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The other day, someone nonchalantly said to me that “you know that the pandemic is dying down when school shootings are starting up again.” Sadly, this rings true.

 It’s April 17, 2021, and there have been 148 mass shootings this year to date. It’s April 17, and 12,515 people have been the victims of gun violence. It’s April 17, and 1358 kids between the ages of 0 and 17 have been shot, 402 fatally. It’s April 17, and last week, the governor of Tennessee signed a law that allows residents to carry a firearm either openly or concealed without requiring a permit if they are over 21. This week, a student was shot and killed at Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Rightfully so, the coronavirus pandemic took up most of the news cycle for the past 13 months. Yet, although mass shootings declined during 2020 with quarantine restrictions, “2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades.” According to the Washington Post, nearly 20,000 Americans died due to gun violence in 2020 alone, and an additional 24,000 Americans died by suicide with a gun. Despite alarming rates of gun violence and suicide, an overwhelming number of these tragedies happened outside the national spotlight. And just like the COVID-19 crisis, this gun violence disproportionately affects BIPOC communities.  

Fortunately, this particular epidemic has not escaped the notice of President Biden. President Trump was publicly known to be affiliated with the NRA, accepting over $30 million in campaign funding from the group, and actively supported loosening federal gun restrictions. In contrast, in his third month of office, President Biden already announced an agenda with gun safety reforms and executive actions. The most significant of Biden’s efforts include directing “the Department of Justice to propose a regulation, within 30 days, to stop the proliferation of deadly, untraceable ghost guns.” Ghost guns refer to unregulated firearms that can be built from kits or 3-D printed and therefore have no tracking serial number or background check requirement. The New York Times cites President Biden saying, ‘“I want to see these kits treated as firearms under the Gun Control Act.” This initiative is a direct response to shootings like the one in November 2019, when five students were shot, two of them fatally, by a 16-year-old student using a ghost gun at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. This action is reminiscent of former presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders’ policy to crack down on 3D-printed firearms.  

Other parts of President Biden’s Gun Control Act include modifying “multiple federal grant programs to increase available funding for community violence intervention programs,” publishing “a model state red flag law within 60 days,” and directing the “DOJ to issue a new, annual comprehensive report on firearms trafficking.” Biden’s policies not only are working to decrease guns in circulation with the protocol addressing ghost guns, but also, with the red flag mandate, working to keep guns out of the hands of individuals who may be a danger to themselves or others, a prudent action especially during the uncertainty brought about by the pandemic. In 2019, 23,941 lives were lost due to suicide by guns. According to Everytown for Gun Safety, it is estimated that the economic recession caused by the pandemic will lead to a 20-30% increase in the number of suicides by guns over the next projected 3 years. The COVID-19 lockdown caused an unprecedented jump in firearm purchases in 2020, with “an estimated 1.9 million additional guns sold during March and April 2020 compared to the same time period last year.” 

     In addition, President Biden will be nominating David Chipman to serve as Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. This agency hasn’t had a confirmed director since 2015. However, the move is a good sign to finally have clear leadership at the bureau responsible for enforcing policies that have to do with gun safety and gun violence prevention,  a huge step for prioritizing America’s gun control enforcement. 

        Given the strong alliance along partisan lines, citizens must show strong support for gun control legislation to succeed. We can use our votes to elect legislators who will take action against this epidemic and our voices to engage with organizations. Organizations such as Everytown For Gun Safety, with its nearly six million supporters engaged in research, policy initiatives, fundraising, and community outreach, strives to organize action at the local level to end this “uniquely American crisis.” These organizations have broad reach. Especially since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14th, 2018, students have been intensely involved in this fight against gun violence, leading organizations like the National Association of Students Against Gun Violence and March for Our Lives. Even with the pandemic causing a decline in protests, students have taken to social media to get their messages across. Social media continues to be a prime news source for younger Americans, and by posting information about what students can do from home to combat gun violence, this generation has added a new dimension to activism, following in the footsteps of movements like Black Lives Matter and #EndSARS.  

While Biden’s legislation is the key to making progress on the regulatory level, the key to solving this epidemic is outrage. Our country continues to normalize mass shootings, and we have lost the sense of outrage that we once felt when the news of Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland happened. Long-lasting, effective gun control requires the support of federal and local lawmakers. Without outrage, sweeping legislation will be a pipe dream, and “thoughts and prayers” will continue to be all we have to offer when another shooting occurs. But, as Moms Demand Action’s members so aptly phrased their campaign to end gun violence, we need #MoreThanThoughtsAndPrayers. 

Today, we should have been observing a transition of power as Congress prepared to certify the results of the December 14, 2020 vote by the Electoral College, electing Joe Biden as president. Today, we should have been acknowledging the progress our country has made by electing Georgia’s first Jewish and Black senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. The real victory for America would not have been who won or lost, but a peaceful transition of power from one set of leaders to another, keeping with a history of more than two centuries. The fact that we could not do this — that we could not have this transition of power — is a tragic failure of the American system. It is possible that the United States of America is no longer a democracy; this behavior is bordering on authoritarianism. The leader of the world’s most powerful nation has frequently engaged in mobilizing domestic terror, and today is no exception. Today, we think back to Donald Trump’s tweets of “Liberate Michigan,” “Liberate Virginia,” and the kidnapping of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer by conservative extremists angry with the governor over her coronavirus policies. Donald Trump has been the ringleader of the mob that is currently assaulting our United States Capitol building and democracy. During the presidential debates of 2020, Trump was unable to unequivocally condemn white supremacists on national TV, and today, he signs his tweets aimed at the violent rioters with “thank you!,” and “WE LOVE YOU.” For a president claiming to be the leader of the “party of law and order,” things sure seem to be out of control in Washington D.C. 

The Republican party has undergone a complete transformation over the last four years, with recent events snowballing into the complete separation and the creation of the Trump-Republican party. What started as one wealthy man campaigning for president in 2016 has morphed into supposedly-democratic leaders advocating the undermining of our democratic systems and the fueling of false conspiracies about voter fraud four years later. Donald Trump’s actions today are not surprising, as two months after the November 2020 general election, the president still has refused to concede or congratulate president-elect Joe Biden. Now claiming that the election results for Ossoff and Warnock are fraudulent, Trump and his supporters clearly have no boundaries of what they are willing to do to stay in power. Shots have been fired into our Capitol as our lawmakers hunker under their desks praying for their lives. Today, our country inches further and further away from the confines of a true democracy. 

President-elect Joe Biden addressed the nation today, demanding that President Trump end the “siege.” The New York Times and Washington Post, among other news outlets, has gone from calling the Trump supporters in D.C. “protesters” to calling them a “mob.” This full-fledged spectacle of mob mentality is obnoxiously characteristic of the new political party that has been created over the last four years.

 Activists are furious with the clear show of white privilege – white cops posted pictures with the rioters, not condemning their actions, but letting them continue to storm the Capitol building; if these protestors were people of color, the police would not be so inclined to hold their fire. Activists point to how the Black Lives Matter protests were treated by Conservatives and Trump supporters. Our democracy is crumbling before our eyes. Our lawmakers are in peril. Our so-called president is thanking the mob for its support. What will it take to get us to walk back from mob rule to democracy?

As a freshman in high school, I went to see The Hate U Give in the theater with my family over fall break. I was so passionate and fired up about the film that I spent days talking about it with my family, and I decided to start my own blog. The Hate U Give was the topic of my first post. Since then, I’ve gone through four years of high school, developed my college and career interests, and lived through one of the most controversial presidential terms and elections in history. Today, in 2020, I have watched and been a part of one of the most influential civil rights protests of my generation, the Black Lives Matter movement. The words I wrote as a freshman in high school could be published today in the New York Times, and my call to action would not have changed—but the list of victims of police brutality and systematic racism continues to grow. 

Now I’m a senior in high school, and in my AP Literature and Composition class, we are reading this novel and analyzing recent police shootings to connect these events to themes in the book. It is my second read of The Hate U Give. As a white teenager living in Southern California, I will never identify personally with the experiences of author Angie Thomas’s main character, a Black teenageer named Starr Carter. However, what makes Thomas’s book so difficult yet compelling to read is that she blurs the lines of race. 

In The Hate U Give, victim Khalil Harris was shot on the side of the road by a white police officer. Starr spends the novel wrestling with an identity crisis; she was born and lives in Garden Heights yet attends a white prep school 40 minutes away. Starr struggles with the idea of speaking out and defending her Black community, as she has allegiances to both sides. Starr deals with justification from white news media, white classmates, and police officers, and while Khalil was indeed a drug dealer, the question Thomas is asking her readers to think about is did he deserve to die? Thomas writes white characters that are stereotypically racist. But she also draws a picture of whites who are allies to the Black community.My rereading of this book and my differing responses over time show me just how much the presidency of Donald Trump, the polarization caused by current politics, and BLM have affected my perception of life in our country. Black Lives Matter forces us to confront systemic injustices within our country. Black Lives Matter forces us to realize how much all people in America need to think about perspectives other than their own. Looking at this issue through Starr’s eyes humanizes someone stereotyped within the Black community. When I wrote about this novel the first time, I wanted to make a point of understanding new perspectives other than my own. As I write about it again, I want to draw attention to how drastically different our political climate is. This post is more than saying Black Lives Matter. What Thomas does with her characters is introduce readers, particularly white readers, to the experiences of Blacks living in America – to the systemic injustices inherent within our system.. The Black experience in America is different from the experiences of other Americans, and it is time our politicians join with the rest of the country in changing systemic injustices that have persisted throughout the last few centuries. A Black professor at American University recently told me that in order to walk in someone else’s shoes, you have to first take off your own. The Hate U Give offers readers an opportunity to truly set aside political biases and talk a walk in the shoes of a Black teenage girl.

Check out my post commemorating RBG and calling voters to action published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Public Policy!

I attended my first drive-in movie theater the other day. Who knew those still existed? As I seek extraneous activities to keep me sane during quarantine, I continue to reflect on both past and present events of this pandemic. In March I thought I’d be back in school by April. Then it was May. Then junior year was over. Now I feel as if senior year were gone too. As the milestones of my high school career continue to slip out from under my feet like a pulled rug, and as I read about lives lost to this virus, I can’t but help feel angry, depressed, dumbfounded. And yet I still have friends who continue to socialize, who don’t wear masks, practices both shocking and defeating. 

With this context as my background, I decided to take a summer class in international relations (IR). I had to write a paper on an international issue about which I was passionate, and  I chose understanding climate change deniers. I researched and read and wrote pages about understanding cultural factors that eventually lead a person to deny science and facts. Psychological factors, like choosing to read only “evidence” that corroborates our own beliefs and defending our personal backgrounds and beliefs at all costs, lead to the polarization we see in today’s political scheme. Interestingly, the same principles apply to public thinking about this virus. Only in this situation, the climate change deniers are those who refuse to wear masks. 

The United States was the country most prepared to handle a pandemic – we had the science, the forethought, the observations of viral outbreaks elsewhere, such as SARS, Ebola, and the Zika virus. But here’s the crucial difference between now and then: we took those viruses seriously. According to the Global Health Security Index, published 45 days before the world’s first suspected COVID-19 case, the US ranked first in preparedness to handle a serious outbreak. Clearly, the situation didn’t unfold as planned, for this index did not account for the extremely polarized political climate that exists currently within the United States. In 2016, the Obama administration urged the incoming Trump administration to examine preparations for a potentially devastating pandemic. Trump’s response in May 2018 was to, according to Time Magazine, “shut down a White House office devoted to pandemic preparedness that President Obama set up after the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic.” 

Since the American Revolution, Americans have had this sense of “American exceptionalism.” This idea encompasses beliefs that America is the best country and that nothing bad will happen here. However, while events like 9/11 and now the coronavirus pandemic challenge this assumption, today’s violently divisive political climate, led by President Trump’s America First Agenda, has stalled a sane response. And we continue to see rallies of irrational protest from Americans who refuse to believe in scientific facts and raise their voices to exercise their right to not wear a mask.

As a teenager living in California, currently a COVID hotspot, I reflect on the lessons from my IR class and how we might do so much better if we learned from other countries, and if we worked together. Rather than feeling hopeless or embarrassed as I watch news stories of irrational mass gatherings for Trump rallies or parties, all attendees sans masks, I look at the social media posts of my international friends, now hanging out with friends and going inside restaurants. I read about Chinese kids who are already back in school in an ingenious modified environment, and I watch people on television in Denmark back at work. What did other countries do so well that my country just can’t seem to grasp? Two pretty simple things: their leaders took the pandemic seriously, and they understand the necessity of testing and contact tracing. As other countries figure out innovative ways to work around this challenge, my country gets ready to lockdown again. 

It seems several of my blog posts here end with me preaching about the importance of voting. This post will be no different. I’ve been frequently asked by the adults in my life what classes I will be taking during my senior year. A varsity tennis athlete last year, many ask if I will continue with my athletics. My answer: it depends on who is elected in November. As of now, all fall sports have been moved to spring, and there’s an idea that we might go back in January to in the classroom learning. But I don’t have hope. Not unless our country makes a real change to prioritize the lives of its citizens. The 2020 November election will determine what are supposed to be the most fun, exciting, and interesting years of my life. So, America, put on your masks, socially distance, and VOTE!