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Quote by Rowan Blanchard

“I can't be light about [gun violence] anymore because it's terrifying to see my friends too scared to leave the house because of all the shootings.”

Author

Rowan Blanchard

Rowan Blanchard is an American actress who gained widespread popularity for her role as Chloe Beverly in the TV series '13 Reasons Why'. Since her birth in 2001, she has made a name for herself in the entertainment industry with her exceptional acting skills. more

“You whom I could not save, Listen to me. Can we agree Kevlar backpacks shouldn’t be needed for children walking to school? Those same children also shouldn’t require a suit of armor when standing on their front lawns, or snipers to watch their backs as they eat at McDonalds. They shouldn’t have to stop to consider the speed of a bullet or how it might reshape their bodies. But one winter, back in Detroit, I had one student who opened a door and died. It was the front door to his house, but it could have been any door, and the bullet could have written any name. The shooter was thirteen years old and was aiming at someone else. But a bullet doesn’t care about “aim,” it doesn’t distinguish between the innocent and the innocent, and how was the bullet supposed to know this child would open the door at the exact wrong moment because his friend was outside and screaming for help. Did I say I had “one” student who opened a door and died? That’s wrong. There were many. The classroom of grief had far more seats than the classroom for math though every student in the classroom for math could count the names of the dead. A kid opens a door. The bullet couldn’t possibly know, nor could the gun, because “guns don’t kill people,” they don’t have minds to decide such things, they don’t choose or have a conscience, and when a man doesn’t have a conscience, we call him a psychopath. This is how we know what type of assault rifle a man can be, and how we discover the hell that thrums inside each of them. Today, there’s another shooting with dead kids everywhere. It was a school, a movie theater, a parking lot. The world is full of doors. And you, whom I cannot save, you may open a door and enter a meadow, or a eulogy. And if the latter, you will be mourned, then buried in rhetoric. There will be monuments of legislation, little flowers made from red tape. What should we do? we’ll ask again. The earth will close like a door above you. What should we do? And that click you hear? That’s just our voices, the deadbolt of discourse sliding into place.”

Children Poetry Grief Violence Poem Safety Bullets Guns Shootings

Author:Matthew Olzmann

“One-Fifteen sits on the sidewalk with his face buried in his hands. Other officers pat his shoulder and tell him it'll be okay. They finally put a sheet over Khalil. He can't breathe under it. I can't breathe. I can't. Breathe.”

Murder Police Officers African Americans Blacks Police Brutality Shootings

Book:The Hate U Give

Source: The Hate U Give

“People become so caught up in a child's understanding of a world much larger than their own, one that, I imagine, they are in no great rush to understand. I think of these people, eager to burden their children with their own discomforts, every time there is a mass shooting.”

Children Nonfiction Columbus Essay Shootings

Book:They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays

Source: They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us: Essays

“Tragedy descends, and in the carnage our enraged cynicism screams ‘If there was a God, He would not have allowed this!’ And somehow we’ve conveniently forgotten that once upon a time He allowed us to tell Him to go away, and once upon that time we allowed ourselves to take Him up on that offer.”