Are school shootings becoming too normalized? Most people currently are saying this is becoming too normalized and it’s becoming a daily thing that you hear in the news. A recent podcast/article on NPR by Martin Kaste talks about how the number of shootings in recent years have spiked.  Kaste says “National statistics from 2022 aren’t yet available, but you can get a sneak peak from an informal year-to-date tally of murders in major cities compiled by data analyst Jeff Asher. … And in 40% of the cities listed, homicides are trending higher.” This just shows that violence keeps growing more and more and because of this people are becoming very desensitized to the violence.

Recently I went around campus asking students if they believed that these acts of violence were being normalized and many of them said yes. Some of them have even claimed that it has become a running joke between high schoolers, lock down drills are treated like a daily thing, and teachers are continuing their lessons during these drills. This is simply because these drills are becoming daily announcements. Some student responses have stood out a lot such as Josse one of our students who said “I think that they are becoming way too normalized because I recently had a conversation with my family about school shootings and my younger cousin said that it was normal for them to have lockdown drills and that she already knew what to do and she is only in the second grade”. They made a valid point with this that many students have also mentioned which is that little kids are already learning to hide and that they aren’t necessarily safe at school always. Another student Vincent said  “I feel like at a certain degree yea it’s become normalized because of how often it happens and how people are just brushing it off and people are becoming desensitized,” which has been a common theme in most responses from students.

A different perspective was also made by Yuvixa who said “it’s being normalized kind of because of our second amendment right and we can’t really get out of it. Like why are we allowed to have war machines in our everyday life?” This brought on the conversation of how some things within our government should change. Which brings in the bigger picture of how violence has gotten worse over the years, specifically with gun violence because how easy it is to access to these weapons. Another student who chose to stay anonymous said “why is it that an 18 year old can get access to a gun but cant buy cigarettes’ or liquor. Like yes, those 2 things do cause harm but they are causing harm to themselves and not other people.”  This argument has been made by multiple people not only by students but by governors and other officials in many other states who have raised the age to buy an automatic weapon to the age of 21.

To summarize this I think we should make a change and stop being so desensitized to these acts of violence. As teenagers we should be more aware and fight for change because we are the next generation to be in charge and we are the ones at risk right now. We should at least try to fix what little we can not just for us but for next generations to follow as well. The question now however is whether or not we believe we’ve become desensitized to this. So do you believe we’ve become too desensitized and if so do you want to make a change?