For students, mass shootings are defining fear, poll finds
Most of those surveyed were born after the Columbine massacre
WASHINGTON – The threat of mass shootings is the defining fear for the generation that has grown up in the shadow of Columbine, a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds. Now more than 1 in 3 young people nationwide say they plan to join the March For Our Lives protests on Saturday in person or via social media.
The survey of 13- to 24-year-olds – including more than 600 middle- and high-school students – shows both the depth of anxiety that school violence has fueled and the way a movement has spread across the country in the weeks since a rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, left 17 people dead.
On Tuesday, another school shooting in Great Mills, Maryland, left the alleged shooter dead and two other students wounded.
“I watch over my shoulder because you never know,” says Justin McDonnall, 17, a sophomore at North Central High School in Hymera, Indiana, who was among those polled. Even in his small town, which he describes as being in “Nowhere USA,” police spent two days at his school to deal with verbal threats of gun violence that a fellow student had made. With the marches, he said, “We’d like to be heard, and not just ignored.”
Eighteen percent of the young people polled, including 21 percent of those 13 to 17, say they will participate in the marches.
If they do, it would mean the most massive student-led protests in American history, dwarfing even the anti-war demonstrations of the Vietnam era. An additional 24 percent say they will participate using social media.
“I think the protesting is ... really great because it’s showing younger kids that you need to stand up for what you believe in,” Madeline Meyers, 14, an eighth-grader at Nikolay Middle School in Cambridge, Wisconsin, said in a follow-up phone interview. “If you believe that armed teachers is not the answer, if you believe that guns in school is not the answer, then you need to show that.”
The USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll is unusual because it included not only those 18 and older but also those from 13 to 17. Parents were required to give their permission before the minors could participate.
“The March for Our Lives and #NeverAgain movements has been organized and powered by young people, but before now we have not known how all the youth of our country feel about gun-control issues,” says Cliff Young, president of the polling firm Ipsos. The new survey “helps us hear their voices and understand they are tired of waiting for us to protect them.”
Those surveyed put gun violence/ crime at the top of the list of topics they find most worrying. The fear is more pronounced among those under 18: 53 percent in the younger age group cite gun violence as a major worry, compared with 32 percent of those in the older group.
For both, the category outranked every other concern, including terrorism, racism, college affordability and climate change.
Since these young people enrolled in elementary school, mass shootings have been a reality. The Columbine High School massacre in Colorado was in 1999, when the oldest in this group, the 24-year-olds, were just 5 years old. The youngest were born six years after Columbine.
Now nearly 1 in 5, 19 percent, say they don’t feel safe at their schools. Twenty-five percent say it’s very or somewhat likely that a classmate will bring a gun to school. Fifteen percent say it’s likely there will be a shooting at their school.