This post is about gun violence. It includes details that some people might find upsetting.
Two years ago, my family was in Dallas for the Texas state fair. At the end of a long day, we had broken up into groups, a couple of us riding one more ride and a couple of us in search of one more fried treat. I was with my youngest son, who was ten, and we wandered toward our meeting spot at the ferris wheel. At the sound of a commotion behind us, we turned to see a large crowd coming our way, running and fast walking in a tense hustle.
We flattened ourselves against a wall, and I called Matt. We agreed to exit separately and meet up outside the fairgrounds. I held my son's hand while I scanned for hiding spots, just in case: I could shove him behind that stack of hay bales, or behind that model car. Will there be a bottleneck when we find the nearest exit gate? My husband, my two teenage boys, and our dear friend were all somewhere else. Are they closer to the danger, whatever it is? What if that lady in the wheelchair gets knocked over and trampled?
I'll never forget that rapid mental calculus I did, while also projecting an outwardly sturdy, calm demeanor for my nervous kid: "We are going to be totally fine, bud. For sure. We're just gonna walk out that way, and we will find Dad and the boys very soon."
We got through the gate and walked a couple blocks, and I slowed down to search my phone for news about what was going on. My kid tugged at my sleeve and said, "Can we keep going? Can we get farther away, please?"
After a long walk, we made it back to our car.
Everyone exhaled.
It turns out, near the food court there was an altercation between people who knew each other. A 22 year old man pulled a gun, and three people were injured. We had been in the food court a few hours prior, eating these overpriced nachos.
It was our first experience with a public shooting. We were never in the range of the gunfire, but we didn't know it at the time. So now my kids have that as a milestone. "When I was (ten/fifteen/seventeen) I had to evacuate the fairgrounds because of a shooter."
*****
Last Wednesday I picked up one of my boys from school when details of the shooting in Utah were still coming in.
Kid: Did you hear the news?
Me: About Charlie Kirk? Yeah, I heard. It's so awful. I hope he doesn't die.
Kid: Oh, I don't think he can...I mean...I saw the video, and it's pretty bad.
Me: You saw video of it? Why?
Kid: Someone at school showed it to me, and I thought it was going to be like a hit in the shoulder or something. But...it was bad. His neck, like, exploded with blood. I don't think he's likely to survive.
*****
Later that night, after Kirk's death had been confirmed, the same son told me, "It's kind of crazy that you can just open your phone and see a dude die on instagram. I'm sure it wasn't like that for you growing up."
Me: No, it wasn't. I hate that you saw that.
Kid: Well, I'm not, like, traumatized by it. Gen Z's different, ya know?
*****
Gen Z is different.
They've grown up doing active shooter drills every school year. I asked one of the boys what that's like, and he said, "Lights out, close doors, lock doors, be super quiet, huddle along the wall."
My 1980s childhood coincided with the tail end of the Cold War. I absorbed a fair amount of fear of nuclear annihilation, but when the Berlin Wall fell in 7th grade, we were able to set that aside. (My friend who is a bit older than I am talks about being trained in school how to climb under your desk and, as he puts it, "kiss your ass goodbye" in the event of a Russian attack.)
In addition to the nukes, we Gen Xers were cautioned about getting kidnapped, lured into a windowless van on our walk home from school. It was stranger danger and poisoned Halloween candy and devil worshippers around every corner.
Check out this artifact I recently found: a newspaper from October 1984 that my mom saved because my name was printed on the honor roll. Under the headline Police Give Tips for Halloween, a Lubbock police officer suggests that kids would be better off skipping trick-or-treating altogether. But for those who go for it, the article lists multiple places that will X-ray candy.
Those moral panics followed a pattern: we learned about a new threat, talked a lot about it, and were frequently reminded about it in the paper and on the evening news. But the things didn't happen, or they happened on a much smaller scale than predicted. The fear was rampant, but the danger was never there.
What makes Gen Z different is that gun violence is not an empty moral panic. It's an actual danger. There are school shootings all the time, dozens so far this year. Besides the mass events that get a lot of news coverage, smaller gun tragedies happen daily. In 2020 gun deaths became the leading cause of mortality for children and teens. This includes homicides, suicides, and accidents. Guns account for the death of more young people than car crashes, drug overdoses, or cancer. The more guns we accumulate, the more dead young people we accumulate.
So yeah, Gen Z is different, ya know?
Their grandparents recall duck-and-cover drills, anticipating a Russian attack which, thank goodness, never happened. Their parents chuckle at the stories of having their Halloween candy X-rayed to search for hidden pins and needles which, thank goodness, never materialized.
Kids today get the emotional trauma of a moral panic, plus the very real body count to back it up.
