Do I hide? Do I run? Do I fight? As students, these questions race in our subconscious each and every day at school. According to Education Week’s tracker, there were 39 school shootings in 2024 that resulted in injuries or deaths. According to data from the CDC, firearms were the leading cause of death for children and teens in America in 2023. There were 1,350 “behavior events” in the state of Kentucky involving guns or other weapons during the 2022-2023 school year. According to the 2022-2023 Safe Schools Annual Report, that’s an increase of over 99 percent from five years ago.

Despite these alarming statistics, some students say these numbers have developed a sense of normalcy among teens. As a high school student myself, growing up with the barrage of news headlines, social media posts, and active shooter drills has transformed an unfathomable tragedy into a mundane reality. In an environment designed for learning and the pursuit of our academic potential, for some of us, our thoughts are instead bombarded by detailing our escape–our plan to survive the guns. 

On September 4th, 2024, a fourteen-year-old student at Apalachee High School in Georgia committed a school shooting that killed two students, two teachers, and injured nine others. As I reached out to students in communities neighboring Apalachee to learn how the shooting impacted them, I, along with fellow high schoolers in Kentucky, saw an uptick in gun threats and shootings across our own state. 

This made me realize the bigger picture: how shootings in schools and in our communities render some students feeling desensitized to gun violence, some overwhelmed by threats online, and some afraid to go to school at all.

Two students from Alpharetta High School in Georgia spoke to me about how their communities were affected by the shooting. On September 4th, Sarah Lopez was studying at a cafe with her friend when she got a text alerting her about the shooting at Apalachee. She had been at the school a few weeks prior for the first cross-country meet of the season.

She felt compelled to act because she felt hopeless: This could happen to any school, she tells The New Edu. So, Lopez organized a walkout. She spoke to the administration, which gave her permission to hold the walkout during a study hall, and spread the word to students. She was empowered by a statewide walkout organized by the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition among other groups, she says. Student leaders organized walkouts for individual schools on September 20th. 

Lopez estimates there were around fifty individuals gathered for four minutes of silence. She spoke about remembering the lives lost, and the responsibility of schools, public servants, and students themselves have to keep schools safe. Giving hope for future change was a main goal, Lopez says. 

Another Georgia student, Anna Grace Soriano, says she’s become accustomed to the prevalence of guns in public, because Georgia allows open-carry. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, in 2022, Georgia passed permitless carry legislation. Soriano describes metal detectors being at her high school for a week as part of a “county-wide test,” and the mixed feelings they brought up for her: while the metal detectors were meant to keep them safe, she says, it unnerved her that they were needed at all. Soriano says that she feels “less safe” in comparison to California, where she had previously lived. Though her middle and high school classes at that time opened to the outside, Soriano says they didn’t receive a threat of gun violence during her time there. 

When the Apalachee shooting made national level news, she hoped that the level of recognition would spark change in her community. While there was recognition of the tragedy among her classmates, she says, there have been no state-wide policy changes to prevent what happened at Apalachee from reoccurring, to her knowledge. Not long after, a series of threats posted on Snapchat spread not just across her school, but across the country, she says.  The unwillingness of Georgia, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, to impose actions on gun control have deeply bothered her, Soriano adds.

Now, she describes the state of her community with regards to gun violence as “apocalyptic, dystopian, disappointing.”

In Kentucky, students recount threats of violence

In the aftermath, other incidents of gun violence impacting teenagers or school shootings continued across the country. The Education Week tracker detailed multiple other shootings, including incidents in Maryland, Minnesota, and Louisville, Kentucky, all in September.

Meanwhile, students recount that threats of violence swept Kentucky schools and communities. On September 7th, three days after the Apalachee shooting, Anna Patel was on the road back home from her Temple in London, Kentucky. She happened to be near Interstate 75, where a man opened fire on the highway. When police cars ripped down the highway, it struck her that she was amidst something serious, threatening. Aside from fearing for her own life, her family and friends had little children in the car. “I had to get their minds off the situation by distracting them with games, but the truth is, we were all still scared,” she says. 

Not long after this incident, she says a police officer in her community was shot and killed. Due to this tragedy, her school was canceled the day after for them to pay their respects.

Within schools, Kentucky students also experienced threats of violence. Karysnn Hatfield, a senior at Montgomery County High School, says that in late September, she found out that a middle schooler in her district possessed a gun all throughout the school day without authorities being notified. 

In the days that followed this incident, “rumored threats” via social media infiltrated her school district. It was so severe that school was even canceled one of the days of the week.  Hatfield was “shocked” by the incident. Hatfield reflects on being asked by her best friend to look after her younger sibling while the friend is away at college. She empathizes with how the sibling might feel during moments of uncertainty and danger, imagining herself and her friends in similar situations, feeling helpless and scared. “People realize that gun violence isn’t just a thing you hear on the news, it’s something that can so easily change the lives of you, or the people you love,” she says.

Also in September, a student was charged after making threats against Grant County High School, according to reporting from WLWT5. One student, who asked to remain anonymous, says that they took extra precautions. “We didn’t go to the bathrooms unless we had to. We never went anywhere alone,” the student says.  

Another student, Ashley Zephua, skipped school out of fear. “I pondered if I’d be okay, if I would die today and what my plan was if a shooter tried to get into my classrooms,” Zephua says. Since the incident she has adopted a new mindset: “Now I envision what would be the best escape plan from all my classrooms or where I would hide if it ever became the case. I think about where I would seek refuge and if I should take self defense courses.”

In Owensboro, Kentucky, Abby Ladwig’s high school experienced a firearm threat in September. A 18-year-old student from Owensboro High School was arrested after threatening “a shooting may take place following tonight's football game” according to the Owensboro Times.  Despite the threat, Ladwig chose to go to the football game. Reporting from the Owensboro Times said that officials did not believe the threat was related to images circulating at the time containing “vague threats about schools.” School districts in the area, as well as the Kentucky Department of Education and Kentucky State Police, all issued statements about the online threats against schools that circulated in September, said the Owensboro Times. 

“My reaction to the threat was so mundane to what was happening,” says Ladwig, explaining she felt desensitized to it. She admits that because of the rumors and threats she has heard nearby and even nationally, she had slowly become accustomed to this information at her school.  

Ballard High School also experienced threats two weeks after the shooting in Georgia, according to sophomore Harini Srinivasan. “I saw the email my principal had sent out saying that there were a few threats to our school the next day and how they would up security,” Srinivasan says. “As soon as I saw the email my heart sank and I started crying and couldn't breathe.” She remembers having panic attacks during school because of these threats, which significantly impacted her ability to concentrate. 

Where do students go from here? 

As I spoke to other students about threats of violence at their school, I recalled a shooting that took place right outside my internship on August 19th, 2024.  For two periods of the school day, I intern at the prosecutor's office across from the Hardin County Justice Center. On my first day of the internship, a shooting happened in our shared parking lot. I recall the head prosecutor shouting, “Gunfire!” and we immediately moved to the middle of the building. “One person was hit”...”Another hit,” I remember a staff member saying as they watched the shooter fire in the parking lot.  The next two hours were grueling, as we were uncertain if we were going to be targeted next. (According to reporting from WDRB, a man killed three people outside the Hardin County Courthouse.)

When it was finally over, a sheriff walked me to my car and I went back to school as if nothing had happened. It felt like I was almost forced to become desensitized–move on; there’s nothing we can do now. 

But there is something we can do. As students, we look to our leaders at our local, state, and national level and they must take action to make our public, especially schools, safer. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, Kentucky’s gun laws are “among the worst in the country, and the state’s gun death rate is above the national average.” The Giffords Law Center states that Kentucky is missing universal background checks, gun owner licensing, open carry regulations, and more gun safety laws; in the organization’s gun law scorecard, Kentucky ranked 47th out of 50 in terms of gun law strength.

Unsurprisingly, some research shows that states with stricter gun laws have fewer deaths due to gun violence. According to a paper published by BJM, researchers concluded that “states with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings.”  Legislatures need to pass gun restriction laws. The right to bear arms is embedded into our constitutional freedoms, but that right must be balanced with the responsibility to protect public safety. How many more innocent students' lives does gun violence need to take for lawmakers to take action? Are we ever going to feel safe at schools?

As we count down the days in our school year, it seems as if gun violence incidents and threats are innumerable. From panic attacks and fearing for the lives of our loved ones to organizing walkouts or skipping school out of fear, the impact of gun violence has become our reality, and something that lingers in the back of our minds. Some students may feel desensitized to gun violence, as if it’s become normal. For others, it has manifested into a daily fear.

Across the nation, students are demanding stronger gun laws, advocating for stricter regulations, and holding leaders accountable for ensuring the safety of our schools. High school students in Georgia staged a walkout to call for legislative action in the aftermath of the shooting at Apalachee High School; in Tennessee, young people gathered at the Tennessee Capitol to demand gun safety measures following a shooting at Antioch High School in January 2025, according to The Tennessean. Students Demand Action and March For Our Lives help organize high school and college students and young people to take action against gun violence. 

It’s time for lawmakers to listen. The lives of our peers, and our ability to go to school without worrying about shootings in hallways, bathrooms, or football games, depends on it. Schools are meant to foster an environment where student learning can flourish and thrive. But how can we focus in lectures and on tests if our minds are preoccupied by planning escape routes and defensive strategies to beat the bullet? Lawmakers hear our cries, and hear our screams. Yet, many do not act. Thoughts and prayers will not save us. Laws and action will.