Americans Dread the Next Rampage
“The guy in the corner always looking at his watch or the woman reaching into her bag too quickly.”
Of course the man is probably wondering why his date is running late. Of course the odds are the woman simply heard her cellphone vibrate. But is it?
Many Americans remain steadfast that they will not crumple in the face of terrorists or other strains of mass murderers, foreign or homebred. Some want to buy their own gun. Many say they worry more about a car accident or slip in the bathtub befalling them, statistically more probable events than gun atrocities. People work, go out, live.
But still, a creeping fear of being caught in a mass rampage has unmistakably settled in the American consciousness.
Any number of people said that gunmen cross their mind when someone walks in late to a crowded movie theater. Is he the one? A 64-year- old man in Charlottesville, Virginia, said he now watched movies only at home.
Others feared that whenever a colleague was fired, he would return armed and shooting.
Arthur Grupp, 64, a custodian of an elementary school in New Hampshire, said, “Every time I lock the doors at school, I think about it.” His school was having a Homeland Security training session just as the violence in San Bernardino unfolded
person in Denver said fear enters his mind at least once a day: “It could be my little brother at school, my siblings running errands, my parents at work.”
A 23-year- old in Cleveland, Ohio, said she “hated this world.”
Alan Hilfer, a psychologist in New York, said, “Everybody is filled with what we sometimes refer to as anticipatory anxiety — worrying about something that is not currently happening in our lives but could happen.” He added, “And they are worrying that the randomness of it, which on one hand makes the odds of something happening to them very small, that randomness also makes it possible to happen to them.”
People are able to recite how often they think about a mass shooting touching them. Every day. Twice a week. Every time they’re in a crowded space.
Kevin Bloxom, 50, who lives in Louisiana, wrote: “I think where I would hide my kids from shooters every time I am in public. No matter where. Not just movies or public events. I was in the grocery store last weekend with my four year old. I found myself scouting places I could hide my little boy. It’s sad.”
The fear sneaks up on some people, catches them off guard. Amanda Cusick, 23, a law student in San Francisco, wrote, “I don’t wake up and think, what if I’m shot today?” But then she will be driving along and she wonders, what if her younger sister is shot and she never sees her again?
In Manhattan, during a spontaneous discussion among workers at a medical center, the subject was which room to lock themselves in should a gunman arrive.
Emily Johnston, 26, a college student in Cincinnati, Ohio, said that a year ago there was a threat against her university involving guns and explosives. Ever since, she worries. The fear infects her sleep. “I have had nightmares in which I am sitting in class when a gunman enters,” she wrote.
How does one navigate this swirl of emotions?
“I think awareness of your own fears is the only way to go and to do the things that are soothing and comforting and distracting to do, and to do things that bring meaning to your life and bring comfort to other people,” said Dr. Sherry Katz- Bearnot, assistant clinical professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. “It’s what your grandmother said: Keep busy.”
Fear that goes with heading to work or eating dinner out.