FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 14, 2025
(Rhinebeck, NY): The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus (“The Campaign”) issued the following statement in response to yesterday’s shooting at Brown University and today’s remembrance of the Sandy Hook massacre:
“Chances are if you were in the Brown University classroom for final exams when gunfire tore through the tranquil campus climate, striking eleven people, killing two students and sending the entire school into hours of sheltering in place and mass evacuation, you have grown up in the Lockdown Generation. Campuses are collectively captive by this insidious epidemic. The true pathway out of such captivity is not protection – it is emancipation.
Others may say you cannot imagine nor prepare for such terror. Yet, ask anyone under 25 and it is hardly unimaginable. It is who we are and what we have become, until we decide and demand a major course correction. “Run, Hide, Fight” should hardly be normal words of instruction but they are shouted from on high regularly. Over 50 colleges and universities in this semester alone have experienced campus-wide closures and evacuations by direct or threatened acts of gun violence, including recent trauma at Kentucky State and now Brown.
The Lockdown Generation knows this domestic-born terror well as today marks 13 years since the Newtown massacre, an act so brazenly horrendous the nation thought we would find our way out of this trajectory into the light of a saner future. Survivors of Sandy Hook are college-aged today. Until we identify the true if not obvious sources, influences and triggers of this epidemic, and reach for the larger solution, then we are only positioned and mobilized for a second generation in lockdown. As Princeton University Professor Ruha Benjamin proclaims in Imagination – A Manifesto, “unless the old scripts animated in false notions of superiority and inferiority are ripped to shreds, we will be caught in an endless purgatory, forced to inhabit the same tired roles as we advance predictable and deadly plots.”
How do we find our way out of the “endless purgatory?” The Campaign proposes an obligation to bear witness, listen and demonstrate in a collective campus voice across the nation, one rejecting a status quo preparing for the “inevitable.” The Campaign shares the appreciation for medical and law enforcement responders. Still, let it be known and advanced the definition of first responders be expanded. It is students, faculty and staff on the frontlines of campus gun violence. Let it be amplified with gratitude their regular, brave and noble actions.
Furthermore, to pass this examination requires a holistic, honest and transparent assessment of the impact and cost of the epidemic. This includes research and accountability to the totality of victims. Brown has eleven direct victims, killed or injured, but thousands traumatized by sheltering and evacuating. Additionally, campus-wide closures include cancellation of exams as well as university year-end special events. The Campaign insists communities (and the country) be fully educated on the price being paid.
The Campaign will mark the end of 2025 in solidarity with the sorrow of students, a generation that knows well the reality of the enduring epidemic. Let us lean into 2026 determined to be free of this imposed and cruel chaos. Emancipation and liberation provide the keys to serenity and tranquility. May the course correction required include new word choices as well, from “Run, Hide, Fight” to “Stand, Demand, Unite.” May we follow the examples, as Professor Benjamin instructs, “who demand that we smash death-making structures and construct new ones that give us life.”
Founded in 2008, The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus works with K-12 schools, colleges and universities across the country to oppose legislative policies that would force loaded, concealed guns to be carried on campuses. Through education, outreach, coalition-building, and legal action, The Campaign works to foster a safe learning environment for all and is the only national organization of its kind tasked with protecting higher educational institutions and the communities they serve. Follow us on Facebook, BlueSky, X and Instagram.Contact: John McKenna, Executive Director, The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus ([email protected])
