It’s a normal experience: As September rolls around, kids and young people across the country dread going back to school. Homework, tests, and the end of summer freedom looms. But something else weighs heavily too: the threat of gun violence. If the shooting last week at Georgia's Apalachee High School showed us anything, it’s that, in America, back to school increasingly means back to school shootings. It’s a terrifying and ever-present danger, and it can strike anyone, anywhere. I would know.
I was just 12 years old when my mom got the call that every parent fears. Sitting beside her, I heard my oldest brother say, “Mommy, there’s a shooting at the Waffle House.” Chaos ensued as my family tried to learn what happened and whether my two brothers were safe. Then my mom grabbed my hands and told me the most devastating news I'd ever heard: My brother Akilah, who was just 23, had been killed in the Antioch Waffle House mass shooting.
I know the crushing grief that guns wreak across this country because I’ve felt it myself. Like so many others, I turned my grief into action and started to fight for a future free of gun violence, alongside the Akilah Dasilva Foundation and March for Our Lives.
While I grieve for my brother and advocate in his honor, though, lawmakers disrespect him and the more than 40,000 Americans who die from gun violence each year by ignoring our voices and passing laws that only exacerbate this epidemic. That’s certainly the case in my home state of Tennessee. Six years after the Waffle House shooting and a year after the Covenant School shooting, which stole the lives of three nine-year-olds and three caregivers, conservative state lawmakers passed legislation to arm teachers — essentially turning teachers into soldiers.
Unfortunately, this law isn’t new. A staggering two-thirds of states already allow teachers to carry guns in public schools, and it’s no mystery why. This legislation has become the new playbook for conservative lawmakers who claim to be addressing shootings but are actually bowing down to the gun lobby.
Let me be clear: Pouring gasoline into a fire does not put it out. We have a gun violence emergency, and making it easier for people to get guns without common-sense safeguards like firearms training and background checks will only cause more gun violence. If increasing the number of guns made us safer, by that logic, the United States should be the safest country in the world; instead, the US has one of the highest rates of gun deaths in the world. Study after study shows that an increased number of guns leads to more deaths, more violence, and more young people like myself fearing for our lives.
As an activist, a student, and Akilah’s brother, I know it was a shooter who committed murder, but that act was enabled by a lack of basic gun laws, political inaction, and blatant ignorance. I’m livid that our lawmakers show no care after massacres like at the Waffle House or the more than 383,000 students who, according to Washington Post data, have experienced gun violence in schools since the Columbine High School shooting.
Our schools should be safe, curious places of learning, not hardened jails with cops, searches around every corner, and armed teachers. Most teachers do not want to be armed, and there is little evidence that arming them will keep kids safe. Just take a look at the school massacres in Parkland and Uvalde, where armed police officers with much more training than an armed math teacher were still unable to stop deadly shootings. Even the Secret Service could not stop a shooter from harming Donald Trump.
Arming teachers is especially worrisome because there aren’t specific requirements for how teachers store their guns, which could allow firearms to fall into the hands of unknowing kids, bad actors, or faculty with ill intent. We’ve seen this happen before. Guns are left in school bathrooms, locker rooms, and even accidentally fired in classrooms. According to Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, there were nearly 100 publicly reported incidents of mishandled guns at schools between 2014 and 2021.
The American education system already unfairly punishes students of color. Young Black children are three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than young white children, and those punishments make students three times more likely to enter the juvenile justice system. This is the ruthless effect of the school-to-prison pipeline. Now legislators are adding more guns to an already racist system.
Instead of spending scarce school resources on armed school personnel, we need to invest in preventing school violence. In America today, 14 million students are in schools with police but lack access to counselors, nurses, psychologists, or social workers. Rather than support student well-being, limited school funding often goes straight to punishment.
Organizations like March for Our Lives are fighting for a different approach: tackling the root causes of gun violence. Before a young person picks up a gun to hurt someone or themself, let’s make sure every kid has access to caring teachers and counselors who are trauma-informed and can offer support; implement K-12 mental health education and care; and invest in community-based violence-reduction programs. That’s why young people are calling on Congress to pass the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act, a community-driven bill that seeks to prevent violence, save lives, and ensure our schools remain supportive environments where students can thrive.
Whether it’s in schools or homes, we need solutions that address underlying motives and interrupt the cycle of violence. It’s time for our lawmakers to adopt preventive solutions and regulate firearms, not punt the responsibility to our nation’s educators. And it’s time they listen to the people who are most impacted by this epidemic: students.
Gun violence can affect just about anyone at any time. Six years ago, it took my brother, and until lawmakers pass meaningful solutions, there’s no saying who it will strike next.
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