An open letter to Gen Z: “You’re our only hope”

First off, on behalf of myself, my fellow Gen Xers, Millennials, and Boomers, I’d like to offer Gen Z our sincerest apology for continually failing to protect you at your most vulnerable.

The fact that we allow school shootings to continually claim your classmates is a crime akin to genocide. Guns are now the number one cause of death for children in America. Not cars. Not strangers with candy in windowless vans. Guns and school shootings. 

All this happened on our watch beginning in 1999 with Columbine, when I was 25 years old. So that one, and every school shooting since then is also on me. I’ve been a voting adult a long time and have allowed this senseless murdering to continue under my watch.

Myself and the rest of us older folks allow your fellow youth to be killed in the classroom because we lack the collective courage to do what is right and lack even the smallest amount of empathy for you — defenseless children just trying to get an education and hang out with friends.

We care so little about you that we barely make time anymore to ask “why does this keep happening?” 

We’re numb to 9-year-old shooting victims and scenes of survivors crying and covered in blood, like the unfeeling and cruel monsters we’ve become. 

You may not know all this since you’ve been busy hiding under your desk hoping not to die, but the so-called “adults” among us think the gun issue is just too hard to solve. Plus, we instinctively know doing so would require all three generations to collectively admit we spent decades bending a knee to gun nuts while you died needlessly because for so long we lacked the courage to do what’s right. 

It’s sick, I know. We can’t say sorry enough for failing you. But don’t hold your breath for any mass “mea culpas” anytime soon. Apparently, we don’t even have enough backbone for that. 

In the face of all our failures, I wouldn’t blame you for telling me to take this weak-ass apology and stick it somewhere uncomfortable. You should be furious for the foreseeable future.

However, having said all that, we kinda need a small favor for you all. 

Clearly, we don’t have the requisite courage of conviction to take on the gun nuts and their elected minions in Congress. 

So … Can you do it for us? Please? 

Go after the gun lobby, the politicians who lick their boots, the gun nuts who pose for family photos around the Christmas tree cradling their AR-15s like only you can. 

You have the skills, fortitude, and a proven track record for political impact, and half of you aren’t even old enough to vote yet. Last year’s midterm election wasn’t the “Red Wave” most predicted because of your turnout at the polls. Thanks for that, by the way. 

Can I make a suggestion? I know it’s not earned, but just hear me out. It’s yours to take or leave — clearly we haven’t done much to gain your trust or attention. 

But perhaps you could use your keen ability to mobilize online to organize a nationwide school walkout to let the rest of us know that this will not stand. 

If you stopped going to school, I think the supposed “adults in the room” would take notice. 

Organize a walkout from coast to coast. Young kids and college students alike. Just walk out. 

If you did that, and let Americans know you’ll do it again and again until they take serious measures to curb gun violence and end school shootings once and for all, politicians would soon realize you folks will vote the bums out for failing to heed your will. 

You do that, and I’ll pledge my undying support to your effort. I think lots of other gutless geezers would too once you took up the mantle of leadership on ending gun-obsessed America’s tyranny. 

You’re already going to make big changes in gun laws when you get a little older. So why not start now? Lead us out of this abject insanity by refusing to attend those shoot galleries we now call schools until you feel it’s safe to return. 

I make my final appeal by paraphrasing an incredible teen who also led a group of those much older than she into battle over the forces of evil. I’m speaking of course of a young Princess Leia. 

Help us Gen Z, “you’re our only hope.”