Several years ago, my partner, a friend and I were robbed at gunpoint on a city street. At the time, I was mostly annoyed because of the inconvenience of getting a new license and filing a police report. Armed robbery was relatively common where I lived, and my experience seemed insignificant compared to the gun violence that the students I taught faced daily.
What did not occur to me until a Moms Demand Action meeting years later was that my life had been threatened with a gun, and I had never, ever considered myself a survivor. Gun violence should not be so commonplace that we accept it as just part of daily life in this country. We should not have to live this way.