By Rozany Guzman

Seventeen people died in Parkland on Wednesday. It was one of the deadliest mass shootings in history.

Teenagers witnessed their friends and teachers get shot. They hid in classrooms, under desks and in closets. They sent text messages to their parents. They prepared for the worst. And today, survivors of the massacre didn’t lay idle. They did not only mourn for their peers; instead, they took to social media and news media to share their ire and bold opinions on the gun control laws in the United States.

The shooting revived an on and off debate on whether the United States should adopt harsher policies on gun control, and these students certainly held strong arguments.

CNN interviewed a seventeen-year-old senior, David Hogg, a day after he survived the Valentine’s Day shooting. Hogg, a student journalist, took videos of the chaos in the classroom as they waited for the gun shots to cease in the shelter of a locked office; he interviewed his classmates on camera.

In his interview with CNN, Hogg pleaded with lawmakers and policymakers alike to take action, “This is not acceptable. This is something that is completely unacceptable. This is something that we need to take action on.”

However, it’s not just David Hogg who voiced an opinion in response to the shooting. Sarah Chadwick took to twitter to express her feelings with a fierce argument full of profanities and powerful words after having read thousands of tweets about prayers and condolences

“I don’t want your condolences … my friends and teachers were shot. Multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. Do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won’t fix this. But Gun control will prevent it from happening again,” she tweeted in response to President Donald Trump.

Chadwick’s tweet reached more than 346,000 likes and more than 144,000 retweets before it was taken down from Twitter. She then apologized for her harsh words, but not for her anger.

https://twitter.com/sarahchad_/status/964199257153720320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Tomi Lahren, an American conservative political commentator, shamed the political left for their campaigns against gun violence not letting the students and those affected grieve, and claimed that the shooting wasn’t about guns. She was immediately shut down by a surviving student, named @car_nove on Twitter, who urged, “This is about guns.”

https://twitter.com/car_nove/status/964122342464081921

Nikolas Cruz, the infamous nineteen-year-old shooter who took the lives of 17, was claimed to have been suffering through mental illness; he was a “broken” child. Lawmakers are now discussing the issues of mental health, and Cameron Kasky, a seventeen-year-old survivor, demanded that lawmakers are using said discussion to “get out of discussing gun control.”

With all the blows thrown at politicians, walkouts and protests are also being organized to bring awareness towards the hotly debated issue.

Two days after the shooting, about fifty students of South Broward High School held a rally on the streets on Friday. Waving posters and screaming on megaphones, these students reached out to the community and called out for politicians to do something about gun violence and school safety―two issues that politicians actively avoid despite the statistics that show that most Americans deem it necessary.

A twitter account named Student Walkout Against Gun Violence is calling for a nationwide walkout for next week. It will be announcing a date for the walkout on Monday.

https://twitter.com/studentswalkout/status/964601845741060096

During and after this tragedy these students refuse to cower in fear. They are standing up, speaking out, and challenging big names in the world of politics to make a change. They are demanding that the world would take notice of what happened in Parkland. David Hogg, Sarah Chadwick, Cameron Kasky, and many of their peers are refusing to allow for the tragedy and the issue at its root to be forgotten.

Even with this new gun-violence epidemic that has taken the lives of countless Americans, Congress has delayed the gun control discussion over and over again. Now, with many more victims and survivors of the shooting that are voicing their anger and demanding action, the world will watch and wait to see whether Congress will take action or sweep it under the rug like the many other times guns threatened the safety of America.