On Monday night, I watched a Zoom presentation by a handful of high school student leaders involved with Sandy Hook Promise, the nonprofit that grew out of the 2012 murder of 26 people, most of them 6- and 7-year-olds, at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. They wore green Sandy Hook Promise T-shirts, and they calmly and confidently explained what they do in their schools to begin to tackle the problem of school gun violence.
They create campaigns to encourage the student body to notice and report when something seems not quite right with a classmate.
They engage teachers and others to commit to being "safe adults"—people with whom they can share their concerns.
They do things as simple as wearing nametags to encourage friendliness, and to make it easier for everyone in their school to strike up conversations. They work to flip clique culture and stigmatize (my word, not theirs) the kind of routine bullying and insiderism that have been part of high schools since high schools were born.
They are advocates for gun safety. They do not seem at all naive about the political challenges of changing policy.
As members of a generation that has grown up participating in active shooter drills at the start of each school year, these high schoolers are poised and friendly as they explain what they want from grownups. Sure, they want us to use our votes well, but they also just seem to really want to be heard. Not because they are snowflakes who need their feelings coddled, but the opposite: they have expertise that a 50-year-old doesn't have.
They want forums where they can speak from the wisdom that arises from facing a problem they did not create but know they have to help fix.
Strategic. Matter-of-fact. Solutions oriented. Non-hysterical. Mission driven. This was my impression of these students after listening to them for a while.
Frankly, it was a relief to hear them. I have been so bound up in fury at my generation for allowing this infection of gun violence to flourish—so bummed out by our self-made Chinese handcuffs, where every movement on the solutions side causes tightening and intractability on the other—that I had fallen into a trap. It's our job to fix this; we will never fix this.
That has been my thinking.
But what if help is already on the way? What if, between filling out college applications and going to prom, between music lessons and winning home games, the cavalry—battle-trained by a culture that, frankly, today's parents and grandparents never lived—the kids are already suited up, utterly done with our failure of imagination, and committed to upending the status quo?
I think they are. I think they know what they're up against, but they also know what they're doing, how much work it will take, that the solution will be many pronged and that it will require steely resolve and endurance.
When these kids were infants, we promised they would be in safe hands. We failed. The young people I heard speak seem utterly unwilling to watch helplessly from the sidelines to allow that failure to repeat itself. So yes, shame on us. And good on them.
Watching and listening was almost rejuvenating. For the first time in a while, the sun passed in front of the moon and blotted out the darkness. I glimpsed what it might be like to go from impotent despair to absolute determination to destroy the virus of gun violence.
The cavalry is coming. I wish it had been us, but either way—it's coming.