PBS News Hour

- Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for young Americans.

But this isn't just another story about gun violence.

More than a dozen student journalists have come together to explore what it's like to grow up in this generation.

- I survived and witnessed gun violence in downtown Orlando.

- Michigan.

- Oakland.

- Philadelphia.

- Tennessee.

- Washington, D.C. - People have to, like, wake up and realize that, like, this is bound to happen to everyone if there's no change.

- I don't care what the people in charge do, but do something.

- He was there... but then he wasn't.

- After the shooting, I would beg my parents to let me go outside to play.

But they wouldn't let me because they think that I would have got killed.

- I hate that we have to beg for safety.

But I love that we can come together.

- I believe in the power of thoughts and prayers.

Prayers without action is not going to do anything.

O0 C1 - My generation is facing a major crisis.

Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for young Americans, killing or injuring more than 5,000 teens in just the past year.

But I'm not here to share the usual depressing facts and statistics.

I'm here to share stories produced by more than a dozen student journalists from across the United States.

We spent months exploring what it's like for our generation to grow up in the shadow of gun violence -- how it feels, and how it impacts many people, even those who are never shot.

We also explored how young Americans are pushing for change and a safer future.

Our first story comes from student journalists at Michigan State University, which was the site of one of the nation's many mass shootings last year.

They found students who had already lived through similar traumas even before coming to college.

- Keep your hands up if you have experienced a lockdown drill before the age of 18... the age of 12... and the age of six.

- Before you learn ABC, you learn how to run, hide, and fight.

And that's where we've failed.

- Gun violence has become tragically familiar to people like Maya Manuel, a student at Michigan State University.

On February 13, 2023, three students lost their lives to a gunman.

During the shooting, students received text messages from the university instructing them to run, hide, and fight.

- ...inside an academic building and then later at a student union.

- Oh, my God.

- Officers raced in as students poured out.

- I'm Alexis Schmidt.

- And I'm Brianna Schmidt.

We're twins and student journalists who started attending Michigan State a few months after the shooting.

We wanted to talk to other students about their experiences with gun violence.

How do you think that, like, MSU students' perception of safety, like, on campus changed?

- You're trying so hard to get your degree.

You're trying hard to graduate.

You're trying hard to keep your job.

You're a college student with so many things going through your mind, and then all of a sudden, bam, everything is uprooted and changed.

Like, my perspective of life and who I was, is changed.

Trying to go back into classes was so difficult.

Every student, every janitor, whoever was impacted by the shooting now had to figure out a new way of thinking and a new way of life, because it was no longer, "I'm listening to your experience."

It's, "I am understanding your experience."

- For other students, like Kylie Ossege, this was not their first experience with the trauma of a mass shooting.

She was a senior at Oxford High School in 2021, when a gunman opened fire inside the school.

- The deadliest school shooting in three years... - Four students died that day, and seven others were injured, including Kylie.

She spent two months in the hospital and physical therapy recovering from her injuries.

She had to learn how to do a lot of basic things again, such as walking and brushing her hair.

- I came to Michigan State and I was so scared.

You know, living with PTSD like that is hard.

I would always tell myself, like, "This is never going to happen to you again.

The fact that it happened to you once is crazy.

Like, it's never going to happen to you again.

Just relax."

And then it happened to me again.

Like, I'm never going to tell myself again that this isn't going to happen to you because it did again.

People have to, like, wake up and realize that, like, this is bound to happen to everyone if there's no change.

I live in an all-boys hallway, and, you know, boys are, like, very loud and they love to, like, slam their doors and, like, scream down the hallway or run down the hallway for no reason.

Anytime that happens, it definitely, like, alarms me and I have to, like, calm myself down again, tell myself it's just boys.

- For Maya, the shooting has pushed her to become an activist.

- I hate that we have to beg for safety, and I hate that we can't feel safe.

But I love that we can come together and treat each other with compassion.

We can treat each other with empathy because we understand each other.

However, I want us to take that pain and I want us to push that into other change.

It's unfortunate that we share this sorrow.

We shouldn't have to be in this position.

And I'm sorry that we are.

- Despite her own pain, Kylie hasn't given up hope for a safer future.

- There's positive things that can come from every story.

Finding a way to turn tragedy into triumph.

You know, because there's so many negatives of the situation, that I think if you're able to, you know, show some strength, I think a lot of people can bounce off you.

It's important to kind of radiate that positivity around you.

- While school shootings got a lot of attention in the news, most gun deaths are suicides.

And violence happens everywhere, every day, in homes, at workplaces, and in neighborhoods.

This next story was made by a student who grew up in North Philadelphia.

When he moved away for college, he didn't realize just how much of his hometown he would be taking with him.

My name is Ethan Rodriguez.

I am currently a junior at Arcadia University, and I was born and raised in North Philadelphia.

Philadelphia is a city that is lovely but has lots of problems.

There are certain areas that are better than others.

There are some pretty serious things that happen here.

Urban violence does happen.

Gun violence does happen.

Drug violence does happen.

That doesn't mean that Philadelphia's filled with bad people.

I know so many amazing people in Philly.

When I was younger, I really enjoyed going to downtown Philly.

There are so many shops and so many places to go.

And since I took public transportation a lot, I was able to take the El and take it down to Center City with my friends after school.

It was usually the highlight of my day.

I think that Philadelphia is filled with hardworking, real people -- people who go to work, people who have kids.

It's unfortunate that this isn't always the greatest place to be.

In middle school, I had a classmate.

This classmate was a friend.

There was one day he stopped showing up, and of course, everyone just thought he was just being absent.

A few days after, the principal came into our classroom and notified us that he passed away due to being shot.

It was a really jarring day.

I believe I was in seventh grade.

It was hard because he was there.

He was there doing the assignments with us.

He was there in class.

We got paired together to work on a worksheet together.

He was there... but then he wasn't.

Gun violence wasn't something the adults explained.

I don't think I realized how much it impacted how I see the world until I moved to Arcadia.

I moved to Arcadia my freshman year of college, started living on campus full time.

It's a smaller county.

It's a lot quieter.

A lot of the urban issues of Philadelphia aren't prevalent here.

I think, if anything, Philadelphia made me realize that violence exists.

And that's not something you can just forget.

So much is happening in Philly that needs to change.

And I remember feeling really hopeless as a kid, feeling like my voice didn't necessarily matter, but it does.

And if it weren't for the things that I saw as a kid, I wouldn't have that drive or that passion for change, and I wouldn't be where I am now.

- I'm Jessica Beard.

I'm a trauma surgeon at Temple University Hospital, and I'm also the director of research at the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence Reporting We're in a very different time than we were even 10 years ago.

I think people want to understand deeper narratives of gun violence and public health solutions.

We're seeing true and deep investment from funders of research at the national level.

We're seeing trauma surgeons like me talking about gun violence, when they didn't 10 years ago.

And we're understanding that gun violence is a social justice issue.

And we're using that language to talk about it.

The root causes of gun violence are very complex, but what we know from our research is that they're really centered in the social determinants of health.

We looked at where gun violence happens in Philadelphia, and we found that the places where gun violence happens are the places that were redlined back in the 1930s.

So there's really a direct connection between gun violence that happens today and historic racism.

Several decades ago, doctors and public health people were working on car safety and safety related to tobacco and defining and understanding that smoking causes cancer.

We've made some inroads when it comes to car safety.

There's no smoking in public places.

That's a real win for public, for public health.

The things that seem to prevent firearm homicide are universal background checks and permit to purchase.

Other policies that are effective to prevent unintentional injury and firearm suicide are child access prevention laws and extreme risk protection orders.

I think one concern that people feel is that this is political.

But the truth is that we have evidence that these things can save lives.

What I would tell to young people is we are living in the time of gun violence prevention.

We are living in the time where there's attention being paid to it.

Keep in your mind that you don't have to live like this and that we can prevent gun violence.

- Gun violence can drastically alter the lives of people who just happen to be nearby.

Next, we'll hear from a teen in Oakland who says that seeing a shooting in her neighborhood completely changed her childhood.

- I've lived in Oakland my entire life and I'm now trying to find out how gun violence affects my community.

I talked to my classmate Yesenia about what she's experienced.

What's it like living in Oakland?

- The good thing to live in Oakland is the weather.

It's very, like, calm.

And the bad thing is, like, there's a lot of violence.

- Have you ever been a witness to gun violence?

- I was 7 or 8 years old.

That day, I was playing outside with my friends, and all we hear was like, just like people yelling at each other.

Out of nowhere, we seen somebody run.

So we just ran inside the house, and we were looking through the window and we seen another guy running with a gun.

He just shot him from behind.

- Can you explain how witnessing that made you feel?

- Witnessing that made me feel scared.

I think I was crying because I've never seen that before.

And I was like, just shocked that that happened.

After the shooting, my parents were more strict.

They didn't let me go outside.

- How did that make you feel?

Kind of like your childhood being limited.

- Just mad.

I would cry.

I would beg my parents to let me go outside, to go to like my neighbor's house and play.

But they wouldn't let me because they think that I would have got kidnapped or killed, and they don't really let me go out now because they're scared.

- If you had a chance to say something to your 7-year-old self, what would you say to her?

- Don't worry, keep on trying.

- Despite the political divisions in our country, there is broad consensus that things need to change.

Last year, a Pew survey found 60% of Americans believe gun violence is a very big problem.

Next, we'll meet a young woman who grew up with guns and wants to see gun safety become a bigger priority.

- Isabella Hipp is a junior at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, and an advocate for gun safety.

She grew up around guns in a military family that moved around a lot.

- Oklahoma, the border of Texas.

And then I went to Seattle, and then I went to Georgia, and we went back to North Carolina, and now I'm in Tennessee.

My dad is a gun owner.

He grew up in a very small town in North Carolina, so he was very used to, "Let's go shoot some rabbit."

Most Southern you could get.

So when I was a kid, I was used to, "Oh, yeah, you have a family, you probably have guns in your house."

It was not something that was weird to me at all.

When I was 12, I got my first shotgun, and it was a pink camouflage shotgun from Walmart.

[ Laughs ] And it was a birthday present because my dad wanted me to go hunting with him.

But before I was ever allowed to touch that gun, I had to go through a safety course.

And it taught you everything from about the proper way to hold a gun, how to point it, how to use it.

- What is that like for you -- like, growing up around gun safety, knowing how to properly use a gun -- to see people here in America using it so irresponsibly?

- It all started for me in 2020, when I was 17 years old.

My mom and I were like, "Well, let's take a girls' day."

So we went to the mall, and with it being 2020, masks were required.

But we had left ours in the car, and so we decided to just go to security office and grab some new ones.

So, we go down this really long hallway and I hear shots going off, and in my head I was like, "Did something break the glass?

Did the ceiling fall through?"

And I was processing everything what felt like in slow motion.

It was like 30 seconds, but really it was probably like five, three.

And in that span of like three seconds, I grabbed my mom's hand and I looked at her and I went, "Run, and do not stop running."

And the second we got to the car and my mom started driving, I looked at my hands, and my hands were locked up, kind of like this.

And it was in that moment that I realized I had just experienced something that I would never be able to change or erase or move.

And since that night, I immediately started having nightmares, and I felt so much at once that something, as a 17-year-old, I couldn't really comprehend.

My dad has PTSD from being in the military.

So, him seeing his daughter experience something that he sees in himself and his soldiers, was something that was really hard to watch.

The thing that angered me the most was seeing people say, "Never forget," because everyone does forget.

But for me, I couldn't forget.

I could never go back to going to sleep the same way.

Every time I go to a mall, it's still there.

- But that wasn't Isabella's only experience with gun violence.

- And then I moved to Belmont, moved to Nashville, and Covenant happened.

- First to the attack in Tennessee's capital city that left the shooter and six people dead, including three children, at a church-run school.

- It's three miles down the road.

It's really close.

That was the deadliest shooting in Tennessee history.

Instead of being anxious all the time, it almost just made me want to fight back more.

There was a march that was specifically for college students.

So I went, marched to the Capitol, protested pretty much all day.

It was really cool.

- You have a lot of courage yourself, like being in Students Demand Action.

So, like, what got you involved in that?

- Students Demand Action is an organization that is committed to young adults like me wanting to go against gun violence.

You see all this injustice happening and you want nothing more than to just do something about it.

As someone that was able to comprehend how dangerous that weapon is and how to properly use it from the age of 12, it really shouldn't be that hard to say, "Hey, because of the unfortunate circumstances of our society, let's put in some background checks."

Prove that you have a place to store them.

Do a mental health evaluation every six months.

- So, what gives you hope?

- I'd like to say that I'm still a hopeful person, even though I've faced a lot of things that I shouldn't have faced.

I am a person of faith.

The day of the Covenant shooting, my church actually opened its grounds for people to come and sit and pray.

My pastor stood onstage and I remember him saying, "I believe in the power of thoughts and prayers.

Prayers without action is not going to do anything."

And seeing him say that was so empowering to me.

No matter your political affiliation, no matter your age, no matter your generational difference, whether you own a gun or not, the majority of America actually believes and is pro gun safety.

So, something that gives me hope is seeing other people my age advocating for the same things.

[ Conversing indistinctly ] - Many Gen-Z Americans are not just sitting back and watching others debate the issues.

They're getting involved and pushing for change.

After the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, more than a million people protested as the youth-led movement March for Our Lives began.

But it was the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that pushed Maxwell Frost into politics as a teen.

A decade later, he ran for office and won, becoming the youngest member of Congress.

- How has gun violence impacted your life and you?

- I think a lot of times, the way we think about gun violence is very narrow-minded.

It's like a school shooting and that, and like, you know, if you were there, you survived it.

I survived and witnessed gun violence in downtown Orlando.

Being out with some friends, Halloween -- We're just hanging out.

Wrong place, wrong time.

Two guys are arguing I think over some, like, over a woman they had brought or something, and somebody pulls out a gun and starts shooting the other guy.

And I remember just this whole group of people, all of us just sprinting for our lives.

One of my friends goes into shock and falls on the floor.

And then we're in safety, we're sitting in the car, and then we were like, "Let's go to the next thing."

We just kind of, like, brushed it off.

And it wasn't until years later, I was sitting in like a roundtable with other survivors of gun violence.

I didn't count myself a survivor.

And I was hearing everyone's stories, and like four people told a story very similar to mine.

And I was like, "Wow, there are so many people who don't realize that they're surviving or have survived gun violence."

But when a gun goes off with that kind of mal intent or even accidentally, and you're there and you survive, you've survived gun violence.

And the fact of the matter is, a lot of this country, a lot of people have survived gun violence in their lives and don't even know it.

And it's part of what shows that this issue is not some far-out thing that you see on the news.

It hits home for you.

You're not that many degrees separated from someone who's probably lost someone due to gun violence.

- How do you think young people can play a role in shaping gun violence policies?

- We lose 100 people a day due to gun violence.

Hundreds of people are shot every day.

And I just think that's unacceptable.

So I think people should find power in running for office, protesting, direct action, of course voting, of course mutual aid, community violence intervention.

Right.

There's like -- art, culture.

There's so much you can do.

And don't let anyone tell you that what you're doing is the wrong way to advocate, because we're going to need everything we got to fix this problem.

The power I have right now as an elected official is borrowed power.

You know, my community is letting me borrow this power for this amount of time, whatever it is.

But the power of, like, the people in our communities, it's forever.

And that's something that people should always remember.

- Why is it important for young people to be involved in change?

- Well, young people have been at the forefront of every social movement that's led to massive change in this country's history.

The reason why I can sit here, have the right to vote, and I'm a congressman, it's because of leaders, right, like that were part of SNCC -- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee -- who participated in direct action and then also encouraged people to go vote, right?

And it was all these things that worked together to where we can be here doing this right now.

- What gives you hope?

- What's given me hope for the past 10 years have been the other organizers I've worked with, but specifically the mothers and family members who have lost sons, daughters, children, but have decided to honor their lives with action.

I'll tell you something that gives me a lot of hope, too, about our generation is we like to create.

You know, we're like a very entrepreneurial generation, whether it's art or create an organization or this and that.

I think that's part of what's going to save us.

So I would encourage people to pick what you want to do and fight for justice and see the world through the eyes of the most vulnerable in whatever that is, but have like a mutual respect for people who might be doing it in a different way.

- Telling the stories of people whose lives have been cut short by gun violence has become the mission of this next student from Washington, D.C. She lost three loved ones before she finished high school, but she's been able to turn her pain into helping others through her activism, artwork, and her creation of a healing space for other students.

- When it hits home, it hurts different.

I lost my cousin Domoni Gaither.

Four years later, I lost my cousin Kyndall Myers, in 2022.

She had just graduated from high school.

And then five months later, I lost my friend Akira Wilson.

- Kanihya was just 11 years old when gun violence first became a part of her life.

- Moving through life, knowing that you can no longer see your cousin every day, it makes you think about life differently, especially at a young age, because I was only in sixth grade.

And it causes you to either have depression, PTSD, anxiety, stress.

Overall, it's, like, very overwhelming.

- After losing two of her cousins, Kanihya started an organization called Broken Concrete.

- When you think of broken concrete, you think of something that is heavy, and that's what it feels like when you lose people to gun violence.

Like, your heart is literally, like, shattered.

- Kanihya also started a support group at her high school, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, to create a safe space to discuss topics related to gun violence.

- The club has helped me stay motivated and stay goal-oriented.

I'm very passionate about what I do.

So knowing that other people are willing to do the same or, like, be a catalyst to our community, it just helps me stay motivated overall.

- 'Cause nothing is ever going to get them back.

That's like the hardest part to really recognize.

- Seeing how impactful that Broken Concrete has been as far as, like, hearing, "Oh, I appreciate you a lot."

"Nobody has, like, ever told my baby's story as like you do."

You know, it motivates me.

What gives me hope is knowing that I am telling their story.

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