Today I heard about the school shooting at Oxford Highschool. I have always been on board with gun control, but today something just snapped inside me. Oxford is so much closer to me than any of the other school shootings I've heard about. It made it so much more personal. I realized I finally had to act. I didn't know exactly where to start, but I figured this was the best I could do at the moment. Now, some people may be asking why I care. My question is: why don't you? Teens like myself spend their entire four years afraid. Many adults don't understand what it feels like to go to school everyday and know you could die. That your best friend could die. Or your teacher, or your brother, or your sister. My friends and I deal with this fear every single day. And we're not the only ones. At Oxford, three people died and six were injured. Imagine if one of those people was your child. Or your brother, sister, friend, mother, father, grandchild. I cry and I mourn for the students and teachers who were lost or injured in school shootings. And my heart goes out to the families and friends affected by these losses or traumatic experiences. When I hear about these horrors, I have to be convinced to go to school again. Because I am so afraid. Afraid I will die. Afraid my friends will die. Afraid my teachers will die. We should not have to live in fear. These reasons, and many others, are why I ask you to please sign this petition for schools to utilize and be required to have metal detectors that students must walk through before entering the school. We still have much more work to do when it comes to gun control, but this is a bit of a first step, to try to protect our kids. 

(Picture is from Google, NBC News, it is not my picture. )