Op-Ed: We’ve got nothing left to lose but our lives

Op-Ed%3A+Weve+got+nothing+left+to+lose+but+our+lives

Isabella Mahal

A young protester calls for gun law reform at the Women’s March in January, 2018. Photo Credit: Isabella Mahal

I’m coming out of my room to fill the cat’s water bowl when my little brother says, “there was another one.” And I look at him for a second before I ask, “where?” And he looks back at me, and he says “Kentucky”, and we both know that what I was really begging for was for him to say anything but a school.

It took twenty minutes of searching news sites to realize that the Kentucky shooting was in January. I didn’t even know it had happened, and I am a journalism student who gets news notifications from four separate sources and checks daily. But the problem is that there have been so many – so many that when your little brother comes to you and says, “there’s been another one”, you already know to ask how many are gone.

This is the same little brother that asks me to help him pick out outfits for dates sometimes. The same one who bought me doughnuts on Wednesday. My little brother, whose schedule I check to make sure he’s in a part of the building by an exit every time I see news of another shooting. The little brother who I would do anything to protect, even if we never hug one another because it’s awkward and he’s cool.

One of his friend’s Snapchat stories asked people to pray for Kentucky. And when he came to tell me, “In My High School” by Blaine Larsen was playing. And as he sang, “we’ve got outcasts and we’ve got rebels”, I broke down into tears because suddenly the only song that had ever felt true to high school wasn’t anymore.

It’s hard for those who aren’t in high school to understand the feelings that thousands of us are experiencing as we walk through the schoolhouse gates every morning right now. The shootings that are plaguing society right now aren’t new. But their scale, their number, have been in the news since we first grew old enough to hear it. It isn’t until the lockdown drills start making students cry that it hits you that the shootings are real and the capability is there and there is someone somewhere who just lost their own little brother to an assault weapon legally purchased by a nineteen year old.

And the song continued, and then my phone was playing, “we laugh, we cry, we fall, we fly, and sometimes we wonder why we’re even here.” That’s a feeling most high schoolers can relate to too. My own best friend wrote about that for Etched in Stone’s mental health column. And the next line was, “we pass, we fail, and only time will tell if we’ll ever make it through these teenage years.” Only then did it hit me that there have been 35 children and teenagers killed since 2013 (TIME Magazine) on the grounds of their schools, and so, no, we are not making it through these teenage years.

It is not because we are driving drunk or doing drugs or making dumb decisions. It is not because we are getting involved with gangs or because we have crossed borders illegally. We are dying for the audacity of attending public high school in a country that is far too lenient towards guns ending up in the hands of those who should not have them.

I say we because I dare you to find a single student in the U.S. with access to a computer right now who has not looked at the faces of the fourteen students from Parkland, Florida. I dare you to find a student who will tell you truthfully that they haven’t scanned the classroom for a hidden corner or a window or something heavy to throw. I dare you to find a student who hasn’t told their friends that they love them or listened to their family tell them the same.

I am proud to be part of a we that includes Emma Gonzalez, who asked National Rifle Association (NRA) representative Dana Loesch, “the shooter at our school obtained weapons that he used on us, legally. Do you believe it should be harder to obtain these semi-automatic weapons, and modifications for these weapons that make them fully automatic, like bump stocks?” in front of the country just one week after losing fourteen classmates. I am proud to be part of a we that planned a March for Our Lives in one week, and is anticipating 500,000 people in Washington D.C. alone. I am proud to be part of a we that is composed of hundreds of thousands of high schoolers who refuse to stand by and continue to be silenced by our ages.

The shootings have been happening since before I was born, since before most current high schoolers ever opened their eyes. If those in power today open theirs, the shootings can stop before our own children enter public school for the first time. Until we see legitimate, legislative action against guns, the students are taking the power. You’ll be seeing us in every newspaper that’ll listen to our perspective. You’ll be seeing us with every school walkout across the country. You’ll be seeing us until there’s no longer a reason to, because we’ve got nothing left to lose but our lives.