(NewsNation) — Saturday’s deadly shooting at Brown University in Providence, R.I., marked the second time Mia Tretta and Zoe Weissman have been affected by violence on a school campus.
In November 2019, a student opened fire at a high school in Santa Clarita, California, killing two teens and injuring Tretta, then 15, who was struck in the stomach. She survived to become an advocate for victims of gun violence.
On Saturday, Tretta was in her Brown University dorm room when she began receiving alerts about an active shooter on campus. Officials later said a gunman killed two students and injured several others in a classroom before fleeing.
“I chose Brown and I chose Providence because it’s somewhere that I felt safer than I have before,” Tretta told “NewsNation Prime” on Saturday. “Safety is something that’s the most important to me … All day has been terrifying and shocking and confusing for me and for the rest of the Brown community.”
Tretta said she’s frustrated the U.S. hasn’t been able to get a handle on the type of shooting she has now experienced twice and she is not alone. Zoe Weissman was attending a middle school in Parkland, Florida, when, 14 students and three staff members were killed in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School next door in 2018.
“Unfortunately, I do think I’m more equipped than my peers, because I’ve coped with this before. I spent the last seven years learning how to live my life with PTSD,” Weissman said. “It just doesn’t feel real, and I’m also incredibly angry that are this country has let this happen to someone like me again.”
Weissman told “NewsNation Live” she was in her Brown University dorm when the shooting began on Saturday, about a five minute walk from where it took place.
“My friend called me crying, asking where I was and if I was in the building where it happened. And I just knew that that there had been a shooting,” Weissman said.
Both Tretta and Weissman are once again calling for legitimate action to be taken to address growing violence in the U.S.
“For some reason, America, Americans and American politicians have kind of accepted this as something that’s concrete to our society when it doesn’t have to be,” she said. “It’s been decades now of these school shootings, of this mass violence, that impacts what feels like every single community.”
Weissman said the time for thoughts and prayers has passed and that Congress needs to act.
“I think that they don’t have the right to pretend that they care about us until they enact meaningful gun violence prevention,” Weissman said. “Because I know the President has his own children, has grandchildren, has loved ones. I can’t imagine how upset he would be if that happened to them.”