By Jennifer Miller
Guest Columnist
I was a junior in high school when the Columbine High School mass shooting happened. I stayed awake into the early morning hours for days just staring at the TV. I could not look away. Soon after, as a student journalist, I decided to make mass school shootings the focus of my required graduation project.
It wasn’t only Columbine that grabbed my attention. There was the shooting at a school in Paducah, Kentucky; the shooting at the school in Jonesboro, Arkansas; and more. I also learned about other school shootings in urban areas that the media and public paid little attention to. I learned this was a rural issue, an urban issue, and a suburban issue, with a diverse group of innocent victims. I thought I was doing something by paying attention to this issue and spending time learning more about it.
But 19 years have passed since then, and I can honestly say that what I did was pointless.
As I continued on with my education, finished college, went to graduate school, and started working, mass shootings continued to happen at schools and universities across the country. As I worked as a journalist and then in marketing, the shootings continued. And not just at schools, but inside movie theaters, churches and other places once believed to be safe.
Then I got pregnant and had a daughter, and during that time I watched the trauma of country music concert shooting in Las Vegas and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. I was a child when I started paying attention to these horrific acts, and now I have a child of my own, and nothing has changed.
While we witnessed Columbine, a mass killing that other shootings would be measured against for years, my generation has been unable to demand change. As a teen, I did not believe my voice mattered in the political world. What a terrible assumption I made. In hindsight, I should have done more. We should have done more.
Now, I see the teen survivors in Florida take advantage of new technologies, including social media. I see them speak so confidently that it is clear they know what they want matters. And I feel a sense of relief. They are doing what my generation wanted to do. They are saying what we wanted to say, what we tried to say. And people are listening. We are listening. And for the first time in 19 years, I am hopeful change will come. Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Edward Stack has demonstrated that change CAN come – even if the National Rifle Association and lawmakers resist change.
So to this group, and to the teens across the country who are joining them, I say, thank you. Thank you for doing what we couldn’t do, and please keep fighting for what is right. And thank you for giving me the courage to finally speak out publicly, and for others to do the same today during “March for Our Lives” rallies across the country.
And to our elected officials, including U.S. Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson and U.S. Sens. Pat Toomey and Bob Casey, who have the power to make change, I have one question for you:
Do you know what teenagers grow up to be?
Voters.
Keep that in mind before dismissing members of another generation who genuinely want change. Instead, please actively work toward a meaningful solution.
