High School Freshmen Unnerved By Age Of 14-Year-Old Georgia Shooter

Ninth grader Alex had questions about the school shooting: Where it happened. What gun the shooter used. Where the weapon came from. How many people died. Whether any of them were children, like him. Last month, after the massacre at Apalachee High School in Georgia, his first question was the one his mother dreaded most: How old was the shooter? “He was 14,” she said. “Wow,” Alex replied. “That’s my age.” On Sept. 4, he and millions of other 14-year-olds had just begun their freshmen years. This year, it began with word — from TikToks, Snaps, Reels, Stories, whispers from classmates and sit-downs with parents — that one of their peers had become the youngest alleged mass school shooter in a quarter-century, the Washington Post reports. Two more ninth-graders and two teachers were dead.

The lives of freshmen had long been shaped by the threat of gunfire in their classrooms. Nearly all of them had practiced how to hide in darkened corners from gunmen. Since they were kindergarteners, at least 245 shootings at K-12 schools have killed 110 people and exposed more than 213,000 students to gun violence. For many students, Apalachee was personal. “Why? How?” then-14-year-old Mackenzie Priest, of Minneapolis, asked when she learned how old the shooter was. “He’s the kid that should be afraid of being shot, not the one shooting.” A freshman in California grew so fixated on the shooter’s age — her age — that she began studying her classmates’ faces at lunch, wondering if one of them could draw a gun. A freshman in Alabama skipped his first homecoming game after his mother pleaded with him not to go. A freshman in Georgia, at a school 30 minutes from Apalachee, couldn’t shake the fact that he shared both the age and first name, Christian, of a student who was killed. After the shooting at Apalachee High on Sept. 4, The Washington Post issued a callout on social media for families with high school freshmen who had been affected by school shootings or the threat of them. Dozens of parents responded, describing profound effects on their children.