Zeke Samuels wakes up on Thursday morning, just as usual, to his obnoxious alarm clock. He gets dressed, grabs his backpack and heads off to school. When he arrives, he receives the usual, cold taunts of his classmates.

“Zeke the geek!”

“Hey, faggot!”

“How’s your boyfriend?”

“Loser!”

Today, he didn’t care. He had a surprise up his sleeve for them.

When he gets to his homeroom, the teacher is taking attendance. Zeke smiles, what he assumes will be the thrill of his life is only moments away. Zeke starts to giggle.

“Zeke Samuels?”

No answer.

“Zeke?”

“Shut up!”

The teacher looks at him in astonishment. “What did you say?”

Zeke then reaches for his gun…

Zeke is not a real kid, I made him up. However, this story is entirely too real for anyone to feel safe. This is a problem that hurts kids around the world, no one is entirely safe. You can’t hid from gun violence.

Maybe you know someone who has been involved in a school shooting or someone who has brought a gun to school. Odds are you have. According to Todd Strasser’s “Give a Boy a Gun” twelve percent of students say they know a kid who has brought a gun to school at least once. Maybe at the time you didn’t think that was a big deal; but even if they don’t fire it, it still is. Besides just Columbine, school shootings and other violence do happen more often then you think. In 1996 handguns alone killed over nine thousand people in the United States. (That same year only fifteen people were killed by handguns in Japan.) I admit that we can’t get rid of violence completely because it will always be there, but we can lower the numbers if we are willing to take action.

Start with yourself. Don’t buy a gun. You heard me; I don’t care if it’s under lock and key, it’s still a gun. Would you let a murderer into your house? That’s what a gun is; a murderer. Afraid of burglars? Here’s an idea: lock the door or get an alarm. It works. Besides, don’t you think a burglar would feel more threatened and be more likely to hurt you if you had a gun? So spread the word. Pass out flyers, have meetings or parties, or simply keep violence out of your own house, especially you mother’s and father’s. A six year old boy brought a gun to school in the early 2000’s and shot one of his classmates. Scary, huh? So keep this in mind; Zeke Samuels may not be a real boy, but there is people like him. What if you’re next?