If you’re reading this, there’s a chance that you have survived, witnessed, or somehow experienced a school shooting, which is a common enough occurrence in the United States that I felt compelled to write this essay. I myself have been through two school shootings: first in Parkland, Florida, when I was 12, and then at Brown University at the age of 20. As my university came together to cope with...
This firsthand account of surviving two school shootings serves as both a personal testament and a broader critique of America’s gun violence epidemic. The strongest version of this narrative lies in its raw honesty about the psychological toll of trauma—how it reshapes daily life in ways that are often invisible to outsiders. The author effectively steelmans their argument by acknowledging the complexity of survival, rejecting simplistic definitions of who "counts" as a victim, and validating t...