Maddox Garetti, Period 7, 12/7/21

 

• Socio-political Consciousness

• What are your thoughts and feelings about issues of inequity, oppression, and/or power?

• How do you reflect critically on your own beliefs, assumptions, values, and experiences, and how these can influence your perception of self and others?

On November 30, 2021, not even 2 weeks prior to this blog being posted, Oxford High School in Michigan was raided by a fifteen year old student who was armed with a semiautomatic pistol.  He killed four students and injured seven more people, including one teacher.

The reason why I bring this despondent moment of history to the table is because of the timeline of this ongoing issue.  School shootings have been occurring for decades, with the most infamous likely being the shooting of Columbine High School in 1991. Over 20 years ago, two gunmen killed a total of 15 people.  Many citizens of America believed an occurrence as outlandish as this would surely never happen again due to the new rules and regulations about gun ownership and safety that were to be set in place.

Over 300 shootings have occured since then, with an estimation of almost 1,000 fatalities in total. Within these statistics are the lives that were lost during the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting; 26 dead with 20 of them being between the ages of six and seven. Since this incident, 200 shootings have occurred. The shooting of Columbine nor the shooting of Sandy Hook made any change.  Gunned attacks on school premises have been increasing over the past decade or so, and America is still stagnant on the issue.  

Change isn’t coming. A classroom full of children was massacred and the numbers continue to rise, which is all that needs to be brought to light to recognize that this issue is not one that can be brushed off for any longer. The younger generations are much more aware of this fact then the older generations, which is hard to believe since we’ve all grown up in a version of America where the news of shootings come and go faster than we can readily process.  As time progresses, it’s truly on all of us to make change, because God knows it won’t have been made by the time we’re finally able to take action.