Almost every single student in America goes through the same routine every morning. You get up. Take a shower. Get dressed. Eat breakfast. Brush your teeth. Somehow you almost miss the bus every day. It’s robotic. But now imagine that each day when you say goodbye to your parents and close the door to your house, you wonder if it’s going to be the last time you get to go through your routine, as monotonous as it is. You hope that you’ll have the opportunity to brush your teeth at night because you’re afraid you might not make it home from school that day.
This is how millions of American children feel every time we leave our house. Whether we are going to school, or the movies, or the mall. We are sick and tired of having to constantly look over our shoulders. Now, I could write for pages describing all the statistics related to gun violence in our schools, but instead I am going to tell you from my heart why we need change.
A source that many gun advocates cite to propagate their beliefs is our Constitution, more specifically the Second Amendment. But I’d like to go back to the beginning of our country’s founding document to the Preamble:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”
And while we can all agree that our union is far from perfect, our country has failed us.
It has failed to provide tranquility for the millions of students across our union who are afraid to go to school every single day.
It has failed to defend those who have been slaughtered in their classrooms.
It has failed to provide justice for the victims of shootings through our inaction in implementing a solution.
We have failed to create a society free from oppressive restrictions imposed on our of lives as we are restricted from living a life devoid of anything but life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Young Americans throughout this country are turning our thoughts and prayers into action and change, because all of you, as adults, have failed us. Many of us aren’t even old enough to vote, yet it is up to us to fight for our right to live.
That is why I urge you to come to our Student-Organized Rally to End Gun Violence on July 29 at noon at Breezy Park in Huntington to voice your support for our cause. Congressman Suozzi (a fierce supporter of our cause) will be in attendance, and we together can show other Members of Congress that we still mean business and that our work will not be done until we make our schools safer. I hope to see you at the rally and join us in our fight.
—Andrew Goldman
