I’m scared.

I’m writing this while UK’s campus faces its second “shots fired” alert of the year. I’m sitting on my bed in my dorm, rocking back and forth unable to stop shaking. I am utterly terrified not necessarily because of the gunman that may or may not have been caught by now, but because this feeling has become familiar to me. It has become familiar to all Americans. I guarantee that as you are reading this right now, there is a shooting going on somewhere in this country. 

I don’t feel safe here. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt safe, anywhere. 

This was not the first time I had ended up in this fetal position as sobs threatened to pour from my eyes. I was in kindergarten, the first time I encountered gun violence. My elementary school’s first day was delayed because of a gang fight in the neighborhood. One of the windows near the entrance had been shattered by a stray bullet. 

That same year, in first grade, that same school went into lockdown, because of a completely unrelated gang shooting that had happened just outside. In second grade, fireworks went off right outside this school. Everyone in the room dove under desks because the possibility of a school shooting was so familiar to us that we didn’t even consider we were hearing fireworks.

I could barely color within the lines or count past 100, but I had accepted the fact that I could be shot dead at school. Firearms are the leading cause of death among children and teens. That’s the reality of a nation in crisis. 

My next exposure to gun violence was in high school.

“Lockdown! Lockdown! This is not a drill!” I had never heard the principal with such a visceral tone of voice. He was frightened, frantic and broken. All students scrambled to the back of the calculus classroom and huddled in a corner. No one had the same reaction. Some were shaking. Some were calling loved ones. Some were checking the news. I was doing all of the above, my heart pounding and my thoughts clattering around my skull. I sent a text to my parents and siblings, “Active shooter at the school. I’ll text you if I’m okay. I love you.” 

It dawned on me that those might have been my last goodbyes, my legacy. There were only so many times I could send that out before the door was kicked in.

It weighed on me heavier than can be conveyed, knowing that there were too many people I wanted to say goodbye to and surely not enough time as my remaining seconds slipped away. Nothing matters more to me than my loved ones and I was shattered at the possibility of being torn away from them. Yet, if anything happened I at least wanted them to know that I died thinking of them. They deserved to know how much they meant to me, just in case I didn’t convey it in life. Other regrets began to overwhelm me. There was so much that I may never do, that I may never get to see or never get to make up for.

It wasn’t long before we were told that the shooting was a hoax. A “swatting.” A crank call. Fake.

But the tears weren’t fake. The special needs kid who defecated in gym class, standing right next to my little brother wasn’t fake. The kid who got dragged out of a bathroom, thrown on the floor and screamed at by the police wasn’t fake. The brief moments when my mother, my father and my siblings thought they may never see me again, the anguish they experienced as they had to decide on their last words to send me. It was all real. The scars from that day threaten to never fade. 

What wasn’t fake was the shooting that occurred in the parking lot of that high school, just weeks later, a completely unrelated incident.

Girls rushed into the building wide-eyed and hyperventilating just as classes were letting out. They had heard the gunshots. I remember seeing the first photos of the incident spread through group chats. This was before the police had time to intercept and censor them. A car I had walked past that morning was littered with bullet holes. The sidewalk, which I knew better than most sidewalks in town, was stained with blood. 

What wasn’t fake was the assassination attempt that Quintez Brown committed at the campaign headquarters of Craig Greenberg. Then a candidate for mayor of Louisville, he was the man who gave me my first political job. I was just a bright young campaign intern. Only 15 years old, genuinely believing I could change the world. 

I had never felt such dread, getting a text just hours before my shift telling me not to come to work. I turned on the news to see my office—the very chair I sat in—riddled with bullet holes. My mental distress was so intense that I needed someone to pick me up from school that day. I swore off politics forever that night and would need several more months before I could look at the field with anything other than disdain and terror. 

Was my wide-eyed enthusiasm truly worth forfeiting my life?

It wasn’t long after that the First National Bank shooting occurred in downtown Louisville. Lives were being taken so close to my school that I heard dozens of police cars speeding to the scene. An officer–Nick Wilt–was forever crippled by the gunman’s bullets. Another police officer called my father, an attorney, not long after killing the shooter with a bullet to the head. His panicked and distraught voice was beyond harrowing. 

I had known someone who died in that bank shooting. His name was Tommy Elliot. He was a good, honest man, a public servant and a former staffer on the Greenberg campaign. I join countless Americans who have lost a peer to the gun violence epidemic. 

Gun violence has remained heartbreakingly common since I enrolled at UK. In just my first week of college, I got the notification for the first time, “URGENT: SHOTS FIRED IN AREA.” The first time. The first time. I cursed myself for trembling and quaking as much as I did, “You should be used to this by now.”

When a mass shooting occurred on Kentucky’s I-75 just months ago, I obsessively followed as the gunman remained missing for days upon days. I was mentally calculating the time that had elapsed since his disappearance and the time it would take him to get to Fayette County. 

There have been 450 mass shootings this year at schools, concerts, parties and just about everywhere a human being could be. Last week, a 17-year-old fired into a crowd, killing two people in Orlando. 

There should not be a need for anybody to fear being shot simply while going about their daily lives.  The U.S. is the only country that periodically experiences this problem. That is in no doubt due to the fact that we have passed only one meaningful gun control bill in the last 30 years. It was passed after back-to-back mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas. While a step in the right direction, this does not include universal background checks, a closing of the gun show loophole or strong enough red flag laws. Gun laws have been going in the opposite direction since then, with a recent Supreme Court ruling reversing the ban on “bump stocks,” which are gun modifiers often used in mass shootings.

One person killed by gunfire is too many. Yet, nearly 43,000 Americans were shot and killed last year and 125 Americans are, on average, shot and killed every day. This issue fills me with insuppressible anger and fury, and it demands my attention. Our attention.  

My heart breaks for all those who will never see this issue addressed. Every time I go to school, a concert, work, on the freeway or even lie in bed trying to enjoy my extra hour of sleep from daylight saving time, I pray that I will not join those countless victims of gun violence.