The massacre generation

Julia Savoca Gibson is a college freshman. She wrote a perspective piece for the Washington Post. She says her entire life has been framed by violence. She is part of the massacre generation. She doesn’t remember 9/11 because she was a year and a half old. She does remember the Virginia Tech shooting. The lockdown drills at her elementary school. A teacher in 7th grade weeping as she told the class about the Newtown shooting – the town where the teacher’s grandchildren lived. The Orlando nightclub. Las Vegas. Parkland, and demonstrations classmates organized.

She recently attended a Jewish Shabbat service. The next morning she heard about the Tree of Life shooting. She had a haunted thought that the shooter might have come to the service she attended. She attended the vigil and will remember her Jewish friends’ eyes.

I remembered that for anyone born near the year 2000, this is all we’ve ever known.

I remember filling out my absentee ballot a few weeks ago. I remember voting, hoping that weeks, years, decades from now I’d be able to remember that we changed.

The young don’t vote? They do now. The difference is school shootings.



Another shooting incident on Thanksgiving Day. Victor Laszlo tweeted:

For the second time this month, a good guy with a gun tried to stop a bad guy with a gun — and was murdered by the police for the crime of being good while black.

The NRA has said nothing.

Neither has the KKK — and for precisely the same reason.

The BenShot company makes whiskey shot glasses that look like they’ve been struck by a bullet. Yeah, I’m laughing. But I’m not laughing at what the father and son company owners gave their employees for Christmas. Every employee got a gun. Even if they didn’t want one. Even though having a gun makes one less safe.

I read that and had a very strong reaction. If that happened to me I would immediately hand in my resignation. I wouldn’t want to be there even if an exception was made for me because I would know all my colleagues had guns.