Our Triggered Youth

I—like many students who were home over fall break—went to the mall. My sister and I spent a day at the mall because we were on a very specific mission: to find our mom a birthday gift. After an hour or so of no luck, we decided to split our efforts and go to different department stores.

I barely stepped into the store when I heard a swift shuffling of feet in the distance. I chose to ignore it. I then proceeded to ask the salesman, standing at the front, a question that I cannot seem to remember because of the call I got from my sister that interrupted it. I raised my phone to my ear only to hear my sister scream, “GET OUT OF THE MALL. THERE’S A SHOOTER.” Immediately, my fight or flight instincts kicked in. My response: flight. 

Within minutes, I managed to run far away from the mall across large, busy streets to a fast-food chain restaurant. I alerted the manager of the restaurant about the scene I’d just fled, and he almost immediately reached for his cellphone to call his brother who works at a store in the mall. I remembered my sister and then my eyes flooded with tears. 

I have never felt so helpless and terrified than in those few moments when I waited for my sister to pick up my phone call; when she answered, she could only muster sobs in between telling me that she “saw blood.” I told her to leave the mall and go to a pharmacy. Thankfully, we both safely escaped before the mall went into lockdown.

Later that day, we sat with our eyes glued to the television, waiting for our nearby news station to fill us in on what had happened earlier that day. Finally, a police investigator showed up on the screen and reported that the shooting was a false alarm, triggered by “balloon popping,” leading to a mass exodus from the mall from which several individuals had sustained injuries. My sister and I were floored. 

When the news had spread about the false alarm, many of my friends and family members were relieved. I, however, could not say the same for myself. No matter what the circumstances turned out to be, I experienced a potentially life-and-death situation.

To this day, I think what baffles me the most about the false-alarm shooting at my mall is that I live in a red state that historically opposes strict gun laws.

Whether if it’s a young person who’s pulling the trigger, or a young person who’s having their life taken away from them by another, the impact of gun violence falls disproportionately on our youth. 

More than ever, Americans are on edge after the string of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. Today, 59% of Americans say random acts of violence like mass shootings pose the biggest threat to them and 78% of Americans believe a similar attack will likely follow in the next three months, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted after these back-to-back shootings. Statistics aside, after experiencing the “shooting” at my mall, it is clear to me that the fear of being next is a prevalent thought among Americans—especially among youth.

Whether it is a young person pulling the trigger, or a young person having their life taken away from them by another, the impact of gun violence falls disproportionately on our youth. A Center for American Progress study found that 54% of people murdered with guns in 2010 were under the age of 30. It also found that every 70 minutes an American under the age of 25 dies by gunfire.

Yet despite the heavy burden of gun violence falling disproportionately among young people, few public health research dollars go towards understanding this epidemic and try to solve it. Though we may have renewed public attention towards gun violence since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, we still have a long way to go. What’s holding us back?

Generally speaking, our leaders do not bear the same personal connection to gun violence as us younger people. We are the generation that grew up terrorized by the news of family members or friends who were victims of mass shootings. We are the generation that sacrificed class time to practice lockdown drills. We are the generation that is so quick to assume that the noise of a balloon popping is a gunshot. 

We—the American youth—deserve better than this. While I believe that our generation of leaders will address the issue of gun violence more actively, we should not have to wait. It’s time to put our political identities aside, and demand that serious action be taken to ensure that the American youth’s future does not unfold the way that current trends predict.