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Column: My child schooled me about gun violence
SCOTT PIEPHO
Cases and Controversies
Published: April 6, 2018
My younger child Zale still hates giving an order when we go out to eat. With some coaxing it happens, but with clear reluctance.
Two weeks ago, that same teenager addressed between 1,500 and 2,000 people as the closing speaker at the Akron March for Our Lives after having as one of the march’s organizers.
My family’s experience was replicated across the country that day as thousands of people of all ages marched and rallied against gun violence, led by student-organizers. Beginning with the survivors of the latest school shooting in Parkland, Florida, a generation has politically awakened, galvanized by a single issue.
Where every other school shooting disappeared from the news cycle after a few days, the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School kicked off a movement that shows no signs of abating. From the national leaders from Stoneman Douglas to the local organizers like my kid, they have worked to keep the nation focused on the problem, all while being subject to increasingly vicious personal attacks.
One of those attacks came from Ohio State Rep. Candice Keller who complained that we shouldn’t be listening to a bunch of kids “who would just as soon be eating Doritos and playing video games.” To me, that cuts the other way. When our teenagers tell us that something is so important that they are willing to put away their digital distractions, we should pay attention.
(Never mind the other thing because let’s face it, teenagers can totally eat Doritos and plan political protests at the same time.)
This political has caught everyone by surprise, which in retrospect I find astonishing. For nearly twenty years, a generation has lived with the reality that includes occasional random gun massacres in schools. How did no one in the commentator class (myself included) see that those kids were not going to remain silent forever. But we did not see this watershed until we were on top of it.
Speaking to the crowd in Akron, my child read a statistic reported by John Cox and Steven Rich in the Washington Post that over 180,000 students have been personally exposed to school gun violence since Columbine. That statistic does not take into account the millions of young people—mostly poor and black or brown—who live in neighborhoods riven by routine gun violence.
Moreover, every child in this generation has endured the fallout from the new reality of school shootings. Since Columbine, through Sandy Hook and up to Parkland, we have come up with no better solution to school shootings than constantly reminding our kids about them through active shooter lockdown drills.
To varying degrees, Americans have complied with this new normal. But now we are surprised when our children stand up to say that it’s not acceptable.
While they are mass shootings are horrific, far fewer people are killed in high profile random mass shootings than in every day gun violence. The March for Our Lives tells us that where the real risk lies is beside the point. While the chance of any particular kid dying in a school shooting are exceedingly low, the chances of that kid growing up in fear of a school shooting approach 100 percent.
A few weeks ago, I wrote that the toxicity of the gun debate (along with a fetish for tax and budget cuts) spills over into what should be less fraught conversation about school security. I still think that even with stringent gun control, we will need to foot the bill to improve school security.
But in the aftermath of the march, I have also realized that our children will still pay a price for that solution. Each piece of security apparatus reminds our children of the threat to their lives that is built into our gun culture.
As a society, we have declared that a level of carnage and fear is an acceptable price for expansive gun rights. Contemporaries of the Columbine victims are now in their mid-30s; those of the Sandy Hook victims are just entering high school. The generation that has paid the most now tells us that the price is too high and will move mountains to bring it down.
I know this because my kid, who still hates ordering at restaurants, spent the Friday afternoon before the march walking from business to business in Highland Square to ask if they would put posters endorsing the march in their windows.
I am immensely proud of my child. But we should all be ashamed of how we failed this generation.