It was strange to see pictures of employees fleeing the King Soopers in Boulder wearing their uniforms and aprons – like the ones she and her colleagues wore every day, she told CNN. After the massacre, “Every day when I went to work, I thought about where the exits were and where I would go if I heard gunfire,” Megan W. CNN agreed to use only the first letter of Megan’s last name in light of her privacy concerns.
“Every time a client becomes verbally offended, I wonder, will that be it?” The 32-year-old said. “Will they pull out a gun or come back with one?”
Many, like Megan, described a new, obsessive habit of identifying escape routes or hiding places in crowded gatherings, or avoiding certain public places altogether. Parents expressed fear of sending their children to school or a desire to move abroad. The teachers said that they had left the career of their choice.
For some, these harsh feelings are new, emerging after mass shootings such as those in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and a primary school in Uwalde, Texas. But for others, this anxiety has been building up for years as the list of shootings grows longer – and the feeling of fear grows with the death toll. As of June 23, there had been 279 mass shootings in the United States since the beginning of the year, according to the Arms Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shooting as killing four or more people except the shooter. This means that so far this year there have been more mass shootings than there have been days – a trend that is observed in 2020 and 2021.
“It simply came to our notice then. Not if, but when, ”Megan said.
“When will my unfortunate day be?”
He is planning a way to escape from public events
Ryan Trot, a 47-year-old father of four in Sacramento, California, recently attended high school graduation with his family. But sitting in the auditorium, he felt vulnerable and could not help but mentally plan his family’s escape if a shooting broke out, identifying exits and potential hiding places.
“This is one of the first things that comes to my mind now,” he said. “What were we going to do?” Where would we go? How to hide? … How to provide shelter? Where to throw my children; to lie on them so as not to hurt them?
In the morning, when he spoke to CNN, Trot planned to take his children to a local pride parade. He has already chosen a place to watch, he said, one with a shelter nearby and a park right behind him that would help them escape if his worst nightmare became a reality.
“Am I becoming extremely paranoid? No,” he said. “It’s just the world we live in. I have little ones to protect.”
She stopped going to her local grocery store
Glenda Prince stopped walking at her local supermarket outside Austin, Texas, fearing that the store, which has mostly black customers, could be targeted – like the one where the Buffalo shooting took place last month.
“Now I rarely go to a supermarket that is mostly black,” said Prince, a 62-year-old black grandmother. “I just prefer to go to a supermarket where the audience is more mixed, not just one nationality, so that I’m not separate or that particular supermarket is not separate.”
Prince, a British citizen who has lived in the United States since the 1980s, now drives about 20 miles to Austin to shop. She also walks less often, and when she does, she tends to go late at night when she is less busy. She is aiming for that extra effort, she said, because she wants to see her 7-month-old grandson live to turn 18.
“Before all that, you just didn’t think about it. You just lived your life and walked and did what you had to do,” Prince said. “Now you have to think about it and just don’t put yourself in danger.”
“But,” she added, “no one knows the harm anymore.”
They are considering leaving the country
By all accounts, Ryan and Sandra Hoover, ages 38 and 37, live an “idyllic” life in Ashburn, Virginia, with their 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, Ryan Hoover told CNN. But now the couple is actively seeking to relocate from the United States due to growing gun violence.
The conversation began partly as a joke, they said, but became more sincere after the shooting at Rob Elementary School in Uwalde. Ryan Hoover has already spoken to his boss about working outside the country, describing new life outside the United States as something “square on the table.”
“We drive a Volvo XC90 … the safest car in the world. We live in a safe, rich area. We feed our children healthy food,” he said. In other words, “we do everything we can to protect ourselves. And then we send them out, and every day when they get on the bus, I have to mentally suppress those horrible thoughts.”
For the Hoover family, it’s not a question of whether they can raise their children in the United States, but if they want to, Ryan Hoover said.
“How can we live a sustainable, happy, fulfilling life,” Hoover wondered, “with this apparent ghost of evil lurking around the corner?”
She is afraid to send her children to school
The day your child goes to school for the first time should be a milestone that every parent looks forward to, said Erin Rim, 34. She is the mother of a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old child in Madison, Wisconsin.
“But that feeling is gone for me.”
After the shooting of Uwalde, Rome was “absolutely terrified” to send her children to school. Next year, her 4-year-old will go to kindergarten, and although she knows “intellectually” that the chances of her son facing such a shooting are low, “she doesn’t feel so emotional, especially because there’s so little you can do.” to do, ”she said.
“I’ve been to this building before for various events, and every time I go, I just think about the situation of an active shooter and my little 5-year-old in this building,” she said. “It just makes me sad that this is the image I have in my mind that I’m sending my child to school for the first time.”
He is still too young to talk about what to do in an active shooter situation, Rome said.
“But that’s something I’m already thinking about – how am I going to have these conversations with a 5-year-old about what to do if there’s, you know, a shooter in your school.”
She feels “helpless” as she hugs her kindergarten to say goodbye
Other parents are dealing with similar fears, including Tony Leaf-Odette, who told CNN that when she says goodbye to her kindergarten, she makes sure her 6-year-old daughter knows her mother loves her.
“Sometimes I think of those parents who had that moment or maybe didn’t have that moment and lost their children,” said the mother of 38-year-old Traverse City, Michigan. “It’s this fear that she might go to school and have a horrible experience or not have a horrible experience.”
“I feel helpless,” she added, “because all that would be needed is for someone to decide somewhere to come in and end my child’s life for that to happen. And there’s really nothing I can do about it. “
This is not a new feeling for Lif-Odette, who has experienced similar thoughts around her two older children – an 8-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old son who has just graduated from high school.
He was in elementary school when the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, occurred in 2012. Nearly a decade later, she still has vivid memories of how she picked him up from school after the massacre that killed 20 elementary school students. school and 6 adults.
“I remember him wearing a blue down coat and thinking the same about him,” she said, “that we’re in a new world now, where you can obviously go in and shoot kids while they’re hiding in the closet.”
He buys a gun for the first time in his life
For most of his life, 66-year-old Gary Bixler of Springfield, Ohio, has been opposed to gun ownership, he said. When he grew up, all he ever owned was a BB gun. But that changed about a year ago when he and his wife bought a gun each.
“We have an alarm system in our house and we have always had German shepherds. No one has ever tried to break into our home,” Bixler said. “We didn’t buy (the weapons) for home security. We bought (them) for our security.”
Bixler’s wife (who has owned a gun in the past) has also taken the necessary courses to obtain her concealed carry license – something Bixler still plans to do, he said, despite a new state law that allows eligible adults to carry a concealed pistol without training or a license. They still haven’t told their older son, Bixler said, because he would object.
Today, Bixler’s wife carries her gun with her wherever she goes. “I even asked her the other day, I said, ‘If we find ourselves in a situation where someone walks into a store, pulls out a gun, and starts shooting at people, would you pull the trigger to disarm the man who had the gun?'”
“She said she could,” he said. “But no one ever knows that until it really happens.”
She stopped going to bars or clubs
Kayla Hilested loves to go out with friends, browse restaurants and immerse herself in the culture of Suwan, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.
But nowadays, the 25-year-old and her friends rarely enter downtown Atlanta out of concern for their safety, she told CNN, a decision that has affected their social lives and even the way they go out.
When she and her friends get together, they weigh the pros and cons of each outing, she said. They do not want to go out too late or too far from home. They don’t want it to be too busy and they know “what kind of crowd it will attract”.
“When I was in college … before the pandemic hit, I went out to bars and clubs, and I don’t really think twice about going out until about three in the morning or where it will be,” she said. these random bars, lounges and clubs. “
“So me and my …
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