Days ago, during a lunch discussion with my father, he asked me what I spent the majority of my time doing apart from schoolwork. I told him “contemplating my future”. This answer, partially a quip I purposefully said to shock him, although entirely accurate, clearly dismayed him by the look he gave me.  Sympathetically, he said “You’re young, you should be having fun. There’s no use in troubling yourself over the future because you have no idea of what could happen.” 

Apart from the fact that everyday I am reminded of what could possibly happen to me and my fellow students through the media, by the successive news articles about the massacre at a Florida high school last month, as well as every precedent slaughter, by the haunting faces of the 17 students who are now dead because someone was able to obtain an AR-15 and fire dozens of rounds in seconds at the school, by all the constant demands for action to end this kind of disaster to which you never deliver. 

I am a part of what is called Generation Z, or the iGeneration. The adults haven’t really figured out what to call us yet. We are the products of a technological revolution that allows us to be constantly bombarded with news of the latest tragedies. That means it is harder for you to keep us in the dark. When I first heard of the Parkland school shooting, I was at my own school surrounded by a bunch of other students. My first thought wasn’t “Unbelievable!” or “How could this happen!”  I’d thought “oh no….. another one already?” 

Do not, I beg of you, mistake this for feeble-minded unconcern for the lives lost during that incident. I can assure you that I, as many other American students do, bear the ache of their loss. However, at the same time, we feel very little impact. Mass shootings have become the norm of daily life to us. Mass shooting after mass shooting, each one assumed to prompt change, yet that has never come to pass. Perhaps another shooting would? How many more lives need to be taken for you to finally say “enough”? Are our lives worth less than an NRA donation?

I was eight years old the very first time I heard about a school shooting. December 14, 2012. Sandy Hook Elementary. 20 children, close to my age, fatally shot by a man who used guns from a large collection of weapons. Legally obtained. Legally registered. Then came the lockdown drills, the expectation of an intruder with the aim to murder us drilled in our minds since early childhood. We anticipate this with fear, watered down by routine. Don’t you find it sad, how desensitized we are to tragedy? To threats to our lives? We weren’t safe six years ago and we still aren’t safe today. 

You paint us as these lazy kids wasting time on our phones, contributing nothing to society. Yet, once we start advocating for stricter gun laws, you threaten to put us in the corner. Call us entitled for wanting basic human rights all you want, there are still others who believe their right to possess a literal killing machine is more important than our safety. 

We are not lazy. We are not useless. We’re young but we can’t have fun because we’re too busy fighting for our own lives. This is something that we, as kids, should not have to do. We will be in charge of the change which you would have failed to bring about. Hell, we’re already getting things rolling and we haven’t even reached voting age yet. As David Hogg, student survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas massacre said, “We will outlive you”. Until then, we as a collective generation are eager for change, ready to yell, shout, and tear down the wrongs that have been created if you continue to stay quiet.

With utmost respect,

Rosemarie Sison, 14 years old, student at Vista Del Mar Middle, San Diego