Students Describe Fear At Anti-Gun Rally: 'It's Not If, It's When'

SOUTHAMPTON, NY — Their voices breaking, three Southampton High School students spoke about what it has been like to grow up in a time when active shooter drills are the norm and teenagers worry whether they will be gunned down during a day of classes.

The students were among East End residents who joined others around the nation in a March for Our Lives rally in Southampton on Saturday.

Last month's shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed, has sparked outrage. Carrying signs that read "Ban Assault Weapons," "Protect Our Kids, Not Guns," "Bury Weapons, Not Children," "Human Lives Over Gun Greed," "No Guns, No Graves" and "I Can't Believe We Still Have to Protest This S---," a group of residents gathered outside Southampton Town Hall to plead for concrete change.

Scout Whiting, 16, spoke about her experience: "It is not if, it's 'when,' a shooter," she said.

Her mother, a television producer, called her when the news of Uvalde broke, she said. "She whispered, 'If a shooter ever comes into your school, you are to throw a desk through the window and run with the wind. . . get the hell out of there!'"

Scout was 6 when a shooter walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and fatally shot 26 people, including 20 small children. "Ten years, and nothing has changed," she said. "It's not if, it's when. When are we actually going to do something about this?"

Jaycee Newcomb, youth president of the East End chapter of the NAACP, also reflected on Sandy Hook. "I stepped into my house, admiring all the beautiful Christmas decorations and all the gifts that could possibly be wrapped under the tree. Suddenly I felt a tight squeeze around me and saw my mom in tears. That's when I knew something very bad had happened. She sat me in front of the tree and explained that a shooter had walked into an elementary school and gunned town young children and teachers. It was very traumatizing," she said. "All I could think about was all the unopened presents sitting under those families' trees."

She added: "I was in second grade. And all I could think about was, 'What if something like that happened in my school?'"

Newcomb she has been practicing lockdown and active shooter drills for as long as she can remember.

"I remember being in kindergarten and my fellow classmates and I were trying to squeeze behind our teacher's small desk because we had to be out of sight," she said.

In the years since, Newcomb said whenever she hears about another shooting: "We all ask ourselves, 'How many more innocent children, who've barely been able to experience life, will die next? Why is it that government and politicians who have the authority to do so, to make change in this country, aren't trying to stop these senseless shootings?' They sit in DC collecting paychecks while hiding behind God and guns but someone that believes in God wouldn't allow children and babies to be slaughtered, day in and day out in this country."

And, she said military-grade weapons, designed solely to kill, should not be allowed to fall into the hands of the public.

Attending school in today's climate, Newcomb said everyone is always planning for the "what if?"

She added: "I find myself in class looking around and thinking of escape routes, and wondering if I would be able to jump out the window quick enough, if a shooting did happen."

A third Southampton High School student, Michelle Morastitia, also gave emotional testimony. "When my parents send my sisters and I to school, the last thought in their minds should be, 'Are my kids safe?'"

She, too, recalled lockdowns, when the teacher closed the blinds and she and her classmates would have to huddle in a corner of the classroom farthest from the door.

"As I Mexican-American, I am afraid for what the future holds for people who are 'different,'" she said. "I fear one day when I am at the mall or supermarket or even at a university, I could become part of something tragic."

Morastitia added: "I ask myself, 'What would I do in a real situation where an intruder entered my school and began to kill innocent staff and students? Would I run? Would I hide? Would I call my parents and say goodbye?'"

How can small locks on doors protect children? she asked. "We shouldn't have to have these kinds of thoughts."

All agreed that change on the federal level is critical. "There is no need for an 18- or-21-year-old to buy a gun," she said. "There needs to be change, not in 20 years — there needs to be change now."

And while the main protest took place in Washington on Saturday, rallies were also planned in other locations across Long Island, including Port Jefferson Station, Great Neck and Mineola.

Speaking at the Southampton rally were New York State Assemblyman Fred Thiele, Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming and Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, as well as teachers, students and faith leaders in the community. Afterward, the group marched to Southampton High School.

"Remember that in 2018, March for Our Lives organized the largest single day of protest against gun violence in history," Southampton Town Democratic Committee Chair Herr wrote in an email about the event. "Millions came together to protest our political leaders' inaction. They spurred an historic youth turnout in the 2018 midterm elections, with a 47 percent increase over the last midterm election and the highest percentage of youth voter turnout ever. Voters made it clear that the status quo was no longer acceptable — a record 46 NRA-backed candidates lost their elections that November. Let's do it again."

At the event, Herr added that guns are a "scourge on society, a plague."

Thiele said it was important to send a message to Washington, D.C. "We've been here before and there's a sickening repetition to what happens after one of these events. First there's outrage. Then thoughts and prayers, and calls to action. Then nothing happens."

After the mass shooting in Buffalo, "the bodies were not even buried before Uvalde," Thiele said.

He said that while New York State already had some of the strongest gun safety laws, action on the federal level must be taken.

"The silence from Washington is deafening," he said. "It sends a message that in a country where the Constitution protects life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that we value our guns more than we value our children."

That message echoes across the world and into the minds and hearts of children, he said.

Thiele spoke of a grief counselor asking a young what he wanted to be when he grew up. The boy answered "if" he grew up.

His voice choked with tears, Thiele also recalled a 9-year-old, nicknamed "Q" who played soccer with his grandson; the child was killed in a random shooting. "When my grandson asked me why, I don't have an answer for him," Thiele said. "Our leadership in Washington needs to be just that, leaders. Lead, or get out of the way. And if they don't get out of the way it's our job to get them out of the way."

The crowd cheered.

Southampton Town Councilwoman John Bouvier shared a story about a young boy he mentored who has completely "shut down" after the shootings, and is now designing weapons and schools, in safe places, in his artwork.

The problem, Bouvier said, is guns. "It's a gun. It's nothing else but the gun, and there should be legislation to get rid of the guns."

Fleming, a Democrat who is running for the 1st Congressional District seat held by Republican Lee Zeldin, led the crowd in a chant, "Protect our kids; end gun violence now!"

Describing gun violence as an epidemic, Fleming stressed the need for federal action and said gun violence is rising in Suffolk County due to illegal and "ghost guns."

"The federal government must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines now," she said. "We need to close the gun show loophole, we need to ban ghost guns, and we need to increase funding for mental health in our schools. Our kids are suffering and to have a loaded weapon at their disposal in the dark times they are living through is unconscionable."

As a mother, she said it broke her heart to hear the student contemplating how she would call her mother to say goodbye in the event a school shooting broke out in Southampton.

Southampton Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni, a retired social studies teacher, spoke about the ripple effect of school shootings. Already in 2022, he said, the United States is on track to beat last year's record of mass shootings. "We have to get weapons of war out of our society and out of our schools, and stop killing people," he said.

Schneiderman looked at the signs being waved in the crowd and said he could put his speech together just from reading the pleas to save the children. "I just cannot imagine being a kid today at an elementary school and having to think about whether you're going to be shot to death that day," Schneiderman said.

He said something is wrong in the United States when an 18-year-old can go into a gun shop and buy two assault guns and 300 rounds of ammunition without police being notified.

Speaking of the basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Schneiderman said the children gunned down had no rights. "They're no longer alive," he said. "We didn't protect their lives. We failed."

He added that the Second Amendment was about the right to bear arms in self-defense or hunting, not buying nuclear weapons or weapons of war at the store. "The right to bear arms was never meant to be without limitations," he said. "We have to fix this in Washington. No kids should grow up with this fear."

Kathy Junior, a child therapist from East Hampton, attended the rally because she wanted to know how many massacres had to happen before there was change and young people no longer had to feel anxiety in the classroom.

Virginia St. John, also a therapist in East Hampton and whose daughter teaches kindergarten, agreed. "It's terrifying that we have to live with this fear."

Nancy Lynott, a former Southampton Town youth bureau director, also came to show support, saying that she believed in "common sense gun reform" so people can no longer "blow up their fellow citizens" with automatic weapons, all while citing the Second Amendment, which she said was never written in that context.

Susie Roden of Southampton had tears in her eyes. "I"m here because the world we live in is crazy," she said. "People say it can't happen here — but it so can."