It was weird to see photos of employees coming out of the King Soopers in Boulder, with their uniforms and aprons, as well as the ones she and her co-workers wore every day, she told CNN. After the massacre, “Every day when I went to work I thought about where the exits are and where I would go if I heard a shot,” Megan W. told CNN. She agreed to use only the first letter of Megan’s last name, in the light. of their privacy concerns.
“Whenever a customer is verbally abused, I wonder, is that it?” said the 32-year-old. “Will they pull out a gun or come back with one?”
Many, like Megan, described a new, compulsive habit of identifying escape routes or hiding places in crowded gatherings, or completely avoiding certain public places. Parents expressed fear of sending their children to school or a desire to go abroad. The teachers explained that they left the chosen career.
For some, these raw feelings are new, emerging after mass shootings like those at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. But for others, that anxiety has been on the rise for years as the list of shootings grows longer and longer, and a sense of fear grows along 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 Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, excluding the door handle. This means that there have been more mass shootings so far this year than there have been days, a trend that also occurred in 2020 and 2021.
“Right now it feels like a numbers game. Not if, but when,” Megan said.
“When will be my unlucky day?”
Plan a getaway route for public events
Rian Troth, a 47-year-old father of four in Sacramento, California, recently attended a high school graduation with his family. But sitting in the auditorium, he felt vulnerable, and couldn’t help but mentally plan his family’s escape if shots exploded, identifying exits and possible hiding places.
“It’s one of the first things that comes to my mind now,” he said. “What would we do? Where would we go? How would we hide? … How would I give shelter? Where would I throw my children; stretch them over so that I could do them no harm?”
The morning he spoke to CNN, Troth had planned to take his children to a parade of local pride. He had already chosen a place to look, he said, one with a shelter nearby and a park right behind that would help them escape if their worst nightmare came true.
“Am I becoming paranoid limit? No,” he said. “It’s just the world we live in. I have little ones to protect.”
He stopped going to his local grocery store
Glenda Prince stopped going to her local supermarket outside of Austin, Texas, for fear that the store with a predominantly black customer base could be a target, like the one that took place last month’s shooting in Buffalo.
“Now I rarely go to a supermarket that is predominantly black,” said Prince, a 62-year-old black grandmother. “I just prefer to go to a supermarket where the public is more mixed and not just of a nationality, so that I don’t stand out or that particular supermarket is not indicated.”
Prince, a British citizen who has lived in the United States since the 1980s, now drives about 20 miles to Austin for shopping. He also goes less often, and when he does, he tends to go late at night when there is less work. He said he is making these extra efforts because he wants to see his 7-month-old grandson alive to reach 18 years old.
“Before all that, you just didn’t think about it. You just lived your life and did what you had to do,” Prince said. “Now you have to think about it and not put yourself in danger.”
“But,” he added, “no one really knows what the mode of damage is.”
They plan to leave the country
In every way, 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 leave the United States due to the rise in armed violence.
The conversation started partially as a joke, they said, but has become more sincere after the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. Ryan Hoover has already spoken to his boss about working from outside the country, describing a new life outside the United States as something that is “on the table.”
“We drive a Volvo XC90 … the safest car in the world. We live in a safe and affluent area. We give healthy food to our children,” he said. In other words, “we do our best to stay safe. And then we send them, and every day they get on the bus, I have to mentally repress those horrible thoughts.”
For the Hoovers, it’s not about whether they can raise their children in the United States, but if they want to, Ryan Hoover said.
“How do we live a sustainable, happy, full life,” Hoover wondered, “with this apparent ghost of evil just 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 all parents look forward to, said 34-year-old Erin Rome. She is the mother of a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old in Madison, Wisconsin.
“But that feeling is gone for me.”
Following Uvalde’s shooting, Rome is “absolutely terrified” of sending her children to school. Next year, her 4-year-old son will go to kindergarten, and while she knows “intellectually” that the chances of her son facing such a shooting are low, “It doesn’t feel that way emotionally, especially because there’s very little that can be done,” he said.
“I’ve been to this building before for various events, and every time I go there, I just think about an active shooter situation and my little 5-year-old in this building,” he said. “It makes me so sad that this is the image I have in mind of sending my son to school for the first time.”
He’s still too young to have a conversation about what to do in an active shooter situation, Rome said.
“But it’s something I’m already thinking about: how am I going to hold these conversations with a 5-year-old about what to do if there’s, you know, a shooter at your school.”
She feels “helpless” as she says goodbye to her toddler
Other parents are dealing with similar fears, including Toni Leaf-Odette, who told CNN that when she says goodbye to her daycare today, she makes sure her 6-year-old daughter knows that her mother l ‘love.
“Sometimes I think of those parents who had that moment, or maybe didn’t, and lost their children,” said the 38-year-old mother from Traverse City, Michigan. “It’s that fear that I could go to school and live a horrible experience, or not live a horrible experience.”
“I feel helpless,” he added, “because all I need is for someone somewhere to make the decision to come in and end my son’s life for it to happen. And there’s really nothing I can do about it. “.
It’s not a new feeling for Leaf-Odette, who has experienced similar thoughts around her two older sons: an 8-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old son who just graduated from high school.
He was in elementary school when the Sandy Hook shooting took place in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Almost a decade later, he still has vivid memories of picking him up at school after the massacre he charged. the lives of 20 primary school children and 6 adults.
“I specifically remember him wearing a blue coat and thinking the same thing about him,” he said, “that now we’re in a new world where it looks like you can go in and shoot kids while hiding in a closet.”
He bought a gun for the first time in his life
For most of his life, Gary Bixler, 66, of Springfield, Ohio, was against having guns, he said. When he grew up, all he had ever had 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’ve always had German shepherds. No one has ever tried to break into our house,” Bixler said. “We didn’t buy (the weapons) for home security. We bought them for our safety.”
Bixler’s wife (who has had a gun in the past) also took the necessary classes to obtain her hidden transportation license, which Bixler still plans to do, she said, despite a new state law allowing eligible adults carry a concealed pistol without training or license. They still have to tell their adult son, Bixler said, because he would be against it.
Today, Bixler’s wife carries her gun with her everywhere. “I even asked him the other day, I said,‘ if we found ourselves in a situation like this, where someone came into a store and pulled out a gun and started shooting people, you could press the trigger to disarm the person who had a gun? ? ‘”
“She said she could,” he said. “But no one ever knows until it really happens.”
He stopped going to bars or nightclubs
Kayla Hyllested loves spending time with friends, exploring restaurants and immersing herself in the culture of Suwanee, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta.
But today, the 25-year-old and her friends rarely venture into downtown Atlanta out of concern for her safety, she told CNN, a decision that has affected her social lives and even their way out.
When she and her friends get together, they weigh the “pros and cons” of each outing, she said. They don’t want to leave too late, or too far from home. They don’t want it to be too busy, and they’re aware of “what kind of people will attract you”.
“When I was in college … before the pandemic came, I would go out to bars and nightclubs and I didn’t really think twice about whether I would go out until three in the morning, or where I would be,” she said. “And nowadays, every weekend there are shootings in these random bars, lounges and clubs.”
“So me and my …