In April, Chip Brownlee and Jennifer Mascia answered a question from a reader for our Ask The Trace series: What generation is most affected by gun violence?
Their findings were startling. Over 11,000 zoomers, people born between 1997 and 2012, were killed by guns in 2023. That’s more than the people who died from overdoses, car accidents, and cancer. What was also notable: Gen Z also appears to be the only generation to experience gun violence as the leading cause of death.
Building on their reporting, Brownlee and Mascia moderated an online panel discussion about the effects of gun violence on Gen Z and potential solutions to the crisis. In attendance were Jaclyn Corin, a survivor of the Parkland school shooting and executive director of March for Our Lives; Mariah Cooley, a board member of March for Our Lives; Alabama State Representative Phillip Ensler; and Maryland State Delegate Joe Vogel.
Gun violence is a “five-alarm fire” for this generation, said Mascia in the introduction of the panel. “Can the severity get worse? Will Gen Alpha trend the same way? Is this the new normal?”
Below are some key questions and answers from the Trace Talk. These have been edited for length and clarity.
Why do you think this crisis is hitting our generation so much harder than others?
Jaclyn Corin: We grew up doing active shooter drills before we could even spell, and we’ve had to learn how to navigate grief and fear before we’ve even had a chance to grow into who we are. There are a lot of cultural aspects to how we’ve grown up that worsen this crisis for us. There are now many podcasters and influencers who conflate masculinity and power with guns.
Mariah Cooley: When I look at the issue of gun violence from a Black and brown lens, and what’s happening around community-based violence, it’s because of the intersectional issues that are faced. Students do not feel supported in the classroom. They do not see a pathway forward. So, they feel as if they have to go to other means to achieve money, to achieve success, to feel self-worth and identity. And that’s how people end up getting involved in crimes.
Phillip Ensler: There are just a variety of factors that have made it so that we’re not supporting our young people as well as we should. Access to mental health services, access to other opportunities and resources, and what we call wrap-around services, as far as supporting the whole child.
Why are Gen Zers not benefiting from the decline in gun violence?
Jaclyn Corin: The structural conditions that make young people vulnerable to violence — poverty, racism, lack of mental health care in their communities, in their schools, political abandonment — haven’t been solved, and in some places they’re getting worse. That trauma and fear, and daily reality for Gen Z hasn’t magically gone away. A large portion of Gen Z gun deaths is gun suicide. There is an isolation crisis among young people — especially among young men. So it’s important to talk about mental health investment and access to community services.
Joe Vogel: I think there is a lot of work to be done. In Maryland, we’re addressing the issue of access to guns, and we’ve taken a number of steps in a very positive direction. We’re also addressing the issue of social isolation. I introduced legislation to create a commission to study social isolation and loneliness. We’ve done a lot of work in the mental health space, in making sure that we get more school psychologists and school social workers in our schools.
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What is your personal experience with active shooter drills?
Jennifer Mascia: I’m among the youngest of Gen X, and I got through my high school and college career without once having an active shooter drill. But for today’s kids, we live in a country where this is necessary.
Jaclyn Corin: My first actual drill was in middle school. My teacher would whisper for us to stay quiet. We had to practice which corner could protect us the most. What is the safest area? How do you get there the fastest? What piece of furniture are you going to use to cover the door? This just becomes very commonplace when you’re a member of Gen Z and you enter your classroom. I actually remember right before the shooting at my high school, they were talking about having drills with firing blanks.
I remember the fire alarm went off during the shooting at my school because of the dust and debris falling from the ceiling from the impact of the AR-15 firing in the hallway. That forced the whole school to evacuate, and then once folks started to hear gunshots and our teachers’ walkie-talkies were erupting with a red code flag, we all started to rush back to our classrooms. And for a moment, you think, ‘Is this a drill?’ because it’s so commonplace that maybe they’re getting really good at simulating a real, possible experience.
Mariah Cooley: It’s second nature. It’s been so ingrained, especially living in the Midwest. You had your fire drill, your tornado drills, and then you had your active shooter drill. And it was something that was so normalized that I never even really saw it as an issue.
Joe Vogel: In my first year in the legislature, we passed legislation to address how school shooting drills are done, and I had to explain to my colleagues what a school shooting drill is, what they look like in practice, being one of the few people who has had that experience. I had a teacher who at the beginning of class, I think we were supposed to have a drill that day, and she told us how she had stayed in the classroom the day before to assess the different angles from the windows and the doors, and had picked a predetermined hiding spot for each of us around the room. That is what our educators were focused on, and that’s what we as students were having to hear at the beginning of a chemistry class. So you know, that’s a perspective that I think only our generation really, unfortunately, has.
Phillip Ensler: When I was teaching, we not only had drills, but actual situations of guns being brought into the school, or rumors or threats of them, and it got to a point where my students were so familiar with what to do in those situations, as if it were the bell ringing and going to their next class. I was a social studies teacher. You only get your students in your class for so long, and to then have it interrupted by a drill or an actual lockdown situation that takes the focus away from academics was also a really troubling part of it.
The reality is that most violence is community-based violence or suicide. From your perspective, Mariah, talk about what community violence intervention is and how that might also be a solution for the gun violence epidemic.
Mariah Cooley: Community violence intervention is taking a new approach to addressing, preventing, and intervening when acts of violence occur. What that looks like is youth development programs, after-school programs, grieving and support services for people who’ve lost their children, their parents, due to gun violence, to make sure that they have the resources they need to heal from their previous trauma. It looks like doing peace walks, bike rides, or a march.
It’s hard to quantify because we’re preventing the violence from occurring. But I think as community violence intervention programs across the country get more funding, we will see a continued decrease in gun violence. We’ve seen that through homicide rates decreasing in large, major cities where they are investing in CVI ecosystems.
How do you communicate with young people about disinformation?
Joe Vogel: Something that I’m really committed to doing is engaging people who are not politically engaged and folks who might not agree with me on every single issue. When you’re able to make the connection on the issues and focus on those solutions, and on tying those to the real experiences people have had, I think we start to break through to more and more folks.
Questions from the audience:
How can people get involved? How do they make a difference in their own communities on this issue?
Phillip Ensler: Reaching out to your elected officials: your city council, mayors, and state legislators. Email, text, and call if you can. Try to meet with them in the district. It’s more personal hearing from you, as a voter in the district, that you’re concerned about gun violence and you want to see them take action. If more and more people do that, it certainly puts pressure on elected officials.
Mariah Cooley: Building a coalition is something that anybody can do in any community. If you are someone who is passionate about gun violence prevention in your community, find a group of people who are as passionate and start hosting meetings to talk about the issues. Start inviting elected officials. Start researching to see if there are CVI organizations. Start asking them about some of the issues they are dealing with. Like, “Are you getting funding from the Mayor’s Office? If that’s not happening now, we have our first thing to lobby on, and to go to a town hall or a city hall meeting.”
Is there something that the gun violence prevention community could stop doing to make it easier to engage Gen Z, and is there a policy that you think is harmful or a tactic that’s out of touch?
Mariah Cooley: The gun violence prevention community needs to meet people where they are and attend to their special needs. The violence that people in rural communities face looks completely different than people who live in the city and have inner-city community violence.
What do you hope the story will be for Gen Alpha, the next generation?
Jaclyn Corin: I think something with Gen Z that at least impacted me very significantly is that I felt like generations before didn’t fight for us. I’ve found so much intergenerational support, but again, I hope that Gen Alpha feels that Gen Z was fighting for them and that they can continue this fight, because, of course, this is not going to be something that’s solved within the next year. They will have to kind of continue carrying the torch forward so we can hopefully one day completely eliminate gun violence in this country.
