I have never once been afraid, while in a shopping mall, school or movie theater, that someone might come in with a gun and starting shooting people up. It registers as low as airplane-crash likelihood while flying. I do have plenty of fears or worries - some which people might consider paranoid - but becoming the victim of an El Paso or Dayton has never been one of them.
Do any Dopers here get worried when doing everyday tasks like shopping at Walmart?
I was in high school when columbine happened and I had to stop singing songs about killing teachers and blowing up the school and now I can’t teach them to my daughters.
Beyond that not really. A couple of years ago there was a nut case with a gun in Isla Vista , CA and I’ve got a buddy who’s a cop there so I worried about him for a couple of seconds, I’m not sure that counts since it didn’t really effect my life.
I wouldn’t say I “get worried”, but I carry a concealed weapon daily, and at least a small factor in that decision was the existence of spree shooters.
I don’t think about it at all. I suppose if I lived someplace where folks like to carry their assault rifles around just because they can, then I might start packing a handgun. And when I come across one of the rifle packers I’d follow them around with my hand on my weapon. If they start getting agitated I’ll draw on them and have someone call the cops to report a thwarted public shooting. Let 'em prove I’m wrong. Fucking rifles belong in a safe or on a gun range.
Not at all. I figure a) it’s vanishingly unlikely that I’d ever get caught in one; and b) if it does happen, it’s a matter of random chance and there is nothing meaningful I could do to reduce the likelihood of its happening, so it’s not worth thinking about.
Car crashes, OTOH, terrify me and I think about the possibility every time I drive on a highway, to the point where it’s totally counterproductive and makes me a much worse driver.
For the most part, no. The likelihood of me being involved in a mass shooting is so low that it simply doesn’t factor into my daily activities. I’ve had to take some active shooter courses at work and speak to employees about it and we’re planning on installing a panic button when we remodel HR. I don’t believe any of our employees changed their habits as a result of those discussions. Prior to this active shooter course I did note that HR had no means of escaping a would be shooter because we only had access to one of the exits which is the same one a shooter would likely come through but we fixed that.
If the situation should ever arise, I’ll deal with it to the best of my ability. But until then, it’s totally not my concern. I refuse to allow this particular insanity to in any way take over my thoughts or feelings. For example, I refuse to even consider buying a gun. To do so would be implying that mass shootings are clear and present dangers, which they are not. Life consists of more than simply avoiding death.
No. They are very, very rare*. I am at a much higher risk of death or injury in the car on the way than I am at the destination.
(*The number of course should be completely zero, but across the whole population of the US, the odds of being a victim of a mass shooting is statistically pretty damn close to zero.)
One of my employees called out for a few days because one of her relatives was involved in the Dayton shootings, that was annoying being short staffed.
My community spent a whole bunch of money building a really cool observation tower over the fairgrounds. It was completed about a week before the Vegas shootings. It then was closed to the public. I don’t know that I was ever planning on going up and seeing the view, but now I cannot.
Last night, there was an unexpected fireworks show (I think). I looked out my window and couldn’t see anything, but there’s bunch of trees in the way. Actually sounded like gunfire coming from the town square, but I figured that if someone was shooting it up, I’d be hearing sirens by now. Were it not for the recent shooting, that thought probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind.
I couldn’t function if I were that worried about something that could happen essentially everywhere.
But, I have children who hear about this stuff. They get anxious and sad about it, and I feel bad for them. And when I visit their elementary school, sad to say, I am scanning for ingresses, defensible positions, fields of fire, objects to use as improvised weapons.
I know it’s statistically unlikely anything will happen, but after hearing about the unthinkable happening over and over and over, it’s hard not to think about it.
In terms of how I go through my day and live my life, there’s no great effect. I go to work, pay my taxes, obey the law as best I can and mostly try to be a good, responsible, gun owning citizen.
Every time one happens though, I get a little more convinced that my fellow Americans and I have the leadership we deserve.
Like others, it does not figure into my concerns. The odds just aren’t there.
I’m pretty good at spotting people who are behaving oddly or appear to be out of place, and then compensating for that. Take in and evaluate your surroundings. Pay attention. It’s just something I’ve always done.
I grew up in a rural community where there was lots of farming and hunting and people with gun racks in their pickup trucks. It’s out of place today and you certainly can’t display a gun in your truck’s gun rack. Guns themselves don’t bother me, but it’s the context that’s important. Anyone carrying a long gun in a shopping mall should obviously alert your spidey senses and cause you to get out.
Ultimately, though, the actual numbers don’t justify the fear. If I was smart, I’d be more concerned about getting in the car and driving to work or school. It seems that going to the hospital (medical error) is far more likely to kill you than a spree killer. They are more mundane events, so people don’t really think about how dangerous those things are.
Humans are visual creatures - big, splashy, in-your-face visual events make more of an impression than all of the numbers in the world.
Somewhat. The Parkland shootings was at a rival high school of mine. Yes, I’m well out of high school, but that one hit me hard.
My best friend was from Virginia and his mother worked at VA tech during that shooting.
has not impacted me.
Last year at a local mall there was a panic where some people thought there was a shooter but there was none. People were hiding in stores and calling loved ones saying goodbye. Some of the people were so upset they ended up with PTSD or close to that.
I avoid crowds more than I used to, but I’m really not worried about shooters. I am more worried that if anything at all happened (some kind of accident, for example) the crowd would be full of idiots that would freak out (like the ones Bijou Drains mentions) and stampede and trample me!
Not really. I am licensed to carry a concealed weapon and have more than one handgun suitable for that task, but I very seldom do, because my chances of needing it during my mundane everyday activities are so very small. I also pay close attention to my surroundings and if my spidey sense tingles, I leave.
People think that ‘mass shootings’ are a lot more common than they really are because the news media like to sensationalize them, and some people hammer on them because they have an axe to grind.
In fact Neil deGrasse Tyson got a lot of flack recently for pointing out that there are a lot of other things in our lives that have a better chance of killing us. For instance you’re twice as likely to die from the flu as from a gunshot wound, but you hardly ever see the nightly news’s lead off story about “6 people were killed by the flu today, video after the break.”
He may have been ‘tone deaf’, but he wasn’t wrong.
actually around here they talk a lot about flu deaths in the winter. Not a lead story but they seem to bring it up every week how many died last week of the flu
I worry a bit because these shootings aren’t taking place in “bad areas” by gangs or a turf war. They happen in places like I may be at-- shopping malls, movie theaters, restaurants… So I make note of emergency exit markers if I’m in a new place.
They make me hate Republicans even more, with every passing one. And as a member of a racial minority, it’s impossible to dissociate the violence from Trump’s race-baiting and the rise of the American Nazi movement. It’s pretty clear that a race war is what the Right wants, with ethnonationalism being their preferred strategy in times of global uncertainty – immigrants/refugees, economic disparity, climate crisis, all connected, all answered by genocidal white supremacy. It’s always the same cries after every shooting: we need more gun control, more mental health care, less racism, a less toxic vision of masculinity, etc., and it’s always the same people, old white Republican men virtue signaling to lost young white boys, who forestall change because it works in their favor. Getting the working class to shoot each other based on skin color and birthplace is a great way to prevent them from working together towards political and economic power.
In the short term, that means I’m considering concealed carry as a last resort. But then chances are good I’d just be randomly shot by law enforcement instead. In the long term, it certainly feels as though a civil war looms ever closer, or another series of concentration camps. First the Indians, then the Japanese, then the Chinese, then the Muslims, then the Mexicans… who’s next?
The mass shootings are statistically unlikely to directly harm me, but the ideology they espouse – ethnonationalism enforced by genocidal capitalism – has a lot of appeal to the Republicans, and that has absolutely measurable harm. I certainly no longer feel safe in the United States of America, even as a citizen, especially anywhere between the coasts. The shootings are just the vanguard, but the mainstream Right isn’t far behind them. Whether by ammunition or by policy, their goals are the same.
So, if you’re not worried, why then is it a part of your decision to carry?