My view on the student walkout

17 minutes. That's the amount of time our schools seem fitting to bring attention to the ongoing issue of violence and homicidal tendencies teens and children are plagued with in our nation. I understand why 17 minutes, to honor the lives that were lost in Parkland, Florida after the recent shooting, but a few minutes of our day is clearly not enough. I am at the point where I feel it is necessary to wear a bullet proof vest in order to get an education. I am not participating in the 17 minute walkout, instead I'm taking the entire day off from going to school, hundreds of children have lost their lives due to the decay of our society and the rise in violence, so to honor only the 17 recent deaths is just a superficial action. Before any assumptions are made, I am not doing this to protest against guns, because to blame an inanimate object that has been around for decades is absolutely insane. I am taking the entire day off because my safety in schools is completely compromised. Our country and people who reside in it are not doing enough to protect their children. At 8:00am, as school starts, I am already a target that has no possible way to defend myself or be protected. We used to have a resource officer stationed in the office for the entire day, now, I hardly ever see the officer I and my fellow classmates rely on for protection, because that one man with a gun in a uniform is responsible for protecting over 400 students and staff members. Its absolutely unacceptable that only one officer, ONE officer, who is placed there to protect us is hardly ever around. This is clearly not a gun problem, because the AR15 has been around since the 1950s but we have only been experiencing mass casualty events since the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting where the shooter used a gun in a similar platform to an AR15. It saddens me that every time kids die due to the action of some nut-job, it instantly turns into a political debate. Democrats fight to push votes to ban guns, and Republicans respond in defense. Why on earth should politics be involved in this at all, this just shows how low America is stooping to. Less energy and money should be pushed towards legality of guns, instead it should be pushed towards bringing back morals to our society, and until drastic changes happen we need to better protect our schools. Children are the future of humanity, their safety needs to be prioritized over anything. More locked doors, more armed security, more training for those security units; these are just a few actually useful actions, because banning guns will only impact law abiding citizens. If a psychotic deranged maniac wants to kill people, gun laws will not stop them. They will get guns no matter what the laws are, for if there is a will, there is a way. Furthermore, on this day that we honor the 17 teens that lost their lives in the recent shooting, and the blood of those victims is on the hands of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States of America and the many other officials who remained silent when many red flags were blatantly exposed.

Stefan Zucktriegel