By Abené Clayton, Photo: Boris Zharkov/The Guardian, The Guardian, December 9, 2021
A deadly mass shooting at a suburban Michigan high school brought back a familiar American routine: utterances of shock, followed by condolences, blame, and then calls for action that fall on deaf ears.
Last week’s school shooting came as young people across the US are reckoning with a historic surge in gun violence. While shootings on school campuses declined significantly during the pandemic – incidents where a gun was fired at US schools dropped from 130 to 96 between 2019 and 2020, according to a database from Everytown for Gun Safety – community gun violence rose dramatically in that same period. Gun violence deaths rose a staggering 30% from 2019 to 2020 nationwide, the sharpest rise in 60 years.
In California, where homicides – mostly by guns – were up 30% last year, six teens told the Guardian about their experiences in the past year and a half. They spoke about hearing about fatal shootings through the grapevine and on the news during the pandemic months, and watching their peers become caught in the cycle of violence. Gun violence has rocked their communities for years, the teenagers say, but the pandemic years have been particularly scary and isolating.
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