The topic of school shootings has been spreading around the United States very quickly for the past month or so. Lately, due to the recent events of shootings coming closer and closer to Yorba Linda, many students have taken it on themselves to speak out for this cause, but also educate themselves on the past and learn for the future during these situations.

Since January 23 after a 15-year-old high schooler shot 16 students in Benton Kentucky news and fear of these shootings began to spread like wildfire. Several schools have been shut down and have caused the parents of these assaults to mourn the losses of their friends and family. As recently as of March 7, there was another shooting in Alabama where one student was killed and another was critically wounded, so these threats are not only seen as a fear to the students but are still relevant up until now.

Recently there was a threat to Troy High School, not too far from YLHS, where a girl was planning to shoot the school. Luckily, she was caught just in time before she could get to any of the students and the school to go through with her plan. Just Friday our very own YLHS was involved in what seemed to be a false threat that had been manipulated to include our high school. Still, students spoke out and raised their voices in opposition to this fearful situation. Fortunately, the staff and officers at YLHS had already taken into account as soon as they heard.

Situations like this are an example of what could be done to prevent future shootings throughout the United States. Preventing horrible disasters such as these could have saved many students before they were even in this situation. The Sandy Hook shooting is probably one of the most famous school shootings of all time and really set the tone for the fear and reality of these issues. For a while, they seemed to be scarce and died down, however they began to rise again around the year 2017 following the Las Vegas concert shooting. Even though it was not a school shooting, it was recorded to be one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.

Gun violence is a widely debated topic these days in media and society as a whole, however, the main issue is how to be safe when these issues arise in real life. Speaking out on little signs of what could turn into something truly disastrous is a major way to prevent these scenarios from widely occurring. Though these past few months or even this past year has seen a rise in gun violence to not only adults but students too. Slowly by slowly, the fight against the seriousness of these issues has begun to rise as well. Being safe and learning to speak up from the mistakes in the past will be a major key to combat these scary situations.