Although there appears to be no place safer than one's own home, schools are meant to be the next best thing. A place where people may learn about the world and about one another. To develop. To become older. It's truly a place to bloom. Parents used to send their children to school without hesitation, just concerned about academics and the occasional bully. It's now time for lockdown exercises. Classroom doors that are locked. Those we have entrusted with teaching must maintain constant monitoring.

The 27th school shooting this year occurred at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two adults were shot. The shooter in Tuesday's event, according to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, was dead. This comes just ten days after ten people were killed in a shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York. This year, there were 27 school shootings that resulted in injuries or deaths.

As of Tuesday, the Gun Violence Archive, an independent data collection organization, had tallied 212 mass shootings so far this year. A mass shooting is defined as an incident in which four or more individuals, excluding the shooter, are shot or killed. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there were 693 mass shootings in the United States in 2021. The previous year, there were 611. And there were 417 in 2019. According to Education Week, 34 school shootings occurred in 2021 at educational institutions (the highest since the organization started its database). There were ten shootings in 2020. There were 24 shootings in both 2019 and 2018.

We can’t just talk and do nothing. We need to take action, and we need to speak with a unified voice. If we don’t, that next tragedy we read about could very well be our own.