Ab-fucking-lutely, YES.
Both my 14 year old child and I can automatically tell the difference between the sound of mere fireworks and the sound of actual pistols being fired, because we’ve heard gunfire so much over the years… and we don’t even live in a stereotypically “bad” inner-city neighborhood.
Sometime between 2013 and 2015 I was a Greek festival in Seattle not long after yet another mass shooting. As I sat in the food court I could see we were fish in a barrel for anyone with rage and a gun. The thought that someone was going to walk in and spray us with bullets grew until i had a minor panic attack and had to leave. Since then I don’t go to any city event with crowds. I avoid theaters, malls, churches, schools, sporting events, concerts and anything else that feels like it might be easy pickings for an asshole with a gun.
So yes. I do feel the effects of prolonged fear of violence. And I actively avoid going to events that I would really like to attend. But now, that just feels like flirting with suicide to go to any event.
One of those things is illegal, and it isn’t the guns 
Kudos on you, for noting the bitter fucking irony.
Another relevant anecdote:
I was 12 years old the first time that someone I knew personally got shot and killed.
This.
I’ve personally know 4 people who have been murdered, the first time it happened I was 8. At least 3 of these was a gun murder, I never got the full details on the fourth.
And I’ve got two family members, mother and brother, with multiple failed suicide attempts. They thankfully have never lived with weapons.
Stuff like this is surreal, and frightening, to see. I mean, we have our share of violence (especially domestic, unfortunately) here in Finland, but here the archetypal homicide is still “two heavily drunken alcoholics have an argument, and one stabs the other to death with a kitchen knife / hits him with a hatchet”. People getting shot at random pretty much never happens, and someone knowing four people who were murdered (unless they were all killed at the same time in a single crime)… that’s not a thing.
So yeah. My sympathies to you both, and to all the rest of Americans in this thread. You live in a scary country.
Indubitably, we do.
There’s been a lot of research to the effect that children growing up in neighborhoods where gun violence is common suffer the same kind of long-term mental and physiological heath problems as soldiers living with PTSD.
One big difference is that soldiers eventually get to leave the battlefield and usually have opportunities for treatment. The kids don’t.
So yes, a LOT of Americans live in daily terror of gun violence. This isn’t even a particularly controversial statement.
Unfortunately 4 separate incidents.
One drive by, one domestic, one home invasion, and one multiple murder but I only knew one of the people killed. The multiple murder was basically a targeted home invasion because of some kind of dispute.
Actually that’s 5 people I knew because I think my friend’s partner was also killed in the home invasion. That’s the one where I don’t know all the details but it also may have had a hate crime element. There was “graffiti” left in the home, according to the report.
Yes. We’re pushing bulletproof backpacks for primary school children and there’s discussion as to whether they are to be required.
We’ve been discussing wills and healthcare directives because if you can get murdered at a damn garlic festival, what’s stopping this from happening at the beach? The mall? The grocery store? Anywhere?
Absofuckinglutely nothing.
And either we become a nation of shut-ins, or we have to accept that our number could be up at any moment, anywhere, just because we were trying to have a normal life, and someone decided that they would use their “rights” to express their frustration, fear and anger with the world by killing as many people as they can.
You want to talk about terrorism? That is terrorism.
Get ready to be told (by someone who’s delusional) that you’re delusional.
This is Lorena Pimental, the mother of Keyla Salzar, who was only 13 years old when she was shot for no reason.
And in the same breath they will blame victims for making “bad choices” by going to the wrong part of town. I’m not sure any more where the good part of town is.
The inconsistencies don’t matter to them because the immediate goal is to create confusion and uncertainty, to divide us, to derail anything that might impede their hobby.
“God is a bullet, have mercy on us everyone.”
How long do we keep needing to have this same discussion?
The only thing worse than having this discussion over and over would be to accept mass shootings as something so inevitable that they didn’t even warrant further discussion.
I think it has been proven here that there are people who think exactly that.
Um, looks like the police may have been taking some “borrowed glory” for a suicide.
depends. my understanding is you can still get one delivered to your door, it just can’t cross state lines.
one thing tho that has changed is the price
The AR-15 Sporter would set you back just shy of $190 — around $1,485 in 2016 [dollars]
today, you can pick up a cheap one for $500. that’s a pretty significant price drop, even as the guns themselves have gotten more reliable and more accurate
ammo’s also cheaper and more deadly. the gun and its ammo is much more accessible now - several dozen of manufactures; not just one. plus who even knew what it was then? ( pretty much no one. ) having and owning a gun like that now is cool and manly. ( that’d be funny if it weren’t true. )
so yeah, lots of things have changed. including gun culture. maybe americans just can’t be trusted with guns any more, and once upon a time they could? who knows.
doesn’t really matter what’s changed. just that it has. we’ve got these other even cooler tools called laws that we can use to help reduce the number of murders and suicides. sounds like a win to me.
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