed carry, and legally buy a firearm should have every right to have that option in the classroom in the case of an occurring school shooting. I understand not all teachers would be comfortable with this as well as most districts and parents, but for the ones that are willing to take this extreme risk to protect themselves and their students, why shouldn’t they be given this choice?

I’m going to school right now to become a high school English teacher and I have adapted to not only know what I would do as a student in a shooting, to now being a teacher in a shooting. I am willing to die for my students, but the thing is I don’t want to die and I shouldn’t have to if I ever find my school and my students to be amidst a school shooting.

I am a person who is comfortable around guns and using them. I come from a cop family, I’ve gone shooting before, I know how to handle a basic handgun and I am trusted with one. My major was originally Law Enforcement before I decided to switch and I’ve taken the Chicago PD exam and received a perfect score on it. Why I chose not to become a cop was because I honestly didn’t see myself in it and in even more honesty I was not comfortable having a gun on me and potentially having to use it to its use, in a given situation.

Funny now that I’m still in a career where guns are used constantly. Only thing is that they are being used in a very wrong and tragic way. All I know is that it’s February going on barely 3 months into the new year and there have been 18 incidents where a gun has been fired on school campuses - something needs to change and it needs to change fast.

And if that change is letting teachers who are comfortable using firearms, have been properly educated and trained, and are legally given permission and authorization to have and need be used in a classroom to protect their students. Why not?

The sad truth is that even with these reforms and if it will be one day allowed as a security for teachers to have a gun in their classrooms. School shootings, if they happen, when they happen, there is no way to fully plan for and prevent them.

When a school shooting starts, even if there are guns in the classroom, by the time the situation is addressed, notified, and recognized to the whole school. However, students and teachers are still going to die either way. By the time a teacher who has a gun finds out that there is a shooting and finds the shooter and if it is even possible that they take the shooter out. By the time that happens, there will still be bloodshed and there will still be tragedy made.

But, even if this still can be utilized to a school’s advantage, any chance that the shooter can be taken out sooner and more lives can be saved. Isn’t that a risk and a chance that we should be willing to take. If a teacher can do this and be a hero by stopping a shooter from furthering their body count, why not?

Aren’t we desperate enough for some kind of change? Our second amendment gives us the right to bear arms. Concealed carry gives us the right to protect ourselves at any given moment of danger where that extreme measure needs to be taken. And that’s what guns should be used in extreme cases. Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.

So I say this when people who legally obtain the right to purchase, own and carry a gun and there are people who are willing to add onto that side of legal gun control, they outnumber those who obtain guns illegally and use them for intended agendas, a shift can be made and a change can be made. It’s a scary world out there but teachers can protect their students more effectively in a school shooting if they do it holding a firearm rather than putting their hands behind them, standing helplessly in front of their students.

Like I said earlier, as a future teacher, I am willing to die for my students. I don’t even have kids of my own yet, but when I do, even knowing that I have them, I am still willing to die for my students. Because when my students are in my classroom, they are all my children. I will do anything for them and do anything to make sure that they are always safe and protected.

And when my kids are in school I expect their teacher to do no less than I would to protect their kids in light of a school shooting. It’s a pretty messed up world that I have to think this way and plan this way and sacrifice so many things before I even have them… but that’s what you have to do when no change has been made.

My whole heart, thoughts, and prayers go out to the victims and families of the tragedy in the Florida school shooting. Also to those who have been in and ever suffered from a tragedy like this in the past. I hope you all find peace and a way to move on from such great losses. I couldn’t imagine what you all must be constantly feeling.