CHICAGO — Born 10 days before Columbine, 23-year-old Nabeela Syed’s opinion on guns in this country began forming in the third grade.
It was that school year that Syed heard the jiggling of a locked classroom doorknob during her first-ever active shooter drill. On the other side was a local police officer who was there to test the elementary students’ abilities to protect themselves should a shooter enter the room.
Fifteen years later, Syed is heading to Springfield, a young Democrat who flipped an Illinois House seat in her local district in Chicago’s northwest suburbs. She was inspired to run, in part, after seeing politicians in years past fail to address gun violence even as the threat seemed to expand.
