i am sassa

Emma González survived the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history as a senior at Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida in 2018. Seventeen people were killed in the shooting, and seventeen others were injured. Just days after the tragedy, Emma and school friends formed the group Never Again MSD and began protesting gun violence and demanding change. Emma gave some seriously powerful speeches, starting the group’s rally cry, “We call BS”. The group started March for our Lives, the largest youth movement against gun violence in history.

Emma’s efforts were not for nothing. New Florida laws changed the age of legal gun purchase from 18 to 21 and increased schools funding for security. This is not an insignificant win against the political powerhouse that is the NRA, but I call bullshit.

I call bullshit on the fact that a 19 year old was ever able to legally purchase a freaking AR-15 in the first place, especially a 19 year old who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons and was known to be a danger to classmates.

I call bullshit on the fact that there were 340 mass shootings in the US in 2018. Eight of those occurred in schools. This information is easy to find, thanks to helpful internet pages such as NBC’s School Shooting Tracker, on which I would also like to call bullshit.

I call bullshit on the fact that I spent SO MANY HOURS as a public school teacher in ALICE drill trainings. Online training, group teacher trainings in the auditorium before students returned from summer break, where we would watch re-enactments of the Columbine shooting. Classroom drills with students, practicing barricading the doors of my art studio while administrators roamed the halls and announced over the loud speaker what section of the school the shooter was in now so we could put all that training to the test.

I call bullshit on everyone who says it’s impossible for us to reverse this. In 1996, Australia lost 35 lives in a mass shooting in Port Arthur. In a matter of weeks, the Australian government banned military style weapons and assault rifles and implemented a government buy-back program for these weapons. And guess what? Some people were pissed. There were even protests. But ultimately, it worked. Australia didn’t have a single mass shooting for twenty years. And they still hunted, and responsible gun owners still had their guns. Just not the ones that are literally designed to maximize the death toll in the minimum amount of time. They’ve urged the U.S. to follow suit. They’ve practically written us a guidebook on how to do it. Why haven’t we? That would have to do with the last item in my bullshit checklist.

I call bullshit on the fact that the National Rifle Association spent FIFTY-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS on the 2016 U.S. elections. Thirty million of that went to Trump’s campaign. These are not difficult dots to connect. Every time another school gets shot up, there is a predictable outpouring of cries. The cries of the grieving parents, siblings, and friends. The cries for tighter gun laws. The cries of “Now is not the time to talk about gun control!”. And in the midst of all the cries, the NRA is stuffing cash into politicians pockets and cranking out fear-mongering propaganda.

If you are a gun owner, please take the time to learn the truth about changes when they are proposed. Know that the NRA spends millions of dollars on campaigns targeting you, with the single goal of making you feel that your rights are being threatened so that you will vote against changes that might affect their bottom line. The changes that people like Emma have fought for are just common sense. We should have put a stop to this long before Emma González lost her friends. But instead, we turned our backs and implemented more traumatic school drills while endless websites keep tallying the death tolls. Emma should not have ever been in this position in 2018, but I’m glad she stepped up and spoke out. How many more Emmas will there have to be before we learn?

Thank you, Emma González.