*Officials unable to protect citizens from guns should resign: student
Since the massacre at Uvalde, the United States has seen more than 51 mass shootings that killed 53 people and injured 227, not counting gun deaths and injuries in incidents that are not considered mass shootings, said recent Henry M Gunn High School graduate Mishaal Hussain, who called on public officials to protect their citizens from the rampant use of firearms or resign.
The young activist's outcry came in the midst of "March for Our Lives"This Saturday, June 11, accompanied by teachers, parents and friends, they took to the streets in various parts of the United States to raise their voices against guns and to ask for protection for their lives.
The collective, in its "Sequoia Union" chapter, held a meeting with residents in front of the Redwood City Public Library, where about 600 people were able to witness the call of these young students who are tired of living in fear and preparing for possible armed attacks in their schools.
Hussain said that, like many young people, he has grown up trained in what to do if someone comes into his school with a gun. However, he noted, this same thing children have to do from a very young age.
"The United States has let this go on for so long that people who were born when Colombine happened have now graduated from college, they are no longer children. They have spent their entire schooling like this and in that time the United States has done nothing to stop the senseless killing of its children," he stressed in his speech to the attendees.
This, he said, has not been for lack of desire for action, as a large majority of Americans want common sense solutions like expanded background checks, "but we didn't get them because 50 people in the Senate refused to put the lives of American civilians at risk over their own pocketbooks."
And, he said, they have the necessary data to carry out the reform, since it has been observed that the most deadly mass shootings are carried out by semi-automatic weapons.
"There is a clear path that is not to do nothing," and another, he said, increase background checks by increasing the time to purchase a gun, and restrict access to semi-automatic weapons, available beyond homes.
In this regard, he pointed out that, just this week, the age for the purchase of semi-automatic weapons was raised from 16 to 21 years old.
"There's a lot that can be done, but Senate Republicans refused to do it and they say that the time after a tragedy is not the time for politics, that laws don't stop bad people from doing bad things, that this is just something we have to live with."
"And to that, I say, if you are a government official who believes that your job is not to respond to tragedy with policy, that there is no use for you to do your job of legislating because laws are useless and that America cannot improve itself, that you resign.
In this regard, he added that the job of officials is to figure out how to enforce the laws that are passed as the American people deserve it. "And if you think this is something America has to live with, I invite you to look at the rest of the world where this doesn't happen, people still have guns in the rest of the world and this doesn't happen. This is an American phenomenon and so is doing nothing when your children are killed."
Mishaal said the U.S. government has had plenty of time to take action after massacres such as Columbine, Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas, Las Vegas, Orlando, or San Bernardino, "but they did." Instead, he said, schools have had to train their children in increasingly dramatic ways to keep themselves safe.
"Republican senators would rather traumatize children, than do their job. And if you're saying I'm overreacting to the trauma of going to a place where you're supposed to be safe and being told that this is how you should react when someone wants to kill you, that this is how you should use elements to learn how to defend yourself, then I envy you, because clearly you haven't faced the reality that, if you're in a school full of your friends and people you care about, you can't help them. I've lived with the reality for the last four years, American kids have lived with it longer," he stressed.
And, he said, "if the school is under attack and our friends are locked in a hallway, it doesn't matter how much we love them. We can't save them. This is what we have been taught. There are times when we will have to leave our friends at the mercy of someone with a gun who wants to kill them, because we can't risk it. The other people we are with are children. We shouldn't have had to think about that decision. We shouldn't have had to live with that knowledge."
"We have told our children that this solution is easier, that this trauma we have given them is easier than the adults doing their job and we, the children, will remember this trauma. It is the choice that American politicians made to choose to line their pockets with the National Rifle Association - NRA - instead of us. And if they don't choose to do something to save us, we will save ourselves and vote them out. And when we do, that victory will be bitter because it comes too late to save the children of Sandy Hook, of Stoneman Douglas, of Uvalde, who will never grow up and whose families lost them too soon."
"And I want American politicians to know that from the moment they refused to do anything after Columbine and all the shootings that followed, blood was on their hands."
For her part, Sarah McDowell, mayor of the city of San Carlos and mother of two young children, said that in addition to practicing earthquake drills in schools, "our children also have to practice active shooter drills. It's scary.
For this reason, he said, it is necessary to act, so he presented three actions that at the local level can help to advance firearms safety.
Number one, he said, cities can pass a safe storage ordinance for firearms and that, fortunately, in San Mateo County, the Board of Supervisors passed a safe storage ordinance in 2019.
However, he clarified that such ordinance only applies to the unincorporated parts of the county and therefore, it is up to each of the cities to approve it as well.
In that regard, he noted that San Carlos was an early adopter of the ordinance as was Redwood City, which requires that all home-rated weapons be kept in a locked container or deactivated by a trigger lock.
Unfortunately, he recalled, there are cities in San Mateo County that have not yet adopted a storage ordinance, such as Daly City, Pacifica, Atherton, Woodside, East Palo Alto and Half Moon Bay.
"So, if you live in any of those cities or even if you don't, now is the time to advocate for a safe storage ordinance in those cities," said Mayor McDowell.
The second option, he said, is to support the repurchase of weapons, where San Carlos has even offered more than $50,000 to support the acquisition of such devices and thus take them off the streets.
The third action, he said, has to do with mental health, a struggle that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, but was exacerbated by COVID-19, meaning that demands for mental health therapy and services have skyrocketed.
Thus, he said, it is necessary to have the right tools and training for everyone to provide mental health first aid to enable everyone to respond to crisis events or to support someone going through turbulent times.
"Ordinary people, their neighbors, their librarians, teachers, we should all be trained in Mental Health First Aid, that teaches how to respond to someone, how to listen, how to react, because there are appropriate ways to do that. Help them bridge that gap until they can get into therapy. So I hope that each of you will go out and advocate for these trainings in your communities," she stressed.
At the time, Helena Landels, a student at Sequoia High School, recalled that a couple of months ago, while she was teaching a music class at an elementary school, a staff member came into the room and asked to speak to her alone where she told her that there was a shooting at Carlmont High School, so she needed to prepare for a possible lockdown with her students.
As the class went on as normal, Landels was searching the room for places to hide with his students and how to barricade the doors, wondering if his Carlmont friends were okay, while his six-year-olds didn't understand why he wouldn't let them leave the room to go to the bathroom alone.
It turned out to be a false alarm. No one was hurt and the shooting occurred off campus, but Helena reflected that day on how quickly she had to mentally prepare herself to deal with a life-or-death situation with these kindergarteners.
"This is not a war zone. This is a country that has not had a war on its soil since 1865. This is not a developing nation with an impotent government. This is the richest nation in the world, the United States of America. In the Declaration of Independence, we are promised three unalienable rights that our government: swears to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So where are the 19 children of Uvalde and the right of all those countless victims who lost their lives in countless shootings across the country?" he questioned.
In this regard, he explained that there is no excuse for semi-automatic rifles, weapons designed to kill effectively and en masse, to be available on the market, or for it to be legal to stockpile weapons especially where there are children with mentally ill family members.
"There is also no excuse for new gun owners and states, like Texas, to openly carry guns in public places without a license and often without a record. So, I urge everyone to continue to protest, march, donate what you can and vote for pro-gun control representatives so that together we can build a future free of gun violence," he concluded.
Cindy Schusterman, a teacher at Carlmont High School, noted that when you are a teacher in the United States, "you go into the profession knowing that you can be shot and killed while working."
In 2014, she said, one day after a particularly traumatic lockdown, her 9th grader asked her, "If a shooter came into this classroom, would you die to protect us? I paused and considered the impact of my answer. Yes, I would. The gasp from the students brought the classroom to silence. Tears came to my eyes and some students cried as the weight of that idea settled on teachers sacrificing their lives and being killed along with their students."
A situation like the one that happened in Uvalde, where two teachers gave their lives to protect their students, he said, "should not be our reality".
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