Seven years ago today was the worst day of my life. On that day, a 19-year-old who never should’ve had access to a gun in the first place entered my high school with an AR-15 and took the lives of 17 students and faculty members and injured 17 others.
Since then, I’ve worked to get stronger gun laws passed across the country because I never want anyone else to hear the deafening cries of their classmates after their friends have been stolen from them by the epidemic of preventable gun violence.
I’ll be honest, this work is soul-crushing. No one would choose to spend every day talking about the worst day of their life because they want to — but the reason people who’ve experienced this do this is because we feel we have no other choice. Like with all forms of activism, it is not voluntary, it is mandatory to organize for others' survival.
Because despite the empty “thoughts and prayers” offered by too many of our leaders, this continues to happen on a regular basis. Thoughts and prayers aren’t enough on their own — they need to be paired with action.
Though this work is incredibly hard, it is working. President Biden created the first ever Office of Gun Violence Prevention which helped act like FEMA for instances of gun violence and mass shootings along with making sure the hundreds of millions allocated by Congress to combat gun violence was actually used. The other day I was talking with one of the former directors of the gun violence prevention office, who told me in 2023 we saw the single largest one year reduction in gun homicides in US history of 12% and the data for 2024 are pointing to an additional 15% reduction. That means we cut gun homicides by nearly a third in just two years. That means thousands are alive right now who otherwise would not be. ⅓ is nowhere near enough but it’s a hell of a lot better than where we were headed. I spent many days of college in between classes on zoom calls with the White House working to create that office and had worked on the idea since introducing it with March For Our Lives in 2019. What keeps me going are my incredible family, friends, fellow survivors and knowing what we are doing is working, even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.
One day, I want to live in a world where no one ever has to experience the pain so many experienced that day in Parkland and every day in America. But until that day is a reality, we have to keep doing this work. It’s too important not to. My generation knows that if we don’t have a government that will change gun laws then we’ll change who’s in government. You are what makes that possible. I deeply appreciate you and your commitment to electing the next generation at a time when it is so easy to feel hopeless. We will keep fighting like hell and we will succeed.
David Hogg
