After the Florida shooting last week, my teen daughter, Anna, told me: “Adults don’t get it. We’re the first generation living in a time when mass shootings are almost normal. Columbine happened when I was a baby. Sandy Hook happened when I was in middle school. There’s a constant feeling in the back of my mind that I could lose my friends in a matter of seconds in a space that’s supposed to be safe. It haunts me.”

I didn’t know what to say to her.



I’ve been working on gun safety since the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre of 27 people, most of whom were very young children, without seeing a lot of progress at the national level. Sure, many states have advanced gun safety measures. But things have been going in the opposite direction at the national level.



Donald Trump recently took steps to roll back gun safety measures that Barack Obama put in place; and the Republican leadership has remained in lockstep with the NRA leadership who fund so many of their campaigns and who vehemently oppose any and all gun safety measures. Meanwhile kids are dying and many are living in constant fear.

My own daughter has experienced at least five lockdowns during her school career due to guns in the proximity of her school or to direct threats of violence on students. Two years ago, the threats written on her school bathroom walls were found to be so specific and serious that the entire school had to be closed down for a day and a large police presence was brought in to roam the halls of her high school.



After the threats, my daughter was taught the active shooter Alice (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) protocol in her classrooms because studies show fighting back instead of sheltering in place will save lives.

Florida students have turned social media into a weapon for good Read more

That sounds like a good thing, but what this means is that in cooking class, she was taught not only how to bake a cake, but also to throw a kitchen mixer and other culinary objects at a classroom intruder. In math class she was told how to leave through a window high up on the wall if the room was breached.



In homeroom she was taught to fight back and then run outside away from the school as fast as she could even if a classmate had fallen, because it was the teachers’ job to help fallen students and put their lives on the line, not hers. (It shouldn’t have to be anyone’s job. Students shouldn’t be gunned down in their schools. Teachers shouldn’t have to put their lives on the line.)

This is what our children live with each day.



Play Video 2:02 Florida shooting: students walk out of schools to call for gun control – video

One of my daughter’s classmates swore to wear running shoes every day so she could outrun potential shooters. Can you imagine thinking about running from an active shooter each day as you tied your shoes before school? Our children are living in a state of siege. It might be easy for us, as adults, to brush off their concerns, but it turns out they are right to be worried.



Our nation is losing over 30,000 lives a year due to guns, with white victims often garnering the most media sympathy as the disproportionate impact of gun violence on people of color is too often overlooked, and mass shootings are becoming more deadly over time. Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, last week became the sixth school where children have been harmed so far this year.



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In fact, since the shooting at Columbine high school in April 1999, more than 150,000 primary or secondary school students have experienced a shooting on campus.



Even as our children are dying, we haven’t yet passed complete background checks for all gun purchases. We still allow the open and relatively easy sale of military-style assault weapons with high capacity magazines, like the AR-15 that was used in Florida and many other massacres. Bump stocks that make a gun into an automatic weapon remain widely available. We have a problem.



Play Video 1:19 Gun owner destroys rifle after Florida shooting: ‘Now there’s one less’ – video

This problem can’t wholly be brushed aside and blamed on individual mental health conditions, as Trump tried to do last week, either. There are no studies that show the US has a higher rate of mental health issues than any other country to explain our extraordinarily high death by gun rate. There are studies that show we have more guns than other countries, though.



In fact, our nation has the highest gun ownership rate in the world, with 270m guns in circulation in our country.

Guns. Unchecked access to guns of all kinds is killing our children. Something has to change. I know it. You know it. And our kids know it, too. That’s why I’m both heartbroken that young people are having to fight for their safety because our national leadership hasn’t stood for kids yet – and also incredibly proud that young people are stepping forward.



The students know what it’s like to live in an unchecked gun culture where the ownership of a cool-looking military-style assault weapon with a high capacity magazine is put ahead of their lives. And they are calling BS, literally, as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school survivor Emma Gonzalez so powerfully did last week, on the excuses that adults in leadership are making to avoid moving forward with commonsense safety reforms.

Play Video 2:43 'How about we stop blaming the victims?': Florida shooting survivors speak at anti-gun rally – video

Even in their grief, the students have hope. My daughter told me: “You can’t prevent a tsunami, or an earthquake, a hurricane, or other natural disasters. But you can prevent mass shootings. This is a human problem. We can fix it.” The students aren’t just talking about solutions, they’re organizing, stepping forward, and demanding accountability of our elected leaders.



A 17-minute national school walkout was called by the Women’s March Youth Empower Team for 14 March at 10am in all time zones – one minute for every life lost at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school.

A march on Washington DC and in cities across our country on 24 March was just announced by the Parkland students. And another school walkout is being planned for 20 April, the anniversary of the Columbine massacre. We adults have tried to fix this problem and failed. Now it’s our time to support the young people who are rising up.