Students Reject Anti Gun “Ambulance Chasers” that descend on Colorado

Good for them standing up for themselves and the truth.

If the media cannot find some kid or parent to rant about writing more firearm restrictions this will fade into obscurity.

This next generation is called I-gen. There is a book on it that was really well written and full of statistics. They are I-gen from the I-phone and rise of smartphones. They have not known a time before it.

There are a variety of social and political views held by this generation. I work in a purple county of Colorado with students and have seem the gamut of views. Students have done everything from push back against the Florida kids to push the anti-gun narrative. I believe that the vast majority are silent, and like the vast majority of Americans, don't think or feel the strong thoughts those on this forum nor the anti-gunners think and feel. Many of them did a post-Parkland walkout to get out of classes, not because they believed in the narrative.

Generally, I-gen is heavily influenced by social media, and are avid users of twitter and snapchat. Facebook is for old people; they never have even heard of myspace. They feel more comfortable with a text, and the social media world is their world. When they get a threatened through social media, it is taken much more at face value than the older generation would take it. They do not date like the older generations (I'm talking X and before) and hang out in larger social groups, but are in constant communication with one another. There is a lot of depression and mental health issues in this generation and a lack of general coping skills from the lack of physical social networks. Bullying is 24/7 365, as there is the social media aspect of it.

Trunk Monkey said:

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Great video TM ! Thanks !

IlikeSA said:

This next generation is called I-gen. There is a book on it that was really well written and full of statistics. They are I-gen from the I-phone and rise of smartphones. They have not known a time before it.

There are a variety of social and political views held by this generation. I work in a purple county of Colorado with students and have seem the gamut of views. Students have done everything from push back against the Florida kids to push the anti-gun narrative. I believe that the vast majority are silent, and like the vast majority of Americans, don't think or feel the strong thoughts those on this forum nor the anti-gunners think and feel. Many of them did a post-Parkland walkout to get out of classes, not because they believed in the narrative.

Generally, I-gen is heavily influenced by social media, and are avid users of twitter and snapchat. Facebook is for old people; they never have even heard of myspace. They feel more comfortable with a text, and the social media world is their world. When they get a threatened through social media, it is taken much more at face value than the older generation would take it. They do not date like the older generations (I'm talking X and before) and hang out in larger social groups, but are in constant communication with one another. There is a lot of depression and mental health issues in this generation and a lack of general coping skills from the lack of physical social networks. Bullying is 24/7 365, as there is the social media aspect of it.

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The way I see it you just listed every single problem with the "latest generation".

If those issues aren't fixed we will continue to see school shootings as well as the degeneration of society.

Agreed. Some of them are getting ready to vote, and knowing that just one of them cancels out my vote scares me.

Good Ol' Boy said:

The way I see it you just listed every single problem with the "latest generation".

If those issues aren't fixed we will continue to see school shootings as well as the degeneration of society.

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george29 said:

I read somewhere today that millennials are becoming more conservative, they hardly watch TV, and they aren't promiscuous. Maybe the Lame-Stream-Media just makes us think they are mainly liberals?

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1. These kids aren't milennials. The milennials are now in the workforce or grad school.
2. I don't know what you're reading, but election results and exit polling doesn't really support the notion.
3. Promiscuity hasn't correlated well with political views for about 30 years, if ever.

Sorry, Gen Z. I can't keep up with who's who.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...TE-tattoos-Generation-Z-conservative-WW2.html

It's interesting how the reactions to a mass shooting are baked into prior assumptions. The Colorado shooting happened in a very conservative county. The Florida one in a very liberal county. Everyone local then reacted exactly as you would expect them to if you had only known the dominant party affiliation in the county.

One survey of 14 and 15 year olds... I wouldn't put much stock in that.

Madcap_Magician said:

It's interesting how the reactions to a mass shooting are baked into prior assumptions. The Colorado shooting happened in a very conservative county. The Florida one in a very liberal county. Everyone local then reacted exactly as you would expect them to if you had only known the dominant party affiliation in the county.

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Mass shootings are like a society-wide rorsach test... you see in them what you brought with you.

Good 'Ol Boy: You mentoned lots of depression and anxiety in "this generation". Maybe you're also describing many fresh college graduates
"The Wall street Journal" had an article a few days ago about college graduates who are brand-new in the workforce.

The article stated that bosses are reporting very frequent and widespread need for counselors to assist worker's stress and various anxieties. It was one of the stranger things I've ever read. And bosses must often say extra kind words to help them cope. I'm not exaggerating any of this.

Some of this view of the world must be very indirectly connected, but somehow linked, with the mental problems of so many high school kids who don't understand that the school is just a transient step, and instead finally totally Freak Out and decide to kill some classmates with a gun.
They could choose to use a large truck on a street, but decided to bring a gun as too many others have done. Their extremely fragile self-identities must consist only of what they see in social media?

Ignition Override said:

Some of this view of the world must be very indirectly connected, but somehow linked, with the mental problems of so many high school kids who don't understand that the school is just a transient step, and instead finally totally Freak Out and decide to kill some classmates with a gun.
They could choose to use a large truck on a street, but decided to bring a gun as too many others have done. Their extremely fragile self-identities must consist only of what they see in social media?

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I remember high school well, took time off, and then remember college well.
A big part of the problem is that high school is hardly geared to get people prepared for the world now, it's geared to prepare them for college. Many school lost their funding for career-oriented classes (wood, metal, and auto shops), and just have many have been moving away from the more social classes and creative outlets--arts, band, and the like.
They're punished for protesting against overbearing teachers, overreaching rules, and lately even if their complaints about them on social media reach the administration.
My core classes dumped half an hour of homework each on me, and I actively avoided advanced classes and academic electives so I could handle it. School from 8 to 3--seven classes total--then two to four hours of homework, and then a job so I could afford my own school clothes and an occasional movie on the weekend, and had to wake up before 6 in the morning to catch the bus to do it all again.
And school--and society in general--drills it at them that they must go to college or the best they can hope for is to manage a McDonalds.
High school is a terrible time for students, in that they're beginning to figure out who they are as a person, have less time and fewer outlets and social opportunities than previous generations did. Social media is by far their most available option, and that outright bombards them with all the worst that current news has to offer, along with ample opportunities for bullying.
And on top of all that, the system pushing them to college tells them that will be even more difficult (which has so far proven mostly false) but can't explain the record number of college graduates unable to find work in their field, why they're earning less, or why they have less in saving or investments than any other living generation. They already have everything about their future getting pushed on them and it's the best time of their life. With everything else they're increasingly able to understand but from the enforcement of their limited perspective, they can only conclude that means that it's never getting better.
Compounded with beginning to cope with the hormones and the changes the brain naturally makes during that time, it's no wonder so many suffer from anxiety and depression--which is also often when the purely clinical affects start to surface on their own. I'm very familiar with that part of the teens and young adulthood; in all honesty I mostly kept going purely out of spite.

It very much is a mental health issue, and it saddens me that so many people that speak out against gun laws also do so little to make it any easier to identify and treat the root cause, if only just saying "we dealt with it before, just suck it up."

And this is where it comes back to guns. See social media above: they get hit with all the most current, collected, sometimes hyperbole-splattered worst that the news has to offer, with blood and body counts at the top of the list--and usually with the perpetrator's name and sometimes even face plastered front, center, and larger than anything else on the page. When that depressed, anxious teenager (of which there are more now then ever) decides he's had enough, occasionally they decide they want to be remembered. And being stupid and getting drunk and wrapping his Honda around a tree, or chugging down the contents of his medicine cabinet might get a moment of silence at his school, delivering an acute lead overdose will probably get his name out across the continent.

And through all that, so many students understand that the causes really are a mental health thing. Contrary to popular belief, many really are astute enough to understand that, and to think critically and know very well to separate violence from reality and objects from actions.
And when they get the chance to call out an 'authority' that fails to see what the 'naive teenagers' clearly do, to speak out against anyone that yet again claims to speak for them without actually allowing them to step up to the microphone, to demand that respect be paid, and know they will be heard and understood, they jump on it.

I think some of y'all are reading much to much into the student and family reactions. They rejected the anti-gun jar. They equally would have rejected pro-gun jargon as well. It isn't that they were rejecting the anti-gunner arguments so much as they were rejecting the notion of turning what they naively believed to be a healing vigil into a political event. Everyone present should have known that such an event sponsored by a political action group (Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence) would turn political.

Yep.
They were just tired of having their grief used by others.

Double Naught Spy said:

I think some of y'all are reading much to much into the student and family reactions. They rejected the anti-gun jar. They equally would have rejected pro-gun jargon as well. It isn't that they were rejecting the anti-gunner arguments so much as they were rejecting the notion of turning what they naively believed to be a healing vigil into a political event. Everyone present should have known that such an event sponsored by a political action group (Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence) would turn political.

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Not sure I really agree we're reading that into it. But I would say that turning an event intended for a memorial to the dead into either a pro or anti gun political event would be wrong and very insensitive.

george29 said:

Sorry, Gen Z. I can't keep up with who's who.

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• Baby Boomer - Born 1946 to 1964
• Generation X - Born mid 1960s to early 1980s
• Generation Y - Born in 1980s to 1990s
• Millennial - Aged late 20s to 30s
• Generation Z - Teenagers to 20s

Generation Z are often anti-Millennial as they reject their older brothers/sisters' notions and beliefs (No free lunch). Generation Z are often self-starters, multi-taskers and are well informed (Grew up with Google, Youtube, etc.) and growing number are seeking solutions to problems and identifying with conservative grandparents.

Deus Machina: Your description was very profound and thought-provoking. I had no idea that today's teeneagers feel so 'pressurized' by so many things. Over 95% seems to be from media information overload?

When we were in our last year of high school, class of '73, I never heard of Any of this pressure. Maybe five tv channels, no computers and Zero constant flood of info, with so many agendas-now mostly to separate you from your cash, or influence your views of the world. We stood by cars at night, listened to 8-track tapes of "Ramble On" Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd etc, AM radio stations broadcasting long range "Jim Dandy'" Black Oak Arkansas via WLS, KAAY.

Nothing was ever presented as only Burger Thing vs. college. And none of our parents were into guns. Even if they had been, nobody that I knew was interested, or mentioned any parent's ownership of any.

But with a common enemy, let's remember what changes.
Guys in '41-'42 had mostly seen a tough life in the Depression, and could not accept that other countries wanted to kill thousands of Americans, and were in a hurry (even at age 16) to go fight the Nazis and Japs.
Also, after 9/11. I doubt that social media would have reduced their resolve to rid the world of these powerful threats.

Ignition Override said:

Over 95% seems to be from media information overload?

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Not sure if it's that high, but it's a good percentage. When you don't have the time to hang out by the car, you're less likely to have one (between inflation, the relative climb in used car prices, and the drop in relative wealth to be able to afford them), and the lack of malls, arcades, and bowling alleys or whatever, the TV and computer you're attached to to reach the outside world just bombards you with it.
I grew up in the last of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. I clearly remember 9/11 (I was playing hooky; see 'depression' above), and that marked a sudden shift in the media (and the society of groups, like school) that the world is out for you and they could come at any time, along with a new pressure to keep an eye out and don't stand out. Which compounded on the 'all safety all the time' and 'anti-bullying' work, which didn't work and often overreacted drastically.
Going to college since, the attitude has calmed down--or just become more apathetic--but the overreach barely has.
Now, more than then, the feeling of privacy is gone. Of course sometimes it's self-imposed (sharing on social media and unable to prevent a lot of it), but now they can be subject to parents or administrators finding what's in their phone or laptop.
At least back then, an enemy was a unifying force (nazis, the Japanese, the vietcong, communists, etc.) instead of 'they can run in and blow you up any time', and IMO the opportunity to catch up with the bigger kids that kept bouncing you off the lockers and square up to him after school kept the worst of the violent tendencies to personal matters.

Shortly after the tragic events, 9News (local Denver news station) was displaying Tweets about the shooting and where money should be spent on school security . My favorite was that "The NRA should pay for metal detectors in the schools".

Yep, and Ford should donate money to orthopedic hospitals for car accident victims, McDonald's should fund bariatric surgery, and the ASPCA should underwrite insurance premiums to pay for plastic surgery from dog bites... Derp!

The crazy is getting so extreme that it's becoming obnoxious to even apathetic people.

Some of these things are so wildly destructive of human freedom and indeed human life, that it's obvious that they can only be imposed by armed force. That can ONLY be done by disarming the intended victims. And that is starting to sink in.

Regardless of their generation or age, they showed maturity, and good critical thinking skills. Good for them.

Someone else described this stunt as ghoulish, and I think that’s a great way to put it.