Victoria Bresnahan – News Editor
Tamonda Griffiths – News Writer
Last Valentine’s Day, David Hogg survived one of the deadliest mass shootings in the modern U.S. history. In the classrooms and hallways of his high school Marjory Stoneman Douglas, 17 people were killed and 17 others were injured by gunman Nikolas Cruz—a former student of the Parkland, Florida high school.
“I hope that like future generations don’t walk into a classroom and think to themselves, ‘which seat is most likely for me to survive in?,’” said Hogg, during a press conference before his conversation in Lyman. “I hope that when people are walking to or from school they aren’t fearing gun violence anymore.”
According to a Gun Violence Archive study, in 2018 there have been 325 mass shootings thus far. This year alone, 13,421 people have died due to gun-related violence, according the study.
In the future, he hopes the fear of becoming a gun violence victim will dissipate, he said.
Universities and high schools, he said, can protect students by working with families that have created organizations advocating for school safety.
Over-policing and over-incarceration are not solutions for gun violence either, he said.
Gun violence, Hogg said, should be responded to as a public health crisis. He said, he is “here for the solutions that will save lives.”
“As such, we need to take down the big tobacco of guns which is the NRA and fund gun violence research so that we can actually find the solutions to this problem,” said Hogg. “Because honestly if arming every teacher and putting gun vending machines on every street corner worked, I would be all for that, but it doesn’t.”
Even before the shooting, Hogg said he feared gun violence and worried about being a victim of a mass shooting.
“It is common consensus when you walk into buildings for us to think about where the exits are,” he said. “And that shouldn’t be something we think about but sadly it is and it is a fact of our daily life.”
Photo Credit: August Pelliccio
