The trauma of gun violence

What were you doing the night of President Price’s inauguration? Were you marveling at the expensive delicacies and sleek ice sculptures on display in West Union? Were you enjoying the ferris wheel and other carnival activities that had been brought to East Campus? 

I know where I was. I was huddled under the desk in my room trying to remember how to breathe as panic ravaged me and vivid flashbacks flooded my mind. My hands were shaking, but I somehow got them to cover my mouth so that passersby in the hallway wouldn’t hear my sobs. 

Eventually, I started to muddle through the deluge of visceral fear to remind myself that I was safe, that what I was experiencing was actually in the past. When I finally calmed down, I couldn’t help but feel irrationally angry at whoever decided to add celebratory fireworks to the inaugural agenda even though they had no way of knowing that their choice would affect me this way.

When I was 15, there was a shooting at my high school that resulted in the death of some of my classmates. I try my best not to remember what happened, but sometimes snapshots of it will filter through my defenses. I’ll remember the tremors in my classmate’s voice while he called his mom to tell her he loved her because he wasn’t sure he’d be alive long enough to say it in person, the terror I felt as a SWAT team knocked down the door to the chemical closet where we were hiding, the smell of the disinfectant that was used to clean the up the blood that had been spilt in our hallways, the agony of finding out on the news that one of my friends was dead. The shooting irrevocably poisoned my relationships with my school, my friends, and my own consciousness. It turned what were supposed to be dependable, safe spaces into violent, untrustworthy ones. And every time I’m reminded of it, I’m also reminded that gun violence doesn’t just steal the lives of the murdered, but also the lives of the survivors. 

It’s been four years since the shooting at my school, but I still wake up in the middle of the night, familiar nightmares resurfacing in the dark. It’s been four years, but every December when the anniversary approaches, I live in an exhausting state of constant anxiety. It’s been four years, but my highschool friends still text me every few weeks because something triggered their PTSD, and they don’t know how to stop hurting. It’s been four years, but I still break out into a cold sweat when there’s news of another shooting on T.V.. It’s been four years, but any 18 year old can still walk into their local outdoor store and buy a semiautomatic assault rifle, with nothing between them and the deadly weapon but a feeble background check, if that. 

I’ll confess something horribly selfish: when the students from Parkland started organizing protests and events after the devastating shooting at their school, a part of me wished they’d just go away. Their constant presence in my world threatened the peace I’d managed to broker between myself and my past. But in the weeks since, I’ve seen the ripplings of change that I’d once considered impossible. Walmart and Dick’s have raised the minimum age to buy a gun in their stores to 21. Florida has passed meaningful, if in some aspects controversial, gun reform legislation. Students across the country have shown a commitment to protesting until national reform is realized. 

When Congress failed to pass legislation mandating stronger background checks after the brutal slaughter of 20 six and seven year olds at Sandy Hook, it seemed that the fight for gun control was over. Their failure ensured that shootings like the one at my own school became routine. As I watched this failure play out time and time again, I could feel the NRA’s unwavering grip on our country as if it were a hand around my neck, always present and loath to let go. It is one of the greatest injustices of our time that we tolerate the deaths of children in order to placate the demands of a powerful interest group. 

The past few weeks have given me hope that this injustice will not endure. Since Parkland, I’ve seen a tremendous amount of engagement with gun control and the national political mood seems to be shifting favorably. But we’re up against a formidable adversary, and it’s going to take a sustained effort to generate change. I don’t have the luxury of forgetting the harm that gun violence causes. For the sake of the victims of the next mass shooting, I hope you won’t forget either.