On Friday, May 25, there was a school shooting at Noblesville West Middle School in central Indiana. A young girl and a teacher were the victims, both survived.
The suspect targeted the girl because she rejected his relationship advances towards her. On the Friday, all of the Indy suburbs on northeast side felt the tremendous pain that the town of Noblesville was dealing with. Being from Fishers, I woke up to read about this on my social media. I was speechless.
How could children so young be shooting each other over a rejected crush?
How could this happen around a place I call home? "I never thought it could happen here." The Issue with what happened is that it has happened again, and again, and again, and again in so many different places, to so many different people.
Noblesville West Middle School is just another school in an epidemic of school shootings in just this past year alone. As of May 2018, there have been around 23 school shootings, and over 20 kids and adults killed. We are not even halfway through the year yet and have lost that many lives due to gun violence in schools. Gun violence in schools has been happening for years such as the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012.
In current years, Sandy Hook should have been the game changer for drastic change to laws regarding guns and safety of students due to a large amount of young elementary children and adults lost at Sandy Hook. It was an alarming amount that truly shook our country.
For weeks after, many have advocated for change. Change is still not seen.
After each school shooting, our country comes to the rescue to donate and pray and support and advocate but then it settles back down and everyone moves on. Mostly everyone. The family who lost their 7-year-old child doesn't get to move on the next week. The widow who lost her husband that saved lives doesn't get to move on a week later. The families and friends and towns that have been affected can't just move on and live their life. Action towards school shooting prevention will not happen until it affects the majority on a personal level.
The mentality of " It won't happen to me" is an all too common reason to move on and forget about the crappy things that happen.
Unfortunately, we can be selfish beings. It is human nature but with this sort of epidemic, nothing will change until enough people are hurt or killed. Instead of talking about it on social media, protest. Letters can be written to designated government leaders of your own state. I took a stand earlier this year with my university and protested.
Schools around the U.S. did a walk out and they heard us. They heard all of us but since then, more shootings have happened. If schools can take a day to make a small impact, imagine the impact if we all started to take a stand instead of sitting and watching.
Let's not make "It won't happen to me" a thing. The future can't be predicted and as shown, a shooting can happen anywhere. From the nicest of schools to the worst. Nobody else should have to die for change.
