Sixth-grader pleads for safe schools

Everyone is starting school soon, including me, but I have one problem. Every time I walk past a flagpole on my way into the school buildings, I'm afraid to look up. Too many times I have looked up and noticed the flag at half-staff, which often means that kids were shot in school again. There was a shooting at the end of the last school year, in an elementary school here in Texas. This time, 19 kids and two teachers died. There were hundreds of policemen with guns who came to help, but they could not stop the shooter from killing kids in the classroom where they were supposed to be learning.

The state decided to make some changes to schools as we are starting the new school year. They are requiring that all doors in schools should lock, and these should be inspected. Many school districts are putting armed officers at the schools. The problem is that this won't work. A gunman can shoot through a locked door or window. Also, if a gunman has a weapon that can fire off hundreds of bullets in a few minutes, an officer with a weapon that can't fire as quickly won't stand a chance. Those officers have families, too, and their own kids want them to come home every night.

Kids like me should not have to worry, even a little bit, about getting killed while we are just trying to get an education. Schools should be a safe place 100 percent of the time. We

should not have to have nightmares about whether we will see our parents again as we are trying to study for a test or learn the basics of math, science, history and reading. We should not be reminded of school shootings by a flag flying at half-staff as we walk into the school building in the morning. We should not have to have regular drills where we hide behind desks and crawl into closets hoping that the gunman picks someone else to shoot dead.

Texas should choose to protect us kids by having gun safety laws. No one needs a weapon that can shoot off so many bullets in such a short time unless they are in a real war. These weapons should be banned.

The state should also make it harder to own a gun. Really thorough background checks should be done to get a gun license to make sure that the person does not intend to use it against other humans or to commit crimes. People who are going to use guns in a good way should have no reason to fear a background check.

Too many kids in our country, and even our state, have died in their own school. All kids should have a right to a good education without worrying about being shot dead. I do not understand why the safety of kids like me is not the most important thing.

Each kid that dies in school is one too many. Many more kids may die in our schools if we do not do something about it now.