“We are so sure we know what freedom is in America that we cannot imagine a world in which true freedom might come after sacrifice of personal rights. Freedom is sending your kids to school with confidence that they will come home at the end of the day.”

— Taylor Schumann, author of When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough

According to CNN, “49 school shootings have happened in the US this year, including the UNC shooting – 34 have been reported on K-12 campuses and 15 on university and college campuses.” There was a point in time in which tragedies like 9/11 and Sandy Hook rocked our nation to its core. We were scared and afraid, with the country feeling a wave of silence as we grieved together. That isn’t the case anymore. The shooting at Chapel Hill was just one of the 49 to occur since the beginning of the year, and if I’m being frank, I thought the number would be higher. Living in Philadelphia, gun violence is, unfortunately, nothing new. It’s common to ask the question, “gun shots? Or fireworks?” Citizen alerts light up our phone screens every other weekend, notifying us of groups of people, including children, ending up at the receiving end of the barrel. And yet, even with little kids losing their lives to bullets, our country still cannot seem to agree on restricting the accessibility to firearms.