Today is Friday, May 27, and like most Americans, I have spent the last four days caught up in the news coverage of the latest mass school shooting.

I have seen invasive journalists interviewing parents as they arrived at the scene of the massacre, not yet aware that their babies were lying dead inside. I've shaken my head as I watch footage of police officers blocking parents from storming the school they should have stormed themselves. I've seen children interviewed just days after the tragedy, retelling how they smeared the blood of their friends on themselves to play dead, how they watched from behind tables as their classmates were shot.

Today is Friday, May 27, and everyone cares. Politicians are angry, and voters are calling them out for not using their power to protect the lives of the innocent. Foreigners again remind us that the United States of America is the only country in the world that has experienced more mass shootings than days in the year. We are the only country where children prepare for a school shooter with the same nonchalance they use for a fire drill or tornado warning — because they are more likely to die in a school shooting than in a fire or tornado.

Tomorrow is Saturday, May 28, and the caring will start to wane. By next week, will this news be forgotten? By the time you read this opinion, will you have forgotten the names and faces of the children who died, just like you did when it happened in Parkland and Newtown?

Who is responsible?
You shouldn't have to be personally affected by gun violence to be outraged by it, but for some reason, the responsibility of advocacy always seems to fall on the victims. Why is that? Why do we have to see high schoolers leading walkouts and calling on politicians to write gun reform laws? Do we just expect the grieving mothers to pick up the torches and continue?

And what happens to those survivors after the world moves on? How do they view the next school shooting, as if all their advocacy, all their trauma, and all their grieving were in vain?

We all care when we see those faces. We scream out, "It shouldn't have been them," and some of us look in the mirror and wonder why it wasn't us.

I grew up convinced it would be me.

Born just days after the Columbine shooting, I entered a public school system shell-shocked by gun violence. In kindergarten, I learned my ABCs and how to sit quietly — away from the windows, behind the teacher's desk, with the lights off — when the lockdown alarm started. We huddled together, safe in the knowledge that it was only a drill, as we watched our teachers count our heads and draw the blinds. We held a collective breath until the PA system announced it was "all clear."

It could have been me
When I was ten years old — the same age as most of the victims of the Uvalde shooting — I was in the fifth-grade band. Every morning, my parents would drop me off at the high school I would one day attend so I could practice my tone-deaf musical skills under the guidance of the school district's band teacher.

One particular day, he sent my section, the flutists, to another, smaller practice room, so he could focus on the brass instruments. I don't recall how long we had been in this room, but the flashing lights and blare of a lockdown alarm went off, interrupting our horrible rendition of Mozart. The other little girls and I stopped playing and looked to the flute instructor for guidance. There was no voice-over of the PA announcing "this is a lockdown," and we had no idea what the sirens indicated.

"Keep playing," she said. "It's probably a drill." And so we sat, four little ten-year-old girls, spitting into one of the world's shrillest instruments, as the lights flashed and the alarms blared.

Suddenly the door flew open. The band teacher entered the room. "This is not a drill!" he barked at us. We dropped our flutes and followed him into the band room to hide. He had already stuffed the rest of the students into the large instrument closet and locked the doors. We would not fit, and attempting to put us in that room would compromise their security. There was only one other option.

"Come with me," the instructor ordered, pushing us into his small office. The room was all windows. He closed the blinds. Unlike the instrument closet, this room had no locks. He ordered us to get under the desk. Our flute instructor began to pray. I watched a few of the other girls do so too.

From the gap under the desk we hid behind, I could see the window. I held my breath, just waiting for the shooter to appear outside. I counted the seconds, then the minutes, waiting for the lockdown to end.

I started to wonder what it would be like to die.

I wondered how my parents would react if I was killed under that desk. I wondered what I would do if he came into the room, if I would push the snotty Madison in front of me.

As all these thoughts flashed in and out of my brain, I began to cry. Silently, I wept. The cold tears fell down my face and soaked my jeans.

I don't know how long we were under the desk, but eventually, the all-clear message came through the PA. The band teacher let the other kids out, and we all sat quietly in the band room and waited for the buses that would take us to our respective elementary schools.

As I sat on the bus, I looked out the window. Several police cars had gathered in front of the high school, and I watched as they took a teenage boy out in handcuffs and stuffed him into the back of a squad car.

I wouldn't learn until later that night that the boy had no real weapon with him. He said he had a gun in his backpack and threatened to shoot his English teacher before storming out of the class. She immediately called the office, which put the school on lockdown, and called the police.

Nobody was hurt that day. Not physically, anyway.

The narratives we teach
When I was in seventh grade, I again encountered the reality of school shootings. In perhaps the world's most insensitive anti-bullying campaign, my middle school decided to enlist the help of an organization known as "Rachel's Challenge" to emotionally manipulate all the hormone-crazed psychopaths roaming the halls of Northwood Junior High.

"Rachel's Challenge" was formed by the friends and family of Rachel Scott, the first victim of the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. The guest speakers showed us pictures and videos of a joyful young girl and sold us on who Rachel was. She seemed like the kind of person you'd want to be friends with. Then, they hit us with the gory details of her death. We watched clips of her classmates and brother talking about the trauma of the shooting. Not a single student in the stuffy gymnasium had a dry eye by the end of the day.

The burden was put on us students to be kinder to one another, to prevent our classmates from snapping and coming to school to shoot us. There was nothing said about gun laws, security, or mental health resources. They told us to be kind to one another like Rachel wanted.

After school, we were encouraged to sign up with the Friends of Rachel (FOR) Club, in which students would mingle and eat lunch together, to create a sense of camaraderie that the adults in our lives figured was enough to prevent a tragedy.

I internalized the messages of Rachel's Challenge. I figured Rachel was a kind girl, a good girl. She tried to talk the gunman down. Yet she died. That must have been the problem. I decided I was going to be mean. The mean ones survive, at least. That's what trauma teaches us: not how to love but how to survive.

The next year, I was sitting in my eighth-grade English classroom when my teacher stepped out and failed to return for the whole period. We sat around, wondering what to do. I think I just picked up whatever book I was devouring that day and finished it.

She returned right as the bell rang and told us to stay put. She informed us that 20 children had died in a school shooting in Connecticut. This wasn't a high school. The shooter wasn't some bullied kid. This was an elementary school, these were babies, and they were killed by a sick man with a gun.

That was the first time I heard the topic shift to guns. The man didn't kill these kids with a mental illness or for vengeance. The kids died because a horrible man was able to get a gun.

For the next few weeks, everything felt somber. I watched coverage of the shooting and looked at my sister, an elementary schooler, and realized she wasn't safe. It wasn't just high schools that had shooters.

I remember staying up at night, wondering if my school would be next. There had been a high school shooting, now an elementary school one. It only made sense a middle school was next. I started making escape plans everywhere I went. In each classroom, I immediately deduced where my best hiding spot would be and how I could escape if the door was blocked. I worried about fire drills because, I figured, that could just be a tactic used by the shooter.

That was the same year a man shot up a movie theater in Colorado.

If my dad took me to the movies, I insisted we sit close to the exit. I couldn't concentrate on the film because every small movement had my eyes darting to the door, wondering if the man standing in the hallway was just waiting for the right moment to strike.

I was also worried when we went to the grocery store or the pharmacy. I avoided large crowds at all times. Fear of guns consumed my mind.

The reality of the modern American teenager
By the time I started high school, I had accepted that I would probably not live to see my 16th birthday. It was a big school in a town where you could buy a gun on every street corner. I just knew the odds were not in my favor. I continued to plan my escape routes in every classroom and remained wary in the crowded hallways.

When I was 15, I met a boy in a class in which I was a teacher's assistant. He seemed nice at first, and I made the dumb mistake of befriending him. I had forgotten my strategy of being mean. Eventually, I learned that this boy was troubled. He confided in me that he was suicidal, that he felt he had nothing to live for. One day he brought in the book Mein Kampf and told me he thought Hitler had some pretty good ideas if you could look past some of his more "severe" ones.

On one of the last days of the semester, he asked me out on a date. I flatly rejected him, and I even told him I didn't have a phone (while holding my iPhone) when he asked for my number.

I went home and cried. I told my mom I was afraid to go to school the next day. I was sure I had pushed this kid to become a shooter — this mentally unstable kid who liked Hitler and had no friends and "nothing to live for." I was worried I would pay for it with my life. All those anxieties surfaced, all those visions of a young and bloody death flashed into my peripheral vision as I begged my mom to let me stay home from school.

She did. But she also called the guidance counselor to tip them off about the boy. He was pretty pissed to have to go to the guidance counselor, but he had no guns. His family had no guns. Because his access was limited, he was deemed not a threat. And for the record, he had no plans to shoot me or anyone else at school.

But that was not the narrative I knew. I grew up with the narrative of school shootings. I grew up thinking it was somehow my responsibility to look out for the loose cannons and prevent a tragedy from happening. At 15, I didn't think about how American the problem of school shootings are. I didn't think to hold elected officials responsible for stricter gun laws.

Living with survivor's guilt
The day I graduated high school was the day I realized I survived. Not "I survived" like some clichéd teen movie, but I survived, literally. I made it to a day I never thought I'd see. I was one of the lucky ones.

In 2017, the same year I graduated high school and started college, it happened. Not at my school, but one in my hometown. A kid brought a gun to school and murdered a classmate. "Lucky" is what people said. They said the school was "lucky" he only got a few shots in before someone tackled him to the ground. "Lucky" only one boy died.

The victim was the son of one of my mom's coworkers. How many degrees away are you from a school shooting victim? How many degrees away do you need to be to care once you stop seeing the faces of dead children on the news?

136 dead people
In the thirteen years since I first hid under that desk, crying and praying for my life, 136 people, most of them children, have died in school shootings. I believe the vastness of that number has desensitized many of us. They had dreams, futures, and families showing up outside, waiting for them to come home.

The Washington Post reports that 311,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine. That is to say, 311,000 students have heard the sounds of bullets hitting walls, guns firing, or even seen teachers and friends shot in front of them. Each one of those 311,000 students now has a GED in trauma.

But, beyond that, every single child that has entered the American school system in the last 23 years has experienced some leftover crumb of gun violence. The frequent school shooter drills, the questions that come after watching news coverage, the wandering eyes searching for a way out, not if but when the inevitable happens. Children have been normalizing this reality for over two decades now, and that, in itself, is trauma.

Who is responsible for this? It is the question we always ask. The blame seems to shift each time it happens. Of course, the gunman is responsible. But what about the stores that sold those guns? What about the laws that enable those purchases? What about the Americans who financially support the lawmakers and super PACs that ensure that those guns can continue to be sold?

To those who still favor gun ownership
I've met many people who will argue until they're blue in the face for the right to own guns. It's more American than anything else, they'll say, and perhaps I agree. It is American. In the same way oppression is American. If being American means our collective history is built on the blood of the innocent, then yes, guns are American.

Liberals and conservatives alike will point out that the Second Amendment assures them the right to own guns. Political scientist hat aside (which always argues that the Second Amendment was written regarding muskets, not military-grade weapons, and the whole second half clarifies that the intention of these precious guns is for a "well-regulated militia," not to overcompensate for toxic masculinity), does the Constitution say we cannot change? Can we not amend this right for the safety and protection of our children? Are guns what make our country great?

At what point do we change our laws? Australia did it after one mass shooting.

Sure, this is America, and if you don't like it, you can leave. And sure, at 23, I am fully capable of leaving. But at 10, I wasn't. At 10, no kid is able to leave. They were slaughtered because of a system that protects its guns more than its children.

Some people will say reform is necessary, and that we need stricter gun laws. I used to believe that was a fair compromise, but I don't anymore. We are gambling with lives, lives that haven't even begun yet.

We need to abolish guns. No stricter laws, no reform, no mandatory background checks. We tried that. That was bullshit.

There is no place on earth where it makes sense for an average civilian to own an AR-15 or any other military-grade weapon. These guns were created specifically for war zones, and America has not been one since the Civil War. There is no reason for these weapons to be manufactured, sold, or used on American soil.

If you are a person who currently keeps one of these weapons in your home, you are a part of the problem. You don't have to be a member of the NRA; you don't even have to vote Republican. By owning a gun, you are supporting an industry that knowingly creates weapons that kill children.

And that's the thing about guns. They have a purpose, just as everything else does, and that purpose is to kill. They are made and used with that intent. If you are a person who lives with a gun in your house, maybe you should ask yourself why you have it. Do you think you will "defend your property" with it? Do you think if someone breaks in in the middle of the night, you will have the time and ability to get to your gun in the safe — and then what, kill that person? Does someone stepping foot on your property unannounced deserve the ultimate punishment?

Or is it more likely that that gun is going to eventually see action when someone goes off the rails? Are you harboring the next weapon that will kill the masses?

Some say guns are used for recreation. How is firing a dangerous weapon recreation for you? Someone, please explain.

And why must you own a weapon that can mow down a classroom of children within minutes? Is a simple musket or hunting rifle not enough for you? If hurting others and ending lives is your type of recreation, might I suggest starting a new hobby? Therapy, maybe? Hell, even fishing, if you must get out there and kill things?

And why does our society feel so strongly about guns and gun ownership? We could look at the root reasons behind this phenomenon.

Guns fit into American history when you think back on our legacy of white supremacy. They were a perfect companion to the soldiers slaughtering Native American people and taking their land. They have been used to hunt down and kill hundreds of Black and Brown people. Gun control ideas only started after Black people began taking up arms to protect themselves from the violence they had been enduring for years.

There's also a notion that guns are "manly." Our culture of toxic masculinity and overt sexism enables men to have power over women. Is this not asserted every day with gun ownership? Men are told they must be powerful, cruel, and unfeeling. What is more powerful, cruel, and unfeeling than a gun? Gun ownership perpetuates the idea that men must be physically aggressive, providers and protectors, and assert dominance in society.

Guns are essential in systems of oppression. Plain and simple, you cannot advocate for the ownership and use of guns without advocating for the continuation of these systems of oppression. You cannot buy bullets and house a weapon in your home without contributing, symbolically and financially, to the systems that provide weapons to murderers.

Empty thoughts and empty prayers
So, turn off your TV. Forget about those ten-year-old kids. Go back to complacency. Your tears are wasted on them, so long as your actions continue to contribute to the system that will kill the next batch. And there will be a next batch.

If you aren't questioning your contribution to the system that continues to enable such tragedies, then you are just sitting back and waiting for them to happen.

So, when your child or grandchild comes up to you after they see the news, see the faces of children that could have been their friends, and ask you if they're next, don't lie to them. They already know. By the time they turn five and have their first active shooter drill, they know. This is the world we have created, the world we have failed to change. The world they didn't ask to be born into and the country they have no way of leaving.

So, when your kid looks into your eyes and asks you that question, hug them while you can, and just remember, it's not if but when.