THIS EDITORIAL IS A COMPILATION FROM A DISCUSSION HELD BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD.

Right before you get in the car to head to school you see a tweet: “The search is continuing for the possible armed subject on Manhattan campus. Please stay inside and lock your doors until further notice.” There’s a shooter on K-State grounds and you drive right by campus on your way to school. Still you drive, fearing for your life. As you enter the school building the announcement is made that Manhattan High is in lockout. You wait until the bell rings and then head to class. Hopefully you don’t die.

Then, you are in class, hoping a shooter doesn’t bang at your classroom door, hoping that you won’t have to smear another student’s blood on you so that a shooter thinks you’re dead, hoping your parents are safe at home, hoping your siblings won’t be shot, hoping that no one will die. You are now living the myth of the school shooting that the media used to tell you about and you are terrified.

After last week’s lockout it only became clearer that we have a problem in America – a gun problem.

We know about Columbine, Sandy Hook and more, but nothing makes people think about something quite like experiencing it.

Combining the lockout with the fact that since Sandy Hook there have been at least 95 school shootings and that America now averages more than one mass shooting every day, it would seem reasonable to expect that stricter gun control would become an American priority.

So why is it that after so many shootings and close encounters we, as a country, have made no progress in the realm of gun control?

The Mentor editorial board believes there are a few reasons.

After such a colossal amount of shootings, people have become desensitized to the violence around them. The sheer number of shootings, and the following media coverage, has numbed us. Shootings and death have, thus, become mundane.

The current political divide of our country has also made gun control seemingly unattainable. Instead of coming together to try and reduce mass shootings in the U.S., the red and the blue have pushed farther away from each other. The partisanship of this country, the refusal to come together to compromise, could very well be the reason for the loss of even more American lives.

The reality of school shootings was thrust upon us during this lockout. We could very well be dead right now. And so, for your own sake, as well as for all of those around you, we urge you to reach out to your representatives and demand safety. Tell them you don’t want to fear death on the way to school. Force them to recognize the value of life, and how guns hinder it.