Who Will Be the Generation that Ends School Shootings?
How old were you in April, 1999 when the Columbine school shooting occurred? Do you remember having nightmares? Do you remember watching as adults debated the merits of gun control laws, and then failed to take any action to implement laws that would have saved subsequent lives?
How old were you when you realized that an individual adult’s right to own a gun is more important than a child’s life?
School shootings are appalling and preventable tragedies, but the sad reality is that there is almost no likelihood that the United States will do anything to prevent them from happening in the future. As I watch politicians respond to the latest school shooting in America with platitudes and prayers, or worse, suggestions that the solution is more guns, the response that most often occurs to me is an exhausted, “OK Boomer.”
It is a difficult reality to accept that the majority of American adults love their guns more than their children, but this conclusion is inescapable. It is intuitive to see that fewer guns equals fewer gun deaths. If intuition isn’t enough, this simple equation is backed up by data documenting record high gun sales in the U.S. over the past two years accompanied by steadily increasing numbers of gun deaths and mass shootings. Around the world, countries with sensible gun control laws also have significantly fewer gun-related deaths. These are the places where there are fewer guns in the hands of the general public, and the people who do purchase guns are vetted for prior violent or dangerously unstable actions before being handed a deadly weapon. There is no compelling evidence that more guns will ever result in fewer deaths, but as a nation Americans consistently fail to accept this reality. Not only have we failed to make serious attempts to implement gun control laws as a solution, but as a country we have often weakened laws that do exist, even though we know this will ultimately result in more deaths.
In 2012, I lived overseas when the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting occurred. I was amazed how many of my foreign friends, colleagues, and even complete strangers expressed genuine sympathy for this tragedy. I don’t remember how I responded to all these concerned folks, but I do remember that every time someone quietly and seriously told me that at least Americans would finally begin to implement gun control measures, I simply thought: I doubt it. I remembered too well the lessons I learned as a teenager watching the aftermath of Columbine unfold.
Now, every time another school shooting happens, I watch the news and I do the math. Not the math of how many lives have been unnecessarily sacrificed to rampant gun culture in the U.S., but the math of how much of the voting population came of age post-Columbine and how much longer it will be before we are the clear majority. The time is rapidly approaching when the majority of American policy makers, as well as voters, will be people who came of age after 1999. Perhaps we are the group of people who will finally be able to act to establish the kind of basic gun control measures that might have saved our peers if they were implemented 10 or 20 years ago.
As I watch increasingly desperate efforts to defend “the right to bear arms,” I wonder if others are also doing this math. Are the politicians and judges who have built their careers on a staunch refusal to introduce gun regulations of any kind afraid that their work will be undone by the next generation? I wonder why they cannot accept what many of us already know, that adults (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, pastors, coaches) who claim to love the children in their lives have a responsibility to question the American obsession with gun culture and to act to protect our children by reducing the number of guns in our homes, neighborhoods, cities, and schools. I hold onto the tenuous hope that my generation and those after me will choose to demonstrate more care for our children than our elders did for us. Maybe, just maybe, as we increasingly fill pivotal political and judicial roles we will finally be able to act together to end the cycle of trauma associated with school shootings.
