In the 1960’s, campus protesters coined the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over 30”. It was meant to imply that anyone older than a Baby Boomer was inherently dishonest or did not have society’s best interests at heart. I would offer that it is time to coin a new phrase “Fear everyone born after 1980”–because it is becoming more and more clear that Millennials and those in Generation Z are a clear and present danger to our society and our nation as a whole.
This week’s shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison is the latest in a never-ending series of high-profile acts of violence perpetrated by a member of one of those generations. It is time for Americans to ask the question: Where were all of the school shootings before Millennials showed up?
Most would consider the start of our “modern era” of school violence as the attack on Columbine High School by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in 1999. Both of them were 18-years old at the time–born in 1981. Because I didn’t want to mis-state that there were “practically no” such shootings before that, I looked at the history of those incidents and found that there were several school shootings a year before that. But wouldn’t you know that starting in 1995, mass shooting incidents in schools had already started to increase–with perpetrators usually ranging in age from 12 to 17–again, kids born in 1981 or later.
Generation Z has not only kept up the youth violence trend–but they have accelerated it. In the years that my generation, Gen X, was in school (1970 to 1998), there was an average of 20 school shootings a year in the US. With Millennials in the classroom from 1985 to 2014, that average doubled to 40 shootings a year. And now that Gen Z has filled schools since 2002, that has exploded to an average of more than 200 annually–with a record 349 in 2023 and another 327 so far this year. Just think what those numbers would have been if so many public schools had not gone to virtual learning for the better part of two years during the pandemic?
I will grant you, not all school shootings are committed by kids attending those schools, but the Sandy Hook School shooting was perpetrated by a man born in 1993. The Uvalde, Texas shooter was born in 2004. In cases where older adults have committed mass shootings at schools, the majority stemmed from custody battles over children of divorce, or spouses themselves were targeted.
And it’s not just schools that are Millennial and Gen Z killing grounds. The first man that tried to kill Donald Trump this year–Thomas Crooks–was born in 2003. Luigi Mangione–the man who killed the UnitedHealthCare CEO in New York earlier this month was born in 1998.
And let’s talk about Mangione for a minute. The day after the shooting–and before the suspect had been identified–I heard three of our youngest employees here at the Radio Ranch discussing the incident in an almost gleeful fashion. “I hope that guy gets a couple more of those (expletives)!” and “Those health insurance guys have got it coming” were among the statements clearly made within earshot of everyone.
And my co-workers are not alone in condoning killing in cold blood. Once the arrest had been made, #FreeLuigi was trending on social media platforms. Multiple on-line fundraising efforts were launched to pay his legal fees–even though he comes from a wealthy family that can easily afford the best legal defense. The heads of other health insurance and healthcare companies were “doxxed”–with their home addresses put up in a “hit list” style across the internet. Young adults even went so far as to call for boycotts of McDonalds because it was an employee there that called police leading to the arrest–and giving terrible ratings to the hostel where Mangione stayed the night before the murder because it provided police with security camera footage of him checking out that day.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that college campuses across the country erupted in protest in October of last year not after Hamas perpetrated a terrorist attack on Israel, but because Israel launched military action against Hamas fighters hiding among civilians in Gaza. The October 7th attacks were celebrated (although in smaller numbers) before the encampments were set up.
Back to the Abundant Life shooter again. In the investigation into her possible motives, police found that she was in contact with a California man that was helping her develop her attack plan. His age? 20. And he was working on his own plan to stage a mass shooting on a government building in his home state.
So how did we get here? How do we have two consecutive generations of Americans that hold so little regard for human life, and see violence as a justifiable means to get what they want? For that, I will point the finger at those of us born before 1981.
There has been a seismic shift in the way children are raised over the past few generations. Baby Boomers thinking they were “rebelling” against the societal norms of the past took a much more hands-off approach to child-rearing for those of us in Gen X. The desire for conspicuous consumption drove the rise of two-income families, moms working outside of the home full-time, and the term “latch key kids” for those of us who came home from school in the 1980’s and 90’s to empty houses every afternoon.
It was those of us in Gen X that (perhaps to compensate for the disconnection some felt toward their own parents) decided to be less “parental” and more “friendly” with our kids. There was less discipline, and more blaming of others for their kids failing to be “the best” at everything. It gave rise to sports programs that didn’t keep score, handed out participation trophies to everyone, and guaranteed equal playing time to everyone regardless of talent or ability.
Then came “helicopter parents” and “snowplow parents”. The first were ever-present in their kids lives, organizing every single moment of their days, and smothering their child’s efforts to gain independence.–the other doing everything possible to ensure that their child never experiences failure or difficulties in life, even if that required destroying relationships with other adults or even engaging in illegal activity like bribing admissions directors at prestigious schools. All practices that leave kids ill-equipped to deal with the slightest inconveniences or challenges in life.
And the last two generations have also experienced the decline in American education. Millennials’ arrival in the school system coincided with the rise of Balanced Literacy as a way to teach kids how to read. The resulting drops in literacy rates and comprehension scores have permanently disabled the learning abilities of two entire generations. Gen Z took the double-barreled hit of also getting stuck with Common Core math–which as resulted in similar declines in mathematics performance in the classroom.
But parental actions and academic decline combined doesn’t explain the rise in mental health issues and maladjustment of so many under the age of 40. Those generations were also subjected to the start of the global warming scare campaign. Starting in the 1990’s Al Gore was out with his predictions that the polar ice caps would be melted away by the end of the century, polar bears would all be dead, and that humanity as a species was doomed. Then Greta Thunberg–a high school dropout who, like Millennials and Gen Z’ers, was a teenager herself–was elevated as a “voice of a generation”, berating adults at the United Nations and scolding the rest of the world for “taking away her future!” Who is going to adopt a positive outlook for their own lives when those messages are being beaten into your head non-stop?
And let’s not discount the effect that relaxing of drug laws are having on younger generations as well. Increased legality and access of marijuana and THC products has led to rising cases of psychosis in younger users. Doctors are frustrated because federal drug laws make it difficult to do research on the long-term effects of pot use–while the free-for-all that is state-by-state drug policy makes entire populations “test cases” living outside of clinical settings.
For years, whenever someone would ask what age I hoped to live to, I would answer that I wanted to die the day before the Socialists took over the country. Now the answer is I hope I’m dead before the crazies in the generations behind me get in control.
