Students have been left traumatized, families have been left mourning. The U.S. Federal Government is continuously failing the safety of its citizens.

Three children, Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all nine years old. Three adults, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill, 61. Six victims, shot and killed in yet another U.S school shooting.

It was early Monday morning when Audrey Hale, 28, stepped foot into The Covenant School, a private Christian school, located in Nashville, Tennessee.

Surveillance video shows Hale armed with two “assault-style” weapons and a handgun, which she would use to shoot out glass doors at a side entrance to the school. The video also shows Hale kicking away the remaining shards and ducking under a door crossbar to enter into the school to begin a living nightmare.

Less than a year before this attack, on May 24th, 2022, Salvador Ramos allegedly purchased two assault rifles just days after turning 18. He would later carry out one of the worst school shootings in U.S history, killing twenty-one individuals, including children and staff.

The Washington Post has published an article to track the amount of children in the United States that have been exposed to gun violence during school hours since the Columbine High massacre in 1999. The dark truth revealed within the article states that “more than 349,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine” (The Washington Post, 2023). The Post has also discovered that children are responsible for more than half of the country's school shootings. On top of all this, 86 percent of the weapons were found in the homes of friends, relatives, or parents (The Washington Post, 2023).

The simple accessibility of firearms to children has become unimaginable.

The number of deaths and experiences of gun violence will continue to increase if changes are not made. Families and students will have to continue to make life or death decisions when it comes to getting an education.