I told myself I wasn't going to get into this, but after seeing the amount of threats to schools in my area in the past two weeks, I have to speak up about something. Yes, this blog is about the current controversy surround gun control, mental health reforms, arming teachers, etc. I'm tired of having this brew up in my head for weeks.
I graduated what will be two years ago in May. During my four years of high school, I remember the school being locked down twice for serious reasons, both occurring during my senior of high school, and both being what the school board referred to as "false alarms." Those situations were terrifying to say the very least, and while I won't be naming any specifics, during those lock downs, my classmates and I were cowered in the corners of our classrooms.
Columbine happened in April of 1999; I was 8 months old. Virginia Tech (2007) happened when I in the second grade; the university is only two hours away from my hometown. Sandy Hook (2012) happened when I was in my first year of high school. Two journalists were shot and killed (2015) less than 30 minutes away from my school; I was in first period when people began to take notice with their cell phones. The Orlando night club shooting (2016) happened less than a month after I graduated.
See, I've grown up in a wholly conservative area my whole life. This whole part of Virginia is mostly just rednecks and guns, but while many of my community may lean towards the "red" side of political views, I and my family, on the other hand, don't. Yes, I grew up around guns, but I was never very comfortable around them and I'm going to explain why.
I have very high functioning anxiety. Whenever I go out to a public place, I'm always looking around at my surroundings, making sure where exits are, and generally paying attention to the world around me. Some of it I blame on paranoia and another I consider a part of my defense mechanism in case my "flight or fight" instinct kicks in. My dad, had a gun cabinet like any person in my area would. Did he ever bring them out around his children though? No. My dad liked to hunt; he's gotten quite a few deer while I've been alive; he's taken my siblings on his hunting trips, but when deer season was over, his guns would stay locked up in their case.
I am the only child who never went on a hunting trip with him for many reasons. I'm not an outdoorsy person, so I never had any interest in them and guns make me antsy. Just to kind of prove how antsy they make me, if someone comes in my store when I'm working carrying something on their hip, I tend to avoid them, just because I'm highly uncomfortable. I don't know why I am and I don't want to hear the crap going on about, "But you can use them to defend yourself," because I've heard that rhetoric so many times.
So, going back to all of those shooting I mentioned earlier that gained a lot of media coverage, I'm going to talk a little bit about what happened the day of the Westlake news shooting. This is going to be mostly a blurb, but I did write about the whole thing two years ago here.
I was in my first period class when my teacher let out a gasp and gained all of our attention. I had heard a little bit about what was going on before school started when I was talking to my friends, but the reason why my teacher gasped was because one of the journalists had been pronounced dead. Second period, more of the story came forward, a mad man of sorts who used to work for the company went and shot two people who he thought were "out to get him" and led the police on a wild goose chase. Second period was a class with the school's journalism teacher and all of us were kind of glued to our phones as the killer uploaded videos of him shooting the journalists and the woman they were interviewing to Facebook and Twitter. We listened to police scanner and the teacher made a call to the cops so they would know since they were chasing this man. Right before class ended, I was asked to walk a girl, who left class early due to her injured foot, to her next class because she was terrified to go on her own. By lunchtime, the killer had shot himself in his car, counties away from where he committed the murders, and almost three hours away from my school.
Why did I share that story, because I remember it like the back of my hand. I remember how uncomfortable the students were around me throughout the day not knowing where this man was. The shooting happened not long after school started for the year, the only survivor was the the executive director the camber of commerce for Westlake. In May, the day of my graduation, she gave a speech to us students that ended up bringing tears to my eyes; she was lucky to survive what she did.
So, let's get the main point of this blog finally.... the violence and why it needs to stop.
I'm not going to start with the Florida shooting though... No, I'm going to start with what went on in my area two weeks before. One Friday morning, there was a threat found on campus of my sister's boyfriend's high school; nothing came of it and a student was arrested for making the threat. The following Tuesday, another high school in the area, fifteen minutes from my house, another threat was found on the football field; students were moved to a local middle school due to the rain while the school was searched. They never returned back to the school, nothing came of the search, and two students were charged with making the threat. The next day, the local middle school in the city where my half-sister goes was under a bomb threat; nothing came of the search and one student was charged.
February 14th, 2018 was the day of the Florida high school shooting. I had been keeping up with the news the whole day, clutching onto my phone, I was at dinner with my boyfriend, my best friend, and her boyfriend when they announced how many were injured and dead.
Since then, there have been a flurry of threats surrounding schools in the southwest Virginia area. If you had to ask me how many, there has to be at least 10. Most of them are gun threats made via text, Snapchat, some are students bringing guns to schools on "dares", some are even bomb threats. There are so many copycats following the Florida shootings and to be honest, I have never seen so many happening in my life.
I saw two today and that's what really set me off. The first was a message via Snapchat. It was a girl "warning" people that if they weren't wearing a certain color to school today, then they were in danger. The father of the girl reported it to police and I texted my sister who still attends that school if they were put on lock down today, and she said that they weren't. It was just another empty threat. The second was for the middle school in the same area, a grown man, took the Facebook to claim that the school board was keeping parents in the dark because apparently, a student at the middle school in the area had been researching how to make a bomb on school computers. I don't know how much of that man's words were true, but the school sent out an email to parents stating that both threats were just rumors and were being investigated currently.
So, what are the solutions to end this madness?
Some people are saying that we should arm teachers. To be honest, I don't agree with that opinion whatsoever. I had a family member who works for a local elementary school in the county I live in. Arming teachers isn't going to a solve a problem, and may just make the problem potentially worse. Remember how I mentioned that I'm a person who is uncomfortable around guns? If I had a teacher who was carrying a gun around in class for everyone to see, I honestly wouldn't want to attend school anymore. Teachers are supposed to be teaching students, they're not supposed to whip out a firearm in the event that something goes bad, and who isn't to say that a student that is "in danger" so to speak, wouldn't take the gun from the teacher when they aren't looking? There's a chance that it could cause an even bigger situation.
The second is mental health reform. I one-hundred percent agree with this solution because many "in danger" students have dealt with some sort of mental health issues. I think mental health is one thing that needs to be looked out for in students because when I was 14, I was covered in cuts from self-harm and no one noticed until I had scars that are still fairly noticeable to this day. I think health care is an issue for some when it comes to mental health because if I wasn't under my father's insurance right now, I'd be paying over $400 a month for just my medications. I think there needs to be more methods put in place to take care of mental health, more therapists, psychiatrists, easier access to important medicines that people need, but can't afford. The shooter in the Westlake news shootings was a mentally unstable man so that's just one thing to add to my point. I'm just trying to throw stuff out there.
The third that has been going around is gun control. Is gun control important? Yes. Hell, school shootings are bad enough that when I went onto Wikipedia to get the information I needed for each shooting that I've mentioned, Wikipedia has it's own page for all the shootings that have happened in the United States alone. On the topic of that, the killer in the Florida shootings was using a weapon that, in my opinion, only the armed forces should have access to. Why in the hell are civilians able to get their hands on weapons that we don't really need to defend ourselves... because a handgun can be enough to defend yourself in the event of a break-in, assault, etc. You don't need to be toting around some massive, dangerous gun saying that, that's all you can use to defend yourself. To be honest, I think there should be stricter rules for how a person can obtain a gun, even if it means that I can't own one because I've been diagnosed with a mental illness for a portion of my life.
So, I think I've got a lot of my chest here and I've got the feelings that I'm going to get a little bit of backlash for writing all of this, but at this point, I don't care. Do I see things changing even though the surviving students are trying to fight back? Honestly, no. The man who is currently living in the big white house at the moment isn't going to change a single thing as far as I know and the same rhetoric is going to go on again and again once another shooting happens; that's the way it's been for as long as I've been alive.
Thank you all for reading and I'll see you next time.
Kayla V
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