By candlelight, a memorial vigil is held to remember the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School. It is 20 years to the day, so the grieving swap stories, tears and silence with one another in solidarity. Then—three days later, less than 15 minutes away—two students open fire at STEM School Highlands Ranch. 

“We heard yelling, we heard police tackling, screaming, singing—shockingly singing. And it was heart-wrenching,” a student told NBC News afterwards, continuing, “I can still hear them faintly. I can still hear them screaming and singing.”

At the K-12 charter school, one student died and eight others were injured.  

“You don’t have to be the hero,” the father of Kendrick Castillo once told his son in a talk about what to do during a school shooting. Kendrick, described as a kind and selfless person by his peers, chose to be one anyway; he tackled and disarmed the shooter with the help of several others in their classroom. He died saving others, three days away from graduating. 

For most, the name Highlands Ranch doesn’t mean anything. It is known as the home for the affluent, and it’s called “The Bubble” because many young people live there, privileged until they graduate. So now, after the shooting, it will only exist in everyone’s memories as another place that contributes to why Colorado is known for its tragedies. The state has had four shootings since Columbine. 

For me, though, Highlands Ranch holds a place close to my heart. It is where my family and I have lived for the past five years. There, I started and finished high school. I learned to drive. I loved and lost. I grew up. 

When I picture Highlands Ranch, I don’t think of shootings. I don’t think of guns and death and politics. I don’t think of fear. Instead, I have always thought of the opposite. Because Highlands Ranch is my home. It is not a place where I expect shootings to occur, and I shouldn’t have to worry when my brother goes to school if he’ll come back the same. Kendrick, who wanted to pursue electrical engineering, shouldn’t have had to be the hero. 

Shootings have become so integrated into our culture that it is the norm for children to grow up afraid. 12-year-old Nate knew to hold onto his baseball bat during the shooting because, as he explained to CNN, “I was gonna go down fighting if I was gonna go down.” The instinct had been bred into him. 

If shootings have the capacity to reach places once known as “The Bubble” because of how safe they were supposed to be, what hope is there for the rest of the country?

The shooting lasted 14 minutes, and in that amount of time, all tragedies like it have become so much more salient to me than they once were. 

At this point, I have lost interest in the politics of the matter. I am tired of how our society is all talk and no action. Spreading awareness is a crucial step in the right direction, but how many more articles about shootings will I have to write through tears before change is visible? 

I, like many, am fed up. Issues of gun control and Second Amendment rights fall to the wayside when confronted with the reality that children are dying in what were once safe spaces. I am past caring about the semantics of who is right and who is wrong—I just want action, from either side, that will attempt to fix the problem. This may be an emotional reaction, but I believe it to be a justified one because preventing school shootings is that important and necessary. Emotional reactions have to be the catalyst for change. 

“We were just mad,” a STEM senior, who participated in a protest the day after, told The Denver Post. “I don’t know. We weren’t thinking straight. We were just really pissed.”