My teacher use to joke in class with us, telling us that he befriended every kid he came in contact with so that if one ever became a school shooter they’d let him go free. We use to laugh in amusement because in retrospect it was funny. We are no longer laughing. In school I have daydreams of what would happened if an armed shooter walked in and began mowing down rows of students, teachers and guards. Would I head outside? Stay in a classroom? Would I get locked out in the hall and be forced into the bathroom to stand on a toilet seat trembling in fear as my foot slips off the plastic and ultimately seals my fate. And who would it be? Would it be someone I knew? Someone I’ve made fun of? Someone I use to know? Would they look me in the eyes as they pulled the trigger? And which of my friends would make it, and for whom would it be too late? Recently I have feared going to school, of becoming the next statistic in a long line of tragedy. And if anyone tells me that my fear is irrational they must not be a high school student. Because everyday we head through those glass doors we are dancing with the devil, praying today won’t be our last. Because I am sure that everyone in my school has had the same daydream as me. Because we no longer practice what to do in the case of a natural disaster, but instead a preventable one. Because for some godforsaken reason these young assailants, most hardly adults, find themselves in possession of guns, a majority of them deemed as mentally unfit as well. So how? How do these “mentally ill” “broken child(ren)” come to own one of the most deadly assault riffles of our time without concern raised their way? And WHY does the right for these people to own mass murder weapons outweigh my right for us to attend school safely? Our generation of students is always at the butt-end of jokes for being so wrapped up in technology that we don’t notice the world around us. But, for a fact, we notice everything, and we are SCREAMING for change, for tighter gun laws to keep the future of our nation safe, but no matter how loud we scream, and cry, and plead for change; just like the next and next and next gunmen to their gun, America has placed a silencer on us all.