On April 2, Maine witnessed a devastatingly familiar story. In Sabattus, 29-year-old James Davis III, in the middle of a mental health crisis, shot four people and killed two, including his mother. He soon shot himself with one of the two guns in his possession, part of a larger collection at home.

How did this happen? I have a simple answer: Maine’s gun laws are severely lacking.

In the wake of the Lewiston shootings a year and a half ago, gun safety jumped into the foreground of Maine’s legislative activity. Maine recently passed a law requiring background checks for private sales, but the system implemented (the FBI’s NICS), has known flaws, and is not enough. Additionally, legislators have been looking to repeal many recently passed laws.

What can be done to fix this issue once and for all? There’s a simple solution.

Presented by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, firearm purchaser license laws can have dramatic effects on states’ gun safety. The licensing process requires a firearm safety course, an application for a license from a local law enforcement agency, a comprehensive background check and a waiting period. All of these steps work to ensure that no one with dubious intentions can acquire a weapon that kills almost 50,000 American citizens a year.

A 2020 study found that gun purchaser licensing laws were associated with 56% fewer mass shooting incidents and 67% fewer mass shooting victims on average. That’s thousands of lives nationally. Thousands of mourning families. Active community members, like Kay Williams, a beloved school cafeteria manager and victim of the Sabattus shooting. Currently, only 11 states have these laws. In the years since Connecticut implemented these laws in 1995, the state has seen a 28% homicide reduction and a 33% suicide reduction.

Of course, mental health plays a significant role in the circumstances of most shooters, which is why another law needed in Maine is a “red flag” law. This law would allow families of people experiencing mental health crises to go directly to court and request their family members’ guns be taken away. The current “yellow flag” laws can only be initiated by police and require the individual to be taken into police custody. This step disincentivizes families from coming forward and makes the law significantly less effective.

With all this being said, I’d like to clarify that I support the Second Amendment right to own a gun and recognize the uses of guns for hunting and self-defense. Gun safety laws only serve to protect our communities, especially the most vulnerable.

All the time across the nation, and in Maine as well, schools receive calls saying that there will be an active shooter. Almost every one of these calls is some malicious prank, but schools can’t take that risk. They can’t take that risk in the cesspool of an environment we’ve created, where we are all but desensitized to news stories saying 5, 10, 15 people, kids included, have been butchered in cold blood. “Oh, it’s awful!” people say. They say it, and people keep dying, and they say it again, and people keep dying. Words of pity mean nothing without action.

I am 16 and in high school. It is ridiculous that I should have to constantly worry about losing my life to a gun, and do drills to practice hiding from a school shooter. You’ve heard about them. Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Columbine, the list goes on. We need to ensure Maine isn’t the next horror story, and that what happened in Lewiston cannot happen again.

I urge anyone taking the time to read this to contact their state representatives and advocate for firearm licensing laws and firearm safety in general. Our future is in our hands, and we can’t let go.