Consider This from NPR - As School Shootings Claim More Victims, Young Activists Want to Be Heard

Episode Date: June 4, 2022

The mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX has parents and students worried about safety at school. Data gathered by the Washington Post estimates that more than 300,000 students have experienced shootings at school since the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colorado. But experts say the impact of school shootings is far more extensive, and even children who don't come into direct contact with violence can be traumatized.We speak with Hannah Rubin, a 16-year-old activist with March for Our Lives, a youth-led movement pushing for gun control measures. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It started as confusion, and then as we started learning more about the situation, it ramped up into, like, real fear. And I've only been that scared, like, a couple times in my life because we had no idea what was going to happen. Last year, Tegan Nam, a high school junior in Montgomery County, Maryland, found themselves in a situation experienced by far too many students. Their school went into lockdown after receiving an anonymous tip that a student had brought in a gun and ammunition. And we heard them talking about a student with a gun and I immediately jumped to like the worst possible conclusions because like people could be dying, people could be getting injured in the very building that I was in and I would have no way of knowing it. Even people that I knew or cared about. And so it was just like my heart was racing.

I couldn't think straight. I just, my brain just kept creating these horrible scenarios. The suspected student left the school before police arrived and was later arrested and expelled. No shots were fired and no one was injured. But students like Tegan Nam can still be traumatized by the experience. We did an analysis of one school year and found that between 4 and 8 million children in a normal year go through a lockdown. Most of those, vast majority of those, are caused by the threat of a gun.

Either somebody saying, I'm going to come to your school and shoot it up, or shooting down the street. John Woodrow Cox is a reporter for The Washington Post and author of the book Children Under Fire. He covers the effect of gun violence on children and says kids can experience trauma without experiencing a shooting firsthand. Those children are deeply affected by what they endure. They've soiled themselves. They've wept. They've texted their parents goodbye. One child I interviewed wrote a will saying who he wanted his toys to go through when he died in his school. These kids are not legally considered victims of gun violence by any measure because there wasn't even gun violence on their campus.

But it speaks to how this looming threat reaches virtually every student in this country in one way or another. Consider this. School shootings and gun violence in America can have a traumatic effect on children, whether they witnessed it or not. How kids are reacting to the violence and making sure their voices are heard in the debate on gun control. That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Alyssa Nadwworny. It's Saturday, June 4th.

This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. The mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has parents and students worried about safety at school. Unfortunately, violence is a reality for many American students. We talked to students in Washington, D.C. about their reactions to Uvalde and the uptick in other kinds of violence in their city, including carjackings, stabbings, and shootings, all perpetrated by teens. I feel afraid, afraid for myself and my family members who go to school, like my nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters. It's scary that school used to be a place where we felt safe and

didn't have to worry about what's going to happen here, how we're being protected there. It's scary. Tamiya Robinson is an eighth grade student at Digital Pioneers Academy in southeast Washington, D.C. and a reporter for DCist's Youth Journalism Workshop. To have experienced it, it definitely gives me a different perspective. Ingrid Gruber is a senior at the Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C. Last month, a gunman shot more than 200 bullets at the school, injuring three adults and one student. I struggled with kind of grappling with the effects, the mental health effects, the physical effects after the shooting.

But I'm 18, so imagine how a fourth grader is going through that. It's hard. Tamia Robinson has written about the mental health concerns of her peers. She says just hearing about violent events can be traumatic. It will cause some students to break down, maybe stay stuck in one area or sit with depression and fear and not really interact with the world anymore, it will cause a lot of, I guess, self-destruction in a way. Like not interacting, not responding,

staying to themselves, being afraid to go to school, being afraid to leave their house. And Ingrid Gruber says that adult lawmakers have let kids like her down. I think everybody says they want change, but the focus is on getting reelected. It's not on actually making school and communities safer for students and the people who inhabit them. Tamia Robinson wants adults to listen to what young people are saying and understand what's at stake for them.

We could speak more about it, more openly about it, and include students and their opinions, their voices, because it affects our lives as well, instead of just leaving it up to adults. I feel like I shouldn't be exposed to it as being 14 years old, and that the kids younger than me shouldn't be exposed to it, but it has become our reality. It affects us, so it needs our opinion and it needs our voices to help cause a change.

But we're definitely too young for this. Coming up, an organizer with the youth-led gun control organization March for Our Lives and what young people are doing to create a safer future for themselves. Coming up, an organizer with the youth-led gun control organization March for Our Lives, and what young people are doing to create a safer future for themselves. It really gives us a sense of purpose in our lives, and it really makes us know that things are going to change. Hannah Rubin is a high school sophomore in Bethesda, Maryland, and a volunteer organizer with March for Our Lives, the youth-led gun control organization formed by survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The attack killed 17 people. We spoke about what young gun control activists are fighting for and how the Parkland school shooting affected her. I was in seventh grade and I just remember sitting there in my social studies, I believe, classroom at like 10 in the morning and just reading about this and thinking I have got to do something. So I organized like a walkout at my

middle school and I signed countless petitions and I went to the march and it kind of just grew from there. On Thursday, the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee advanced legislation to impose restrictions on gun use. It's called the Protecting Our Kids Act. What are you hoping will come of this latest push from lawmakers? We're hoping for a reduce in gun violence in America and not just a push for an increase in background checks, but other common sense gun laws like a requirement for safety boxes for your gun so your child doesn't end up shooting himself in the face, like with Ethan's law. Just really a push in common sense gun laws that will change lives and will save lives in America. What would you want to say to some of those lawmakers who are going to vote on the legislation? I just want them to do their job or else they could be facing not having a job.

They could be voted out by their constituents. And I just want them to do their jobs and pass these laws or else we'll vote them out. Simple as that. So March for Our Lives was started by some of the survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. And the whole movement is focused on encouraging young people to take action against gun violence.

Do you think that effort should be the responsibility of kids like yourself, like you're 16? Absolutely not. I mean, we're children. We shouldn't have to be mobilizing for our lives. We shouldn't have to be begging for our lives to these grown adult politicians. And it's not just that, because in the gun violence prevention spaces that I'm a part of, there's lots of adults, particularly boomers, who are very, oh, the teens will save us, the kids will save us about it. And that's entirely unfair, because we're children. I'm 16 years old. I shouldn't have to be lobbying Congress so I can be safe in my school.

I shouldn't have to be marching so children don't get shot up or Black people don't get shot up in a grocery store. It's entirely unfair that this has been placed on our shoulders. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think other kids can do to make a difference in the fight against gun violence? I mean, what options do kids have? And we are also holding a week of action here in D.C. It's a sort of flood Congress lobby week slash mobilizing week. But something easier where you don't have to move away from your home or you don't have to do something as direct would just be emailing your representative, calling them and urging them to pass these laws, which are being voted on very, very soon. And also just spreading awareness, because I know a lot of people, especially in my area, who are so blind to the news, they just don't care. So by spreading the news and just making sure people understand that this is a real issue, then hopefully something will happen. I'm curious where your motivation comes from, because you've never experienced gun violence firsthand, right?

No, not firsthand. So tell me a little bit about where this comes from for you, kind of where this fire builds. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. I was raised Jewish, and in Judaism, we have a very strong push for social justice. So that was really ingrained in me since I was a little, little kid. But I think in seventh grade, we had this active shooter-esque thing. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but I think... What do you remember from it? I just remember there might have been an active shooter in my school,

but it wasn't, I didn't know. Nobody was hurt, thank God, but we were just sitting there under our desks for about an hour or so nobody really knew what was going on and just sitting there maybe waiting to be shot maybe waiting for anything we didn't know and um thankfully there wasn't an active shooter someone just like yelled something in the hallways it was a false alarm but it was still a traumatizing experience. Yeah. Yeah. You know, kind of despite many efforts to kind of decrease gun violence and to legislate around this issue, those efforts have failed again and again, you know, even since you

kind of started getting involved in activism since Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, that shooting. How do you keep from losing your motivation and hope? You seem so optimistic. Well, actually, not a lot has been done, but we have passed, I believe, over 200 pieces of gun violence prevention legislation around the country in the past four years since MSD. So it's not all for nothing. But even though we know that this is going to continue to happen, and it might be inevitable

now, we know that things will change, whether it's now, whether it's in 50 years, 100 years. We don't care. We know it will happen. No matter what anyone might say, we will change the future, and we are going to do it to save ourselves. Hannah Rubin is a sophomore at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and an organizer with March for Our Lives. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Alyssa Nadworny.