Americans Dread The Next Shooting

The killings are happening too often. At places you would never imagine.

As a holiday party in San Bernardino, California, was added to the long list of mass shootings, a wide expanse of America’s populace finds itself engulfed in a collective fear, a fear tinged with confusion and exasperation. The fear of the ordinary. Going to work. Eating at a restaurant. Sending children to school. Watching a movie.

Wendy Malloy, 49, of Tampa, Florida, said she worried about being in an attack just doing what anyone does. “When my son gets out of the car in the morning and walks into his high school,” she said. “When I drop him at his part-time job at a supermarket. When we go to the movies, concerts and festivals. When I walk into my office. It is a constant, grinding anxiety. And it gets louder every single day.”

After all, a festive gathering of county health workers in San Bernardino would not seem likely to make the list of shooting targets. It was not a symbol of American freedom. It was not a target draped in ideological conflict.

If you were not safe there, where were you safe? A common office party. That was everywhere. That was everybody.

For some, the shock of repeated slaughters is leaving them inured and resigned. With others, there is bewilderment. And anger. Why doesn’t the government do more? Why must I feel so helpless? What world must my children live in?

Jean O’Sullivan, 54, who lives in the Los Angeles area, wrote, “Just as I naturally consider how I would survive if there was an earthquake, now I have added mental contingencies for a shooting — and THAT is a sad state of affairs!”

In the aftermath of the San Bernardino shootings, coming on the heels of recent killings in Colorado and Paris, The New York Times invited people to respond online about their fears.

More than 5,000 wrote in. In addition, many others were interviewed around the country: teachers and students and office workers, even some Army veterans who confided that they felt safer in war zones than on the streets of the United States.

People spoke of being spooked by gestures once ignored. As one young woman from Massachusetts put it: