GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - It’s becoming all too common place. School shootings are taking the lives of dozens of students, including recently in Santa Fe, Texas.
This is exactly why David and Lauren Hogg, two Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors, are writing a book.
“We hope that people read and understand this book and they take motivation from it so it’s not your community that’s next," David Hogg said.
At the end of the book, the siblings detail a 10-point plan for gun reform.
“We do not want to take any guns away. My parents, we have guns in our household; we grew up with guns in our household. We just want reasonable, common sense gun laws that restrict this from happening to any another place," Lauren Hogg said.
Now, school districts across the country are trying to become more proactive.
“How do we help our kids want to live, and to be safe and to feel that school is a place that they can thrive?" Kerry Muller with Project AWARE said.
That includes Kent ISD.
“We’re looking for creating a safe environment by being proactive and not reactive. Most systems are reactive; we wait for something to happen and then we respond," Muller said.
A West Michigan alarm company is teaching the K-12 community on how to prevent, plan for and respond to threats.
"We feel pretty strongly that it’s a big part of our responsibility to help improve the safety of our schools, of our children. We saw a need, we saw an opportunity, we saw a gap and we realize we can do more," SecurAlarm President Brent Van Haren said.
All of them are keeping the same goal in mind.
“These are our children, this is our community, we want to do something to help," Van Haren said.
“My teacher once told me, 'It doesn't matter how good your story is, as long as you make somebody feel something.' And I think that’s what we really need in this country; we need to feel something because in a way we’ve become numb to these things and that’s just not acceptable," Lauren Hogg said.
All of the money earned from book sales will be donated to charities and local community groups. If you'd like to be involved in the gun policy conversation, text 'CHANGE' to 97779.
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