We watch the news. We know what happens outside home and school. School shootings, natural disasters, deadly crowd surges, wars, etc. I’m not here to talk about all four of these, just one. School shootings and gun violence. Just recently our own community experienced a tragedy. Oct. 24 was a sad day for all of St. Louis, a shooter entered Central Visual and Performing Arts High School and fatally shot two people and injured nine others.

This is just one of many school shootings in America. The Uvalde school shooting, the Parkland school shooting, the Columbine school shooting, and many more. Click here to see how many deaths and injuries have happened due to gun violence since 2013. These are too many lives lost, many were so young with their whole lives ahead of them. 

Here’s a question though, why do school shootings happen so often? What’s being done to stop innocent lives from dying? Many kids are concerned for their safety when they walk into school. Kids should not feel unsafe at school, they should feel like they are protected. Many schools are updating their visitor protocol and security systems. Making sure dangerous individuals don’t cause harm to students and staff inside is top priority.

Liberty’s resource officer, Scott Young, has seen a lot during his time at Liberty. One of the biggest things you can do to make sure no one dangerous enters a school is to not open the door for anyone. 

“Letting people in or leaving the doors unlocked is kind of a bad security practice,” Young said.

Young explains when people park in the back parking lot, their friends let them in. Young went on to say, “The gym doors are sometimes left open for kids to let air in, it’s not a good practice.” 

There’s so much more to it than a person getting their hands on a gun and causing harm to staff and students. It raises the question: how did that individual get that gun? Was it a family member’s? Or maybe they bought one? There’s always a possibility that the person was mentally ill and wasn’t thinking straight.

“The staff are trained to be diligent about indicators as far as what to look for,” Young says. Indicators being who to look out for. I’m not saying ‘oh this person is wearing all black, they look suspicious,’ but with school shootings there’s some type of common theme that all the shooters acquire. 

“There’s certain behaviors and indicators that would say, ‘Hey I probably need to watch this person,’” Young says.

I know I talked a lot about the shooters, but what about the kids inside the school? The kids who are locked in their classroom, terrified that this might be their last day. Kids should not have to go through stuff like this.

First graders in Uvalde calling 911 to save them. Trauma is going to follow these kids for the rest of their lives. Kids don’t deserve this. Even the staff members, trying to save the kids lives.

Freshman Emerson Stubblefield says she isn’t scared of what’s on the news, just the what ifs. 

“I’m not necessarily scared of walking into school, I feel like I’m more scared of the possibility of something happening,” Stubblefield stated.

Stubblefield is like most kids, scared of the possibilities. The what ifs scenarios that circle around in your head. When you watch the news and see all the terrible things that happen, you can’t help but feel like something is going to happen. Hopefully none of these awful things happen at Liberty. I send all my prayers to everyone who has lost a loved one to gun violence.