Enough is enough

Lax gun control is killing kids; teachers can’t take anymore

Mads Olsen

Protestors from the nationwide March For Our Lives protest on March 14 2018 gather in front of the Texas state capital. March For Our Lives was prompted by the Parkland shooting in Florida. Since then, there have been 165 school shootings in the United States.

Amy Smith, guest columnist
March 30, 2023

If your response to Monday’s Covenant School shooting in Nashville is “it’s not just guns,” just scroll on by. This is my cry from my teacher-heart and my grandma-heart.

I’m not interested in why you think it’s not the guns. I’m an English teacher, but I can read data. It’s the guns.

A protester holds up a sign at the March 14, 2018 March For Our Lives. (Mads Olsen)

As a teacher, I’m exhausted. The book bans, the curriculum overhauls that ignore our history, the attacks on teachers, the hours of unpaid labor—they all make this job untenable. But on Tuesday morning I went back to school after another shooting.

In my state, politicians are more concerned with controlling drag queens than they are with controlling the No. 1 killer of children. The thing about hobbies is that if my hobby was the No. 1 killer of children, I would find a new hobby.

There is nothing about a “well-regulated militia” that supports semi-automatic weapons. Do not tell me you care about life when you refuse to regulate weapons to protect the children I teach. Your Second Amendment rights are not more important than the lives of my students.