From Classrooms to Closets: Gen Z’s Reality
I was ten years old the first time I remember experiencing a school lockdown. My classmates and I sat silently in the dark, tucked away from the windows. At first, I felt a strange sense of excitement—our language arts lesson had come to an unexpected halt, and part of me hoped we might stay in lockdown for the rest of the day. I didn’t yet understand what we were practicing for.
At sixteen, my high school received a threat of a potential shooter. The campus was nearly empty, most students stayed home, and police officers lined every hallway. I remember walking through the doors thinking, This is it. It’s finally happening to me. My hands shook as I clutched my phone like a lifeline, rehearsing what I would text my mom if I had to say goodbye.
By the time I was twenty-one, I had grown used to the notifications. When a message from campus security popped up on my phone—Active shooter reported on campus—my first thought wasn’t fear. It was: I hope this is over before my TA session. I have a midterm tomorrow.
In my lifetime, I’ve attended four different schools, from elementary school through graduate school. And in every single one, I have experienced a real-time threat of gun violence. Different cities, different ages, different campuses, but the same fear. The same alert. The same rehearsed response.
I’ve never been shot at. I’ve never lost a classmate to gun violence.
And still, I carry the weight of a generation that lives with the expectation that one day, we will.
We live with fear as routine. We live with grief as inheritance.
Looking back, I’m not sure when school stopped feeling like a safe place. Somewhere between the drills and the real threats, we all learned to keep one eye on the door and know where to hide. Safety became something we rehearsed, not something we felt.
The sound of the intercom could make my chest tighten. A door slamming in the hallway would send a ripple of silence through the classroom. We weren’t just learning math or history, we were learning how to stay quiet, how to make ourselves small, how to text our parents without making a sound.
Even now, years later, I still instinctively check for exits in crowded places. I still feel uneasy sitting with my back to the door. These habits aren’t part of an emergency protocol, they are part of who I have become.
We practiced hiding.
We practiced silence.
We practiced survival.
But no one taught us how to grieve at thirteen.
Or how to write an obituary at seventeen.
Or how to feel lucky that we lived long enough to graduate.
This is the reality my generation has grown up with.
Over 95 percent of K–12 schools in America now conduct active shooter drills. In the 2022–23 school year alone, more than 1,300 gun incidents were reported on school grounds—nearly four per day. For us, Run. Hide. Fight. isn’t a lesson, it’s muscle memory.
The numbers are staggering, but they’re not abstract—they’re personal. Behind every drill is a child wondering if today’s practice might one day be real. A child counting the steps to the closet. A teacher rehearsing how to lock a door while calming twenty third-graders.
Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States, surpassing car accidents. While politicians argue and delay, the gun industry continues to thrive, selling over 16 million firearms in 2023 alone.
We grew up watching the names scroll: Sandy Hook. Parkland. Uvalde. Oxford.
We read about kids our age—or younger—who didn’t get to walk out of their classrooms.
We saw backpacks turned into body bags.
And then we went back to school.
These aren’t just policies or procedures—they’re shaping our childhoods, our psyches, our sense of what’s normal.
The routine presence of fear in school hallways isn’t an unfortunate side effect.
It’s the direct result of political choices—of loopholes left open, of profit prioritized over protection.
We normalize trauma by turning it into protocol.
We teach children to barricade doors before they can multiply fractions.
We rehearse hiding before we rehearse graduation.
We were told we were the future—then trained to survive it, not shape it.
We are not desensitized.
We are exhausted.
But we are also determined.
It’s time to act.
Pass universal background checks. Ban assault weapons. Fund community-based violence prevention. Require safe storage. Hold the gun lobby accountable.
We don’t need more drills.
We need change.
And we won’t stop until we get it.
Angela Passalacqua is an intern with San Diegans for Gun Violence Prevention.
