Some of my silly classmates in Michigan in the 1950s.  (Photo: Ilse Jurgis)

Growing up in the United States was never easy. Certainly not during the decades following World War II. Not for displaced kids like me, at least, who were born amid foreign invasions and occupations. Whose families were forced to flee their homeland, leaving nearly everything behind. Including loved ones deported and imprisoned in godforsaken gulags. Nor for native-born American kids whose family members had served overseas and returned to a nation that knew almost nothing about armed conflict. Adults seemed all too ready to dismiss our difficulties. Parents responded by telling us how easy we had it compared to them, and healthcare providers responded by offering us platitudes and placebos. While young people these days have it better in these respects, they have also lost one important advantage that most of my generation took for granted: access to safe public places, particularly schools, where they could do dumb-assed kid things and still survive.

I remember the exact day that this started: 1 August 1966. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan and heard that someone had gone on a shooting spree at the University of Texas at Austin. Charles Whitman, a former Marine turned engineering student, had murdered his wife and mother and then brought several guns—including semi-automatics—to campus, killing 14 people and wounding 32 others, mainly from the 28th-floor observation deck of The Tower. An intelligent 25-year-old with a history of being abused by his father, Whitman claimed in writings left behind that he did not understand his own behavior and requested an autopsy. The Connally Commission was convened and concluded that a brain tumor “conceivably could have contributed to his inability to control his emotions and actions.” A aberration, we were conveniently led to believe.

Almost 52 years have passed since that day. And 19 since carnage occurred at Columbine High School in suburban Denver, where 13 people were shot and killed and 21 others were injured. And about five since 20 children between the ages of six and seven as well as six staff members and the shooter’s mother were slaughtered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. And only six weeks into the start of this year since seven multiple-casualty school shootings have occurred. Including the one last week at a high school in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were shot dead and 15 more taken to hospitals. Over those 50 some years, the  frequency and scale of such shootings has increased to such a degree that no one can, in good conscience, call them “aberrations” anymore. They have become so common  in the States—as opposed to anywhere else in the world—that a recent  Los Angeles Times headline read, “Here’s a morbid exercise: Can you keep track of which school shooting was the last before Parkland?”

So common that I needed a reality check. Had our schools ever been as safe as I remember them being back when I was growing up? And, if so, what changed in 1966? Not surprisingly, I had trouble finding definitive data. The federal government does not study gun violence in the States because The National Rifle Association has opposed any measure to fund research on or accounting of America’s gun epidemic. But I did find a list that I could pare down for my purposes. Here it is, with a brief description and number of casualties for each instance:

Best I could tell, more people were killed and injured in the Parkland high school incident alone than in the first 15-some years that I was in school. Many instances occurred in urban areas, with New York City and Chicago being overrepresented. Most resulted in single casualties, frequently non-fatal ones. And none involved the use of assault weapons resembling the ones used by Whitman in 1966. Which is why I believe 1966 can be considered a turning point, not only for me but also for countless students that followed. And for other victims of gun violence, including the troubled young people whose ill-considered acts could have concluded so differently had they not had such easy access to weapons designed for use by our well-trained soldiers.

On a positive note, I came to conclude that Parkland could be a turning point of another sort. Amid the all-too-familiar images of frightened kids collapsing in the arms of relieved parents and tearful teens carrying flickering candles in the dark, some images emerged that I had not seen in any meaningful way since I came of age in the Sixties. Students as angry activists, and for similar reasons. Many of my generation felt betrayed by adults in positions of power and decided it was time to take matters into their own hands. Particularly when it came to life-and-death issues. Back then, young men were forced by law to fight and die in a war that many felt was immoral by a government that many considered corrupt. Through mass protests and other means, they helped bring about (1) the end of the draft and the establishment of an all-volunteer armed forces, (2) the resignation of President Richard Nixon and (3) disengagement from the Vietnam War.

If my generation could effect such far-reaching change, imagine what a generation endowed with a wealth of technological resources could do. Particularly if mine uses these resources to keep reminding everyone that there was a time when classrooms were not killing fields and that, with leadership from today’s students, it could be like that again.

Note: To see what being a teen in the Sixties was like for me, read my short story “Winter Wonderland.” To see why Sandy Hook affected me on a personal level, read my essay “So You Know About Guns?” To learn about upcoming student-led gun control events that you can support, click here. And, if you happen to be a young person, feel free to take what you need from the past. I recommend that you start with “The Port Huron Statement,” written in 1962 by Tom Hayden, a University of Michigan student,