Illustration By Carla Labto / Staff
This is a joyful graduation season for South Bay high school seniors and their families. Another wave of COVID survivors declared victory over the virus and the hardships it placed on isolated students and frazzled parents.
No more drive-by commencements, take out celebration dinners in Styrofoam and campaign style yard signs with pictures of mortar boards. Rock bands and mariachi blared from backyards wafting with the aroma of carne asada and hamburgers. Streets were choked with cars whose back windows were covered in cheery well wishes scrawled with bars of soap.
From San Ysidro High School near the border to venerable SUHI in National City, our community rejoiced at an All-American rite of passage.
In the borough of Newtown, Connecticut, however, graduation season is muted and somber. Its class of 2024 paused frequently to acknowledge some teenagers who could not be there to celebrate their graduation.
They could not be there because they were dead.
This spring would have been graduation time for the youthful victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. It unfurled when an unhinged 20 year old stole his mother’s guns, killed her, then murdered six brave educators and 20 innocent children.
The kids were all 6 and 7 year olds. Their hopes and dreams died with them on the tile floors of their blood-soaked classrooms.
We wish we could report that this horrific tragedy sparked a national reckoning on America’s barbaric gun culture. We wish we could say that sensible legislation has made our nation safer from gun violence. We wish we could say that the children of Sandy Hook did not die in vain.
Sadly, we cannot.
Nothing has changed.
In fact, our nation has actually gone backward. For example:
• The 1994 federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in 2004 when the George W. Bush administration did not lift a finger to renew it. Repeated attempts in Congress to re-establish it have all failed, including a proposed bill named for Sandy Hook victims.
• 32 states now allow teachers and public school staff to carry concealed weapons on campus.
• Bump stocks – the sadistic attachment that transforms a rifle into a machine gun – are legal again thanks to a ruling this month by the Supreme Court. Bump stocks had been banned following the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting that killed 60 and wounded at least 413.
Sandy Hook is on the other side of the continent, but anyone who thinks a mass shooting cannot happen here is delusional. Southwestern College, in fact, narrowly missed being a killing ground in 1999 when a schizophrenic man drove from Missouri with an assault rifle, pistol and 265 rounds of ammunition to kill a professor and everyone around him. An alert teenager working at the gas station across the street prevented a certain massacre when he spotted the man loading his weapons and preparing to enter our campus.
Graduation Day has led the Editorial Board of the Sun to reflect on the achievements of our remarkable 17-year-old Associate Editor-in-Chief Nicolette Monique Luna, who graduated from Bonita Vista High School this month. Nikki joined The Sun as a 15-year-old BVHS sophomore. She won a state journalism award for her very first article, an extensive exploration of gun violence in San Diego County that focused on our South Bay community. Our progressive-leaning communities are, alas, awash in guns as well as the maladies and social stressors that push people to use them.
Nikki interviewed the families of victims and activists from San Diegans for the Prevention of Gun Violence. Like most sensible Americans, they said they were fed up with milquetoast politicians offering “thoughts and prayers” but no legislation to address gun violence.
Dual enrolled at BVHS and Southwestern, Nikki became Editor-in-Chief of El Sol Magazine, leading three issues – two of which (so far) have earned the collegiate Pulitzer Prize and a raft of other awards. She is the first high school student ever named National College Reporter of the Year and the only student ever to earn the San Diego Press Club award for community service. She has a bright future.
A young man with a gun snuffed out the futures of 20 children in Connecticut. Guns have killed at least 525,000 Americans since then. The number has steadily increased each year, surpassing 50,000 in 2023.
Right now thoughts and prayers are just about our only defense against gun violence. Meaningful change may depend on our generation, which has been on the wrong end of stressful lockdowns, phoned in death threats and terrifying encounters with shooters.
We are so happy Nikki graduated from high school. We wish the kids of Sandy Hook could have, too.
