Growing Up in the Age of Mass Shootings

Image source: Paul Campbell (Getty Images)

On Wednesday, November 2, 2022, Nikolas Cruz was formally sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In a mass shooting over four years ago, Cruz murdered 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. 

I found out about the sentencing on TikTok, through a video of victims and their families who addressed the shooter in court, testifying about the destruction he had caused in their lives.

“You don’t know me, but you tried to kill me,” Parkland teacher, Stacey Lippel, said to Cruz. “I have no forgiveness in my heart for you. You are a monster with no remorse, and every breath you take is a breath wasted.”

Hearing those words truly stopped me in my tracks. I will never be able to understand the suffering that these victims endured and will continue to endure for the rest of their lives, but watching Lippel look this murderer in the eye and articulate her pain is not something I will ever be able to forget. 

Seeing this video on TikTok while scrolling through my feed looking for silly videos to brighten my day was an apt metaphor for what it is like to grow up during this epidemic of mass shootings in the United States. I can’t keep track of how many times I have been going about my day when I see the news that people have been murdered, and more often than not they are people my age killed in schools just like mine.

I still remember the first time I became aware of mass shootings. I was in fourth grade when 20 children, as well as six adult staff members, were murdered by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Even though I had little access to the internet or awareness of current events, I still remember discussing what had happened with my classmates and seeing a memorial for the victims on TV. I remember sitting on the floor with my mom wrapping Christmas presents as I told her about how scared I was to go to school after what had happened. What a strange feeling it was, preparing for the holidays, supposedly the most wonderful time of the year, while knowing the victims and their families were experiencing such immense pain. 

Less than four years later, on June 12, 2016, I went to my friend’s house to work on a group project for our English class. She pulled out her iPad with the news app open. 49 people had been killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in United States history, and it remains the deadliest incident of violence against LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. I remember that, when I saw the number of people who had been murdered, my brain refused to compute it. How could that many people have simply been gunned down, their lives taken in a split second? I didn’t want to believe it was real, that something that heinous could have happened. 

Somehow, just a year later, it only got worse. On October 1, 2017, 60 people were murdered at a music festival in Paradise, Nevada in the single deadliest mass shooting in United States history. The next month, on November 5, 2017, 26 people were murdered at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

Then came Parkland. I was fourteen years old and beyond disgusted at the state of the country since Donald Trump’s election. Seeing the gun violence, and seeing that Trump thought absolutely nothing should be done to stop it, sparked a palpable rage in me and in so many of my peers. We were all so young and already felt so angry and hopeless. A couple of weeks later, we all came to school wearing orange and walked out in protest of the lack of political action being taken to stop gun violence. At the time, it felt powerful to come together as a collective and take a stand. 

Three months later, eight students and two teachers were murdered at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas. 

It became crystal clear to me that, no matter how many children were murdered, no one in the federal government intended to take any meaningful action in favor of gun reform. I felt myself becoming apathetic, desensitized, and helpless. 

Then came 2020, when the world shut down and life as we knew it came to a grinding halt. I was a junior in high school, miserably suffering through online classes and stuck at home. But I do remember people talking about one morbid positive of virtual school: there wouldn’t be any school shootings. At the time, I didn’t really contemplate the validity of that claim too much, but it became apparent how accurate it was.

On May 24, 2022, I had just finished my first year at Wesleyan and was back home for summer break. My dad and I were on our way home from a trip to CVS, purchasing birthday cards for my mom. I opened Instagram. 19 students and two teachers had been murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Beside the devastation and heartbreak, I felt the sickest sense of déjà vu. It was nine years after Sandy Hook, I was an adult in college who knew how to drive and had a real job. So much in my life had changed, and yet elementary school students were still be murdered.

In the aftermath of that tragedy, under the Biden administration, the federal government did take some action, passing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant federal gun reform legislation passed since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. But I can’t help but feel that this victory feels so hollow. So many lives lost in so many senseless tragedies, and for years the only thing the American government could come up with was “thoughts and prayers.”

As frustrated and despondent as I find myself at the state of this country’s gun laws and the epidemic of mass shootings, I also think it’s important to recognize the futility of apathy. As much as my generation has suffered and lost growing up under the ever-looming threat of school shootings, I do still think it’s important to recognize that hopelessness will not create a better tomorrow.

References

Andone, D. (2022, November 1). 'you don't know me, but you tried to kill me.' parkland victims and loved ones get last word before shooter sentenced to life in prison. CNN. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/01/us/nikolas-cruz-parkland-victim-testimony-sentencing 

Gun Violence Archive. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ 

Learish, J., & Capatides, C. (2022, July 6). By the numbers: America's deadliest mass shootings. CBS News. Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/america-most-deadly-mass-shootings/45/ 

What is the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act? Everytown. (2022, July 27). Retrieved November 20, 2022, from https://www.everytown.org/what-is-the-bipartisan-safer-communities-act/