Four months ago, a potential shooter came onto my campus. Now I have something to say to my fellow Republicans about gun control

I am a member of a party that notoriously votes for gun rights, but I can’t vote for a candidate who will be pressured to look past the facts of what happened yesterday

Four months ago, I was sitting in a 200-person lecture hall at my university in the United States when a student raised her hand and read aloud a safety notification on her phone. A potential shooter was on my campus.

I heard a professor shriek from across the building and we were told to run to a protected room. All of my senses felt like they were on fire, and for a second I thought, is this happening to me too?

Luckily, I felt that paralysing sense of fear for just an hour before my university issued a statement, saying the potential shooter had been taken into custody and was found with an unloaded weapon. I was relieved, but I couldn’t help but wonder: what would have changed if it had been an active shooter, instead of just an active threat?

Well, from my experience, nothing. It has happened over and over again in my lifetime – yet no legislation has been made to prevent these atrocious crimes from occurring in the first place. Now it is catching up on us.

In Parkland, Florida, 17 people have been confirmed dead after a shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The suspect, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, was a former student of the high school and is being charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

As an American who grew up in the age of mass shootings, I expect a terrible act of gun violence like this one to happen at least once a year, but I feel powerless to prevent it. Gun violence feels as uncontrollable and unpredictable as the next natural disaster. How did we let this happen?

In my opinion, the United States, one of the world’s most powerful countries, has become the most powerless when it comes to protecting ourselves from ourselves.

We create our own problems. We spend money on houses and cars that we don’t own, creating massive amounts of national debt. We frack for oil, allowing us to get it more quickly than ever, but by doing so we have created earthquakes that tear apart our own foundations. We do these things because, as Americans, we value immediacy above all else.

So, where is this sense of urgency when it counts? Why hasn’t our government come up with a solution to prevent mass shootings in schools?

Again, it comes back to creating our own problems. If we want gun violence to stop in the US, we have to stop voting for candidates who are funded by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Although the majority of candidates the NRA have given money to are Republican, it is important to note that this is a weakness shared by both Democrats and Republicans alike. In Florida, where the mass shooting occurred yesterday, the NRA had given money to Congressman Charles Joseph Crist Jr, a registered Democrat.

As easy as it would be to point fingers, the bottom line is that we must stop seeing this as a political issue, but as a moral one. The real problem is the NRA, which seemingly uses its power to manipulate politicians to make political decisions in their favour.

I know some people truly believe in gun rights and value self-protection immensely, but I don’t know many people who think guns should be able to fall into the hands of those who aren’t mentally stable.

I am a Republican, a member of a party that notoriously votes for gun rights, but I can’t vote for a candidate who will be pressured to look past the facts of what happened yesterday.

When 17 innocent children and teachers are murdered, the politicians I vote for better feel capable of creating legislation to protect their people.