I’m a high school student and I was terrified by footage of the Parkland school shooting I saw online. It was the seventh school shooting in our country since the beginning of the year. Insufficient school security is one reason why this keeps happening – that’s why I started a petition to change that.

This time, a former student named Nikolas Cruz opened fire on his old classmates, murdering seventeen and injuring many others – and they never saw it coming. The shooting continued for an extended period of time before any police officer showed up to stop him. How could this have been stopped?

I believe we need more federal funding directed to schools for security measures like recruiting more officers to be placed in our schools. We can prevent dangerous people from gaining access to our schools. We can add things like bulletproof windows and metal detectors.

Basic safety measures make sense for schools everywhere. You can add your name to this petition to speak out and demand action.

We’ve grown accustomed to a cycle where we mourn for a few weeks and post a social media status on how sad and tragic these events are. But what will we actually DO as Americans to stop this?

We need to demand real change from our leaders so that these victims don’t become another hashtag and statistic – only to be forgotten until the next mass shooting event.

Please sign this petition calling on our Congress to provide funds to support better security at our schools and protect students, like me.