I watched If anything happens I love you on Netflix this weekend and it was devasting. It’s a 12-minute short film that is trending on TikTok because it is making a lot of people cry. I watched it with my little brother, who rarely ever cries, and he did indeed cry, as did I. Please go watch before reading. It’s a must-see that will throw you right back into the harsh reality the United States was and will probably be after the pandemic if no necessary change is made.
The film is about a school shooting and as you all may have noticed; school shootings have decreased in record time. And we all know why that is, schools aren’t open, and everyone is doing online school. In 2019, for the first 46 weeks, there was one school shooting a week. A total of 45 school shootings by mid-November. There were approximately eight school shootings this year, two of them happened during this pandemic. I don’t even want to think about how many other school shootings would’ve happen this year if it weren’t for the pandemic which was really a blessing (in disguise for saving many schoolchildren) and a curse (many people have died due to the virus).
How sad is it to admit that as the United States, the only reason school shootings aren’t happening anymore is because schools aren’t open? Not because there were gun laws that were passed, or because lethal guns were taken away from the public, not any of that. But because a virus that was out of our control took over. Before the pandemic, I would fear for my little brother, for my little cousins, for my friends’ younger siblings, for every single grade school kid out there. School should be a safe place and I just hope that after the pandemic, a change is made. Living in that fear can be unbearable. I don’t want to be 35 years old, fearing for my own kids’ safety at school, but maybe by then a change would be made.
An alumnus from NMSU and past CC, Isadora Renner, wrote “The Only Solution to School Shootings” back in April. Renner mentions how a typical civilian shouldn’t have fire weapons, there are other ways to hunt animals or protect your home. I couldn’t agree more. It infuriates me how a lot of people care more about their guns than children’s safety.
The pandemic has made me forget that a school shooting a week was normal, but thanks to If anything happens I love you, for bringing me back to the reality. We can’t forget about all the people that were affected by school shootings, there needs to be justice. All those children and adolescents that have died in the hands of evil people who had the resources to access a gun, deserve justice.
This article is specific to school shootings but let me give you another statistic that’s more general to throw you back into reality… there were a total of 417 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019.