Every few years, all the news stations play familiar footage: police lights flashing as terrified students sob–another school shooting.

School shootings almost seem like a part of life in America. According to USA Today, there have been 15 school shootings since the Columbine shooting in 1999. Though not all school shootings were as high-profile and as deadly as Columbine, Virginia Tech or Sandy Hook,  all of them matter.

How do we stop school shootings? We believe that gun control is a reasonable solution to the issue– after all, how is the killer going to shoot someone if they can’t get their hands on a gun? Apparently, state legislators don’t see the correlation between gun control and school shootings, because out of the 109 gun control laws passed since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2013, 70 of them aimed to loosen gun restrictions according to The New York Times.

If we cannot gain legislator support, students need to take a stand to lessen the damage in the wake of school shootings. There is a procedure called ALICE, which stands for alert, lock down, inform, counter, evacuate according to ABC News. This procedure encourages improvisation such as barricading doors and throwing objects at the attacker. During the Sandy Hook shooting one teacher used a method similar to ALICE and it saved the lives of her students, according to ABC News. I believe this method is much more promising than our current model. After all, who’s going to fall for an ‘empty’ classroom filled with backpacks?

Additionally, locked doors are only effective to a certain extent—if someone is really determined to break through, they will.  

If our school  adopts the ALICE policy for lockdowns, we would stand a better chance against a potential shooter.

Talk about ALICE. If we don’t, we could be the next school of sitting ducks.