As I sat there, huddled in the back corner of my classroom, squeezing the hand of a girl I had maybe exchanged three conversations with in the past and watching people desperately try to get in contact with their loved ones, all I could think was: Why is this the life we have to live?

This is the reality of a campus lockdown.

It’s strangers rushing into the room as you stroll in for class, carrying with them their books and their backpacks and an anxiety you don’t understand.

It’s everyday small talk escalating, gradually then all-at-once, into a panicked, incomprehensible dissonance of “Wait, what’s going on?” and “Apparently, there’s an active shooter, I don’t know”, “Close the door, close the door!” and “We’re not sure how to lock doors in this building.”

This is the reality of a campus lockdown.

It’s your heart shrinking in its chest and racing as you see people crying hysterically into the phone, crying silently even though you never expected them to.

It’s you, crying, too, at the sight of others’ fear, letting yourself fall apart right beside the people around you and letting them lift you up because they’re somehow stronger than you are.

This is the reality of a campus lockdown.

It’s the Internet immediately knowing the name of the building you’re about to type in because so many people have already done the same.

It’s news accounts on Twitter making you feel voiceless as they report “all-clear” when you’re still cramped in a barricaded room with people praying and sending each other strained smiles, trying to reassure each other—and maybe themselves—that you are fine, that you will be fine, that everything will be okay.

It’s your breath stopping in your airways every time someone bumps their knee into a table leg or mumbles a little too loud. It’s the girl on her phone hearing that two people were shot. It’s a period of uncertainty, of not knowing what to believe.

It’s coming out of it the way you come out of a nightmare, with a heaving chest and the mantra running through your head that you’re all right now, you’re all right.

This is the reality of a campus lockdown.

It’s anger.

It’s anger as you move the chair in front of you, crouch down, and wonder: Why is this the life we have to live? It’s anger that we have been forced to normalize a life in which we fear to live. It’s anger that this has been happening for years and there have been politicians in Washington, simply watching— watching Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Orlando— and letting it happen, over and over and over again.

Yes. I’m making it about politics. How could I not? It’s impossible to resist “politicizing” these events as they come—and they inevitably keep coming—because politics is this.

I am incredibly lucky that the campus lockdown we experienced at the University of Southern California was a false alarm. I am incredibly lucky that this is the extent of my personal connection to this issue because so many people cannot say the same. For those who have loved ones in Las Vegas, or have experienced similar tragedies in the past, my heart is with you. But it’s not enough for me to grieve with you. People in my position cannot send “thoughts and prayers” and expect the news we wake up to in the morning to change.

Yes, we need love. We will always need love. But right now, it is not enough. Right now, we need legislation.

The issue of gun control is not as controversial as we believe it to be. 90% of Americans support increasing background checks to close loopholes for gun purchases. That’s almost the entirety of America that wants, to some extent, stricter gun control.

But what we want doesn't matter in a democracy that is indirect only to its citizens and direct to the interest groups that feed it money in return for loyalty.

In the 2016 election cycle, the NRA collectively contributed over $50 million independent expenditures.

That’s $50 million to Republicans. $4.6 million to Senator Roy Blunt, whose “thoughts are with all of the families affected” by Las Vegas. $1.3 million to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who called the tragedy a "[shock]." $50 million to the politicians who create our policies, who represent our vision of the country we want to live in, who hold our lives in their hands—hands that are stained with blood money.

Our apathy and ignorance put them in these positions of power. Every member of Congress sitting in D.C. today is there because of us. And I want to believe that we can either push them out of those seats in 2018 or demand more from them because they owe us this, because their job is to represent us, because the message we stand for is not students hiding in a corner, calling their loved ones and trying to repress an irrepressible fear, nor is it fatal gunshots fired into an environment meant to celebrate life, because I want to believe that there is a world that is better than this, because I know that there can be.

I don’t want anxious phone calls and barricaded classrooms to be the reality of any campus. I don’t want concerts to become a place of danger when they have always been a place of safety and escapism. But unless we demand that our representatives listen to their constituents before they cater to their lobbyists, I don’t see a future that promises otherwise. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

The information to call your representatives is can be found here.