Madison Culpepper

Central Connecticut State University

The adults say that we need the guns to help us win a war, that they’re sacred to America, that they’re used by the heroes in the fight.

Yet there’s carnage in classrooms. Desks are abandoned and overturned like wreckage of a fallen city, and no slogans can sanitize the blood of seventeen in Florida, thirty two at Virginia Tech, twenty six at Sandy Hook.

The adults tell us to admire the craftsmanship, the chambers that hold as many bullets as soldiers in the belly of a wooden horse. They swear it’s not the guns, it’s the people; it’s their twisted, unhealthy minds.

Yet my friend’s hands shake as I try to comfort her, because every lockdown feels like another headline, another shooting, another number soon to be forgotten.

The adults say our schools will become fortresses, our teachers will be armed. Meanwhile, I say I love you to my dad before I get on the bus every day,

so if I don’t return he won’t regret our final words.

Yet every word I speak isn’t valid enough because I’m just a kid, I don’t understand what they keep telling me – that there’s value in something carved for blood and war.

The adults say we need the guns to help us win a war, but the only war I see is the one where students become soldiers, textbooks become shields, classrooms become battlefields.

The adults do not want the children to speak because the children will not stay quiet. The children are finding their voice in the ruins, and it’s louder than any gunfire the world has ever heard.