Threat. The word threat implies that this is not something that I have experienced, lived in, or slept beside. Many people I loved have been snatched from my arms by a single bullet. When the people around you drop dead it is hard not to be scared that you will, too.
Just yesterday my cousin was shot and killed, unsuspecting of the unforgiving nature of the world around her. She wasn’t even the target, just at the wrong place at the wrong time. A man who should not have had access to a gun did, and for that, she paid in bloodshed. A baby died that day, too, its eyes never getting the chance to see the world outside of the perspective of its mother’s arms.
These experiences will always be in my heart, but as time goes on and this violence seems to progress, these experiences seem to transition out of my heart and into my life. And I pray to God that I will never come face to face with it, to stare at a person in the eyes and know that my death lies intertwined in their fingers. But it just seems to get closer, and closer, and closer, yet no one wants to do something about it until their “threat” becomes a reality. We all talk about the shooting in Nashville, expressing our concerns, and sending our condolences, but what has anyone really done about it?
Students flooded the Republican-controlled Tennessee House, demanding gun control. Three district representatives led the chant in protest and two of them were later expelled, being compared to the rioters of the White House on January 6th. They worked against the threat-turned-reality and were met with reality itself. It seems that our government would rather sit in comfort than assess change in discomfort. But I promise you the moment one of their kids is affected, they would be chanting in protest too.
The term “bite the bullet” is a term many of us are familiar with. It means to do something that might be difficult or unpleasant. I challenge America to do so, or at least us at WCHS to bite the bullet before the bullet’s in your head.
