Growing up, I never imagined that my hometown would be a place of tragedy. The cookie-cutter suburbs where I once lived screamed flawlessness, and the people who lived there never once grew suspicion. The crime rate was low, and everyone lived quietly to themselves.
The small town of Sandy Hook, Connecticut was unknown, and if someone had asked, you wouldn’t be able to point it out on a map. My life was fairly average: go to school, go home and attend to my after-school activities. There were no real big weather events, other than the occasional snowstorm and hurricane, but “Sandy Hook” was never on the front cover of any newspaper—until December 14, 2012.
When I was 10 years old, I didn’t really know what a gun was. I knew they used them in wars and could kill people, but no information other than that was really taught at that young of an age. So when the announcements came on that day in Reed Intermediate School that we had to go into lockdown, most of my classmates sighed. We sat for hours, waiting on the announcement to come on over the PA system telling us everything was okay. But it never came. Soon enough, myself and other classmates were being called out to go home. I will never forget the feeling of being escorted into a giant crowd of anxious parents looking for their children to pick up.
I learned that my younger sister’s best friend was killed in the shooting, and I was devastated. The feeling of knowing that someone you knew, who was so happy and had so much life left, had died is the worst feeling in the world. And knowing it could have been prevented is even harder to think about. I always think that if one thing had gone differently, the 20 children would not have died that day.
Right now, gun control laws are messed up. Sure, you may have a different opinion, and I’m not going to fight you. You believe what you want to believe and I believe what I want to believe—I don’t care. But the amount of mass shootings in the U.S. is higher than it should be. Out of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, six of them have happened in the last 10 years, the deadliest happening only a month ago. Guns are no joking matter.
In the midst of things, gun control laws are a very controversial topic. It’s always “people kill people” versus “guns kill people.” Harsher gun control may not fix every gun problem, but the awareness that guns are dangerous and do more harm than good is extremely important to relay to society. To me, I feel that it’s crazy when normal people like you and me have guns. I understand if you are a police officer or you hunt, but I feel “self-defense” is not a logical reason. If you use a gun for self-defense, you risk killing someone.
The United States needs a plan that would enforce better licensing and regulation. Better security, better monitoring and better awareness to the fact than guns are the most dangerous “easily” available weapon on the planet.
– By Emma Pollard