What Defines a Generation
Gun violence in America
By Nate Lapointe
The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
THERE ARE SOME EVENTS SO TRAUMATIC that you don’t just remember them for the rest of your life, you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you found out.
For most Americans, this event is 9/11. A national tragedy on a scale not seen in 60 years, but I was born in 2002. I don’t remember 9/11, or anything in its immediate aftermath.
So, what do I remember? For Gen Z, for those too young to remember 9/11, what is the event that has seared itself into our collective consciousness?
Sandy Hook.
I was in fifth grade. I remember when I came home, my mom was waiting outside for me and my sisters, something she didn’t do very often anymore. We were older at that point, mature enough to walk home from the bus stop. We had insisted on that at the start of the year. But that day, there she was. I got to her first, and she told me to wait for my sisters. I had no idea what was wrong yet; I just stopped and waited as she said. She walked us inside for a minute before stopping and turning around to talk to us. She seemed hesitant like she was trying to find the right words. We had kind of figured out that something bad had happened at that point. Eventually, she told us that someone had broken into a school in Connecticut and killed a bunch of kids our age. I was mature enough at that point to walk home from the bus stop; I wasn’t mature enough to process the fact that someone could just kill children like that. I didn’t know how else to respond, so I just said, “That’s sad”.
In the days and weeks after that, my fellow 5th graders all found out. We focused on one detail someone had heard and spread through the whole grade: That the shooter had allegedly entered the school by breaking the window to a fifth-grade classroom. “We’re fifth-graders,’’ we said, vaguely scared that if we had been in Newtown that day, we would likely have been among the dead. None of us really understood what had happened, and none of our teachers were willing to talk about it.
It wasn’t until years later that I understood the real implications of what happened that day. If there was ever a “gun debate” in America, it ended on that day. Sandy Hook was literally the nightmare scenario. It was the absolute worst possible thing that anyone imagined could happen. If someone had said before that point, “someone could just go into a school and murder 25 children in 5 minutes, that’s why we need to change the laws”, it would have been dismissed as fearmongering. People would have scoffed: “Don’t be dramatic, nothing like that could ever happen.”
But then it happened.
The nightmare became real.
And what happened next? This attack happened, children were murdered, and what did we do?
Nothing.
Nothing happened.
In the United State Senate, that beloved cesspool of dysfunction, every proposed action failed, thanks in no small part to outright lies by gun-rights organizations.
Assault weapons ban? Voted down.
Limited high-capacity magazines? Voted down.
Expanding background checks? Voted down
Clarifying gun trafficking laws? Voted down.
That was when the gun debate ended. That was when we, as a country, decided that 25 children could be murdered and it was politically acceptable to do nothing.
So how could we be surprised when 14 people at a Christmas party were killed and we did nothing?
When 49 were killed in a nightclub and we did nothing?
When 26 were killed in a church and we did nothing?
When 58 were killed and almost a thousand injured at a concert and we did nothing?
When there was a shooting at a bar, and some of those who were killed had survived a previous mass shooting?
People escaped death in the deadliest mass shooting in American history and then were relaxing at a bar only to find themselves in that nightmare AGAIN.
Some of them survived the first time but not the second time.
In America, there are people who survived one mass shooting but died in a totally separate one months later.
And what did we do?
Nothing.
We did nothing.
After all that death, all that bloodshed, you might think that the only thing that could make Congress act is if they faced gun violence themselves, personally.
You’d be wrong.
In the last 10 years, two sitting members of Congress have been shot.
In 2011, Representative Gabby Giffords was shot in the head in an assassination attempt. She survived, but 6 others died, including a 9-year-old who, in a morbid turn of events, was born on September 11, 2001.
In 2017, Representative Steve Scalise was shot and wounded at a practice for the Congressional Baseball Game.
They still did nothing.
Half of Congress refuses to admit what the problem is. According to them, the problem is everything, anything but guns. It’s violent video games, a baseless claim that’s been used since the 90s. It’s godlessness, some claim, as if a lack of belief in God means that you’re predisposed to mass murder or the absence of prayer makes shootings more likely. The current favorite is mental illness. Despite the fact that the vast, vast majority of those with mental illness are not violent and in fact are more likely to be killed by police than commit an act of violence and despite the fact that the same people blaming mental illness as the problem refuse to make mental health care more accessible, they continue to repeat this claim endlessly.
It’s a deflection.
Every industrialized country has violent video games, every industrialized country has atheists, every industrialized country has people with mental health disorders, and yet, America is the only one where mass shootings happen weekly. What makes us unique? Why are we the only nation where this happens?
We have more guns than people.
The guns are the problem.
States with comprehensive gun laws, like Massachusetts, are not immune to gun violence — it’s still a daily occurrence here — but the laws we have in place significantly reduce gun violence. MA has about 3.4 gun deaths per 100,000 residents. The national average is 11.8 and Alaska has the highest rate at 23.3 per 100,000.
Strong gun laws work. They work in Europe, they work in Australia, they work in America. We just need to have the political will to actually do something.
Our generation has grown up with lockdown drills, has grown up hearing of each and every one of these massacres. We’re almost numb to them at this point, but we can’t allow ourselves to become blind. Our generation powers a movement that has produced more action on gun violence prevention than any other in decades. Progress is difficult, it’s slow, but it is possible.
