Approximately eight hours after Bill Badger’s head was grazed by a bullet, and after he had tackled the gunman at the Tucson Safeway Jan. 8, 2011, shooting, he and his family were sitting down together at their dining room table, grateful Bill had survived. And praying for the gunman. “He’d been shot in the head, and he’s sitting at the table. We sat here at the table that night, and I said, ‘Let’s pray for that man and his mother and father,’” Sallie Badger told Bill and their son Christian. “Christian, you are the same age. By God’s grace you’re right here with us. We have no idea what went on in his life. All I know is this is what happened, and we have to pray for that family.” Sallie and Bill Badger, a retired Army colonel who was 74 at the time he tackled the shooter, were both significantly impacted by the shooting outside the grocery story at United States Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ Congress on Your Corner event. After the shooting they became advocates for gun reform. Gun-reform organizers especially appreciated Bill Badger’s perspective because of his military background, and because he was a conservative. “He had great presence. He was a wonderful speaker. He stood up one time,” Sallie recalled, “and said, ‘I didn’t have to get shot in the back of my head to know that not every Tom, Dick, and Harry should have a gun in his hand.’” Bill Badger died in 2015 at 78, approximately four years after the Safeway shooting. Sallie believes his deteriorating health was related to the rampage. Within months of the shooting, Badger had a minor stroke near the area of his brain where the bullet had grazed his head, then had a fall — when shooting a rattlesnake on their property —and had spinal surgery. Then, adding insult to real injuries, he developed Parkinson’s disease. Sallie said Bill became frail after a lifetime of health, running or swimming every day. For years, the Badgers had traveled for pleasure, going to Europe for a month every summer as a family, and traveling throughout the U.S. After the shooting, the couple traveled the country for the cause. Journalists and members of the public often referred to him as a hero because of his actions that day. But he declined that title. “Bill immediately corrected them, ‘No. Anyone would have done this.’ And I would say, ‘Bill, anyone wouldn’t have done it.’” She would point out his military training, but told him it was more than that. “‘Most of the people over there, very wisely, if they weren’t shot, were down or behind a post, were hiding, were fleeing,’” she told him. ‘But you didn’t do that. You stepped up because that’s who you are.’” And he would deny it again. Sallie Badger said one result of shootings is the creation of bonds between survivors. She and Bill became part of a growing “family” of shooting survivors. “We got to know the survivors from all these mass shootings. From Sandy Hook, from Aurora, from places that we never, maybe we have heard of before. And they have become our friends. We developed a family outside of our family who we really look at as very close,” she said. “And that’s been a wonderful thing. It’s been wonderful, especially since Bill’s gone.” Bill and Sallie Badger had the reputation of taking action with little fanfare, and of being listened to. This was clear on the day of the shooting. In addition to the fact that Bill Badger took down the gunman that day with the help of another man, little things also reflected the Badger trait of getting things done. When Sallie got the call from Bill that he had been shot, she was at home. She tried to drive to Safeway, but the car battery was dead. So she hitched a ride from her son’s roommate — by this time to the hospital where Bill had been taken — and when she arrived she found that her son had not be allowed in to see his father. “Everything was locked down in town,” she explained. “Everything, every federal building, all that sort of thing, hospitals.” Her son told her the authorities would not let her in to see Bill. “And I said, ‘Christian, do you know who you’re talking to?’” Within a few minutes, she was at Bill Badger’s side. For the first few moments, she could barely speak. “Bill is sitting up, covered in blood. He’d just gotten there. Just pouring, all dripping down his head,” she said. “And he saw me, and just this big smile on his face. And I just couldn’t believe it. And it was really — I really couldn’t even say much of anything.” After Bill Badger received CT scans, the hospital was preparing a room for him to spend the night. But he was having none of that. “‘If I don’t have a concussion or any of that, then I’m going home,’” Sallie remembered him saying. “So they wrapped him up in bandages and he got in the front seat, and I was in back.” Their son drove. Soon, the bandages were gone. “He’s unwinding the bandages. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I don’t want anybody to see me with this thing on.’ I said, ‘Well, you know the view from back here is not too great.’” She smiled and shook her head at the memory. “This huge wound. But he took that thing off. Yes. And we came home.” Sallie Badger said initially her husband seemed unfazed by the shooting. “He took everything so much in stride,” she said. “It did bother him later. But in that first week or two, I was just amazed at how he handled everything.” Like many shooting survivors, however, it did not prove to be easy — for either of them. After the shooting, Bill became much more protective of his family, and was frustrated when his health began to decline. For Sallie Badger, who does not reveal her age, the shooting altered the course of her life, too. “My life is changed forever because of this. Whether you were there or you were injured or you were a spouse at home. It changes your life.” The surprising part for her was that the shooting impacted her own feelings of security. “There’s no question that it — it just changes everything. It changes your physical and mental outlook. It does,” she said. “Because I wasn’t there, why would I have any lasting issues?” she recalled thinking. She never thought she would be personally affected by post traumatic stress disorder. Now she acknowledges that she has been impacted. “For two years, I knew every single time that I got in my car, other than at my home, that there was going to be a man, that I was going to put the key in the ignitIon and start it, and look, and there was going to be a man with a gun. I knew that. Two solid years of that. Everywhere I went. Every drugstore, every grocery store, the movies, and I’d get in and then I’d look for him.” She recalled one incident where she and Bill were attending their son’s adult city-league basketball game not long after the shooting. A young man wearing a black hoodie ran up behind them as they walked to the building, and Sallie started running away, full speed. “I had no idea I could run that fast. And I’m screaming at Bill to run, run, run,” she recalled. “I ran and got myself in. It was one of the guys playing basketball with our son.” Sallie said the Tucson shooter wore a hooded sweatshirt. While that incident did not affect Bill, other things did. The Badgers went out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. They had forgotten about the reenactment of the OK Corral Tombstone shootout. “Bill almost collapsed. We had to leave,” she recalled. “‘Cancel the order. We have to go.’” Like many gun violence survivors, the Badgers were on high alert for months, even years. “You’re constantly vigilant. I’m still very, very hyper-vigilant. And Bill was as well. We were always very comfortable in this home. We sit here alone on two acres.” Sallie Badger recalled traveling out of town after the shooting, without Bill. They talked on the phone. “He said, ‘I really don’t like being here anymore without you. I am so uneasy,’” she said. “And it made me feel terrible that this man that was, you know, the man jumped up and tackled the gunman, is feeling uneasy,” she said quietly. “Those were the things, the everyday things, that just crept in. “It was just an ongoing ripple effect.” And then there was having to reassure others. “People constantly asking, ‘Are you okay?’ ‘Yeah. We’re fine.’ Because everybody says, ‘We’re fine.’ But inside, you’re just always wondering if something’s going to happen.” Like other survivors, the Badgers were offered counseling. They declined, almost without meaning to. In retrospect, Sallie Badger thinks therapy may have helped her husband. “I wish he had. Bill just put it off and put it off and put it off,” she said. “He wanted to do it. But there was always some place to go that was more important for somebody else. ‘They want me to speak here. They want me to come in here. They want me to —’ And he never did it.” When asked why she, too, did not got to counseling, she hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said. “Life goes on.” And she laughed — seemingly at herself. “So I’m doing fine. But I’m also a very, very strong person. When something needs to be done, I take charge and I do it. Bill was the same way,” she said. “He never hesitated in anything. Because you can’t be an Army commander and be, you know, trying to figure out what you’re going to do. “And both of us were the same in that respect,” she said. “And so whatever needs to be done, we just do it.”
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Once considered a beacon of inspiration, a call to tourists and natives alike to gaze upon Austin’s skyline, that all changed on August 1, 1966. On that summer day, a gunman with an intricate plan to kill as many people as possible shot hapless students, professors and civilians 28 stories below. At the end of the slaughter from the University of Texas Austin Tower, he had killed 14 people (including an unborn baby), and wounded more than 30 others. He was shot and killed in the tower after holding the campus hostage to his gunfire for more than an hour and a half. Since that day — one that whispered the beginning of mass shootings in the United States though none followed until decades later — for some people the tower carries them back to that terrifying incident every time they glance upwards. “Any time I look at the University of Texas Tower, I automatically look to make sure there’s nobody up there,” said Forrest Preece, who witnessed the shooting when he was a 20-year-old student. “Every time I see it, I relive that day.” Preece, 72, who worked in the advertising field in Austin for many years, said the shooting changed him. “I will say there hasn’t been a day in the last 53 years or whatever it is here that I haven’t thought about it,” said Preece, who said he has read everything he could find about the event, has talked with other people who were there that day, and has met with many survivors and relatives of the victims. Brenda Bell, a longtime journalist for the American Statesman and a 20-year-old student who witnessed the Tower shooting from a classroom window, agreed that Monday in 1966 changed the significance of the Tower for those who were there. “We never, we never, never, never look at the Tower without thinking about that. You know, it’s impossible,” said Bell, 73. “But for most people now, I don’t think it’s in their mind. I think it’s just, you know, the remnant population that’s left that was there. [For them], that will never be gone.” Neal Spelce reported from the scene that day for the radio station KTBC. He agreed on the significance of the Tower, which stands at 307 feet and was completed in 1937. At other shooting sites, he said, there may be a memorial to remember shooting victims, but those are not like the looming building seen from the university grounds and from neighborhoods across Austin, the state capital. “But here, the tower dominates everything. Everything,” Spelce said. “So it has maintained, that is one of the things I think that has kept the story out there, that equates to surviving — a surviving story.” Preece, who grew up in Austin, said as a child he considered the Tower inspiring. But that was ruined by the shooting. “As a lifelong Austin resident, I resent this fact,” Preece said. “My whole childhood, I was full of the expectation of one day being a UT student and enjoying my classes there. Before the incident, the tower was a symbol of hope and aspiration for me.” Preece said his mother told him years ago that after she gave birth to him, she reflected on the fact that he was born in the shadow of the UT Tower. “How ironic that the existence of that tower almost cost me my life 20 years later,” he said. Still, the tragic event also enhanced his gratitude for life. He recalled a bullet literally whizzing past his ear. “The randomness of the universe landed in my favor that day.” Preece said. “It’s…made me appreciate what I was given through sheer luck that day--a second chance to get out there and make something out of myself.” While thousands of people have died at the hands of mass shooters in the U.S. since 1966, at the time it seemed a one-off — an unimaginable and never-to-be repeated killing spree. When the Columbine High School shooting happened three decades later in 1999, killing 12 students, a teacher, and wounding more than 20 more people, that shooting became known in the collective consciousness as the first such event. But it was not. “There was no precedent for this,” recalled Bell of the Tower shooting. She went on to write about the shooting several times on its various decades’ anniversaries. “You know, we didn’t even have a movie. We hadn’t read the book. We didn’t get the memo. So there was no, there was nothing that we could compare this to except a movie that we hadn’t seen. So the shock and all was just universal that day.” The uniqueness at the time of the evil act was true for journalists, too. “There was no plan for coverage. Zero. Nothing like that had ever happened before,” recalled Spelce. “Now I’m sure newsrooms have their disaster plan — what to do, who to call, send the word.” Many heroes emerged on that hot August day in Austin. People pulled the injured off the mall area below the tower, risking their own lives. Journalists covered the event as bullets rained down. One student risked her life by lying on the sweltering concrete next to a pregnant woman — the first person shot, whose baby died from the wounds — just to talk until help arrived. It was a life-changer even for those who witnessed it from nearby, like Brenda Bell. “It was this seminal event,” Bell said. “And from the day it happened I was just consumed with, kind of curiosity — maybe morbid curiosity — about the whole thing. And about what other people were thinking, and how they were dealing with it.” Bell said watching the shooting from the window of an English class classroom influenced her choice of careers. “It did have a lot to do with me being a journalist,” she said. “I’d never seen suffering like that. I’d never seen someone die in front of me. I’d never seen people bleeding, you know. A pregnant woman lying in front of you. I’d never seen those things. And so I became, I wanted to know more about that. And so it kind of became a minor obsession, you know, through the years when I did become a journalist.” She took away something else, too. “I'm not brave,” she said, she realized when she stayed at the window, unable to move outside to help others during the gunfire, feeling like a coward. She remembered watching a student run out to help carry the wounded pregnant woman off the mall. “It was just so human, and so brave, you know. And so opposite of me,” she said. “He was like this super hero as far as I’m concerned.” Bell said she’s observed through the years how the ripple effect has impacted people differently. “What it felt like to me was a ripple. A ripple, ripple, ripple that never stopped,” Bell said. “There is a shore, a far shore, but it never reaches it. It just keeps going.” She referred to families that ended in divorce partly due to the impact of the shooting, people who swore off guns, and people who seemed unaffected. “I remember the father of one of the victims. He sold all his guns. He had guns. He sold them. He never wanted another gun in his house,” she said. But one wounded man had a different reaction. “He’d been shot,” she said. “And he seemed to go on as if nothing had happened. But other people, you know, there are some people in town who are obsessed with the Tower thing. And if you ever run into one at a dinner party, everyone leaves the room because the obsessive conversation starts.” Bell said the ripples have now moved on to the children and grandchildren of people who were there in 1966. A daughter of one of the police officers who shot the gunman that day became an Austin police officer. Bell believes the difference between a shooting and a bad accident is the intent, and the weapon. “The gun aspect of it,” she said, “I think it makes it different from something like a 30-car crash on the highway, or, you know, a tsunami. I think it makes it different because of the malice involved. You know, and the intention. It’s not an accident.” Ironically, or perhaps tellingly of the times, for years most people referred to the Tower shooting as “the accident.” That is, if they talked about it at all. For many people at the shooting — and the University of Texas itself — not talking about it seemed an attempt to make the whole tragedy go away. For years, there was never even a marker or even a historical note on campus about the shooting. Unlike the reaction to the 2017 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, that birthed the students’ political activism, the 1966 Tower shooting was nearly swept under the Texas rug. But not for the survivors. “I’m just trying to get rid of this ghost,” said Preece. Last week, on March 15, a White nationalist gunman in New Zealand shot to death 50 people and injured approximately 40 more at two Christchurch mosques. He videotaped the shooting, live-streaming it on Facebook and Twitter. Before he began the massacre of Muslims at Friday night prayers, he sent out a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto to government officials and the media.
As people across the globe mourned with the families of those killed, and with the survivors, the New Zealand prime minister vowed to take action. Jacinda Ardern said the country’s lax gun laws needed to change. “They will change,” said the prime minister at a news conference. She added that her Cabinet planned to reassess the country’s policies on gun control immediately. According to media reports, compared to many countries, New Zealand has fewer restrictions on shotguns and rifles, while handguns are more tightly controlled. Yet the country, unlike the United States, has relatively few murders by gunfire each year, and before this March 15 massacre, few mass shootings. Here’s what The Atlantic magazine reported after the New Zealand shooting. “This is the deadliest shooting in the modern history of New Zealand, a country where gun violence is rare and annual gun homicides don’t usually reach the double digits. The most recent mass shooting was in 1997, when six people were murdered and four wounded in the North Island town of Raurimu. Until now, the deadliest mass shooting in the country had been in 1990, when a gunman in the small township of Aramoana killed 13 people and injured three. After that shooting, the country amended its laws to limit firearm access. Since then, New Zealand has experienced approximately four incidents of gun violence in which more than five people were killed,” reported Atlantic writer Isabel Fattal the day of the shooting. “According to an open-source database that Mother Jones created, 103 mass shootings have occurred in the United States since 1990, 90 of them since 1997. Overall, the shootings resulted in more than 800 deaths.” Hate-crime shootings are, simply, all too common in our country. The Sikh Temple shooting outside Milwaukee in 2012. The Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston, S.C. in 2015. The Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018. And on and on and on. Of course for victims and survivors, there is little difference between losing a loved one or losing the use of your limbs or organs at school, at a concert, in a movie theater, or in a church. But, somehow, a gunman filled with racist hate entering a place of worship and killing because of the worshipers’ very faith — where believers are on their knees praying, or reciting from the Bible, or welcoming believers into their house of God — somehow, that feels especially dark. There is no telling exactly what will happen with the gun laws in New Zealand. But imagine what the U.S. would have been like today if this country’s leadership had this type of reaction after the 1966 University of Texas Tower shooting, or after Columbine, or Sandy Hook, or Las Vegas or the Pulse? (Let alone in a reaction to all the people shot to death in U.S. murders that are not mass shootings.) How many people who were shot dead would be living full lives today? “To make our communities safer, the time to act is now,” said Prime Minister Ardern on the other side of the world. Let’s hope New Zealand moves beyond “thoughts and prayers,” the phrase our own politicians are quick to spout. Running late. For most or us, it can mean irritating the more punctual people, or messing up a day’s calendar, or simply triggering feelings of urgency. For some, however, tardiness changed the course of their lives. When it comes to shootings, either random, mass or other types, there is a fine line of fate when it comes to who gets killed or wounded. But even those who are not shot, or do not witness shootings, can be affected. Two families that were late to temple on August 5, 2012, in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, may have avoided death or physical injuries because of being behind schedule. By late morning, six worshipers were dead, including the Sikh temple president and three priests, and four other people were wounded. One of those wounded remains in a nursing home with brain damage more than six years later. Pardeep Kaleka was driving his son and daughter to temple that morning when his 8-year-old daughter announced she had forgotten her Sunday school notebook. He turned the car around and drove home, she ran inside to get the notebook, and they drove back toward the Sikh Temple. Just as he was approaching the highway exit to the temple, however, about a dozen police cars, lights flashing, sped up behind him. He pulled over to let them pass. A former police officer, Kaleka noticed several police jurisdictions were responding. He knew that meant something big was happening. Nirmal Kaur and her family were also behind schedule — due to her own actions. She and her husband, with three small children in tow, reached the temple after the shots rang out. When they arrived “I remember there was all [these] cops blocking all the area,” she said. “If we were not running late, if I was not, you know, spending more time on my makeup — my husband was arguing with me ‘Come on, hurry up,’ — we would’ve been inside there,” she said. “I think about that day all the time. If we were in there, I think, I would have got shot. My husband would have got shot. My kids would have got shot.” That morning at the suburban Milwaukee temple, a neo-Nazi into the white power music scene may have mistook the Sikhs for Muslims. He shot as many people as he could before turning the gun on himself. He died at the scene. The first responding police officer was shot 15 times, and survived, though his injuries forced him to retire from police duty. Pardeep Kaleka knew his parents were inside the temple, but he could not get to them. He received a call from his mother, who spoke quietly because the gunman was still in the temple. She was hiding in the kitchen pantry with about a dozen others. She asked him to get help. He also got a call from his father’s phone — but it was a priest telling him his father had been shot, was in serious condition, and needed help. Because of his former ties with law enforcement, Pardeep was able to speak with the officer in charge. He was finally allowed into the command center at a nearby parking lot, leaving his children with friends. He found his mother, who had escaped the temple with others in an armored police vehicle. She was scared and upset, but not wounded. It was several hours before Pardeep and his brother Amardeep found out that their father, Satwant Kaleka, had been shot dead while fighting the gunman. Nirmal Kaur’s family did not stay at the scene when they learned of the shooting. Stories were flying, and nobody knew exactly what was happening inside the temple, other than someone had been shooting. “We didn’t know what to do,” Kaur said, adding that her young children were frightened. Some members of the temple decided to go out to lunch and stay together for support until answers could be found. But Nirmal wanted to protect her young children from hearing too much. “I told my husband, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ Because the kids were crying. They were getting scared. I said, ‘Let’s take the kids out of here. I don’t want to get them traumatized from this.’” The family drove across town to another Sikh temple in Brookfield, Wisconsin, about 25 miles away. She said people there wanted to hear about what had happened, but she and her husband knew few details. She made sure her children had something to eat after the service, though she and her husband had little appetite. “It was a really sad day,” she said. Since then, many members of the temple have found new directions for their lives. Pardeep Kaleka enrolled in graduate school to become a counselor. He specializes in holistic trauma-informed treatment with survivors of assault, abuse and acts of violence. In his men’s counseling groups, he often addresses male toxicity and anger. He also co-founded the group Serve 2 Unite, which engages youth and communities to create peaceful communities and address violence and trauma. He and former skinhead Arno Michaelis met after the Sikh temple shooting, and they wrote the book, “The Gift of Our Wounds,” about the transformational power of friendship and forgiveness. Kaleka also became a more conscious family man. “I found a new appreciation about fatherhood, and being a husband. And so I started to hug my kids a little bit longer,” he said. “Make love differently — that sounds weird.” Kaleka laughed. “And just generically not taking things for granted. I think a lot of us do that, you know. Because we think we’re going to live ’til tomorrow. And this really showed me that nothing is promised.” Even though Nirmal Kaur had no immediate family members killed that day, the deadly incident that impacted the entire Sikh community pushed her to her re-examine her life and religion. “Since 2012, a lot of changing. I got more involved in my community. I used to stay away. I didn’t care much. Me and my husband got baptized after, in 2015,” said Kaur, who is now the temple community liaison, public educator and greeter. “And then I said to myself, ‘Now I want to do something. I want to educate people.’ It really needs to be done, and we need to do something to show people who we are.” Both Nirmal Kaur and Pardeep Kaleka feel partly responsible for many non-Sikhs in Milwaukee and beyond not knowing enough about Sikhism. She believes if the gunman had known more about them and their religion, he may have left them alone. A chilling fact: The murderer visited the temple a few days before the shooting, and learned the building’s layout for his killing spree. “He took the tour of the temple,” she said, adding that she did not meet him. “All we need to do is talk to them. And sometimes I wish that the shooter came in here, instead of having doubt about who we are, should have talked to us, asked questions. Who you guys are? What are you guys? What do you believe in? What do you guys do for prayer? Nothing. Anybody would answer those questions.” Pardeep Kaleka still mourns his father’s death, yet most days finds himself full of hope. He tries to make the most of every day he is alive — thanks to a forgotten notebook. “We believe in Chardi Kala,” he said of a basic Sikh tenet. That means relentless optimism. Dogs, large or small, service or strictly pets, can be a gun violence survivor’s best friend — a coping tool hidden beneath four paws and a bunch of fur. When Jennifer Longdon was injured by a random shooter in Phoenix, Arizona, 15 years ago, she was paralyzed from the chest down, her life forever altered. Her canine pal Pearl, a Doberman pinscher service dog, helped Longdon negotiate her new world. The two learned together. “I got Pearl as a puppy about a year after my injury. I raised her, I trained her. She was amazing. She actually kind of brought me out of my shell. Because I took her out and walked her,” said Longdon of their ventures into the neighborhood, the human on wheels, the dog loping alongside. “And she was also a bridge to people. So people who didn’t want to talk to me, wanted to talk about the dog. And she became a great connector back to humanity for me.” In addition to helping Longdon ease back into the world, Pearl also gave her human tremendous physical support. “Dobermans have this bad reputation, but they bond to a human. And they’re very smart, and they’re very loyal,” Longdon said. “A lot of other animals are food driven. And a doberman just loves you. They will put down their life for you. Pearl would pick up things that I dropped, she would hold me in my chair, and she watched my transfers. And she would realize before I did that that transfer is not going to work,” she said of transferring herself, for example, from her wheelchair to a couch, or a bed to the wheelchair. “And she would be there and catch me and ease me down, rather than me breaking something.” Before Pearl entered Longdon’s life, Longdon fell out of her wheelchair and fractured a leg. That is not uncommon for people with spinal cord injuries. “Pearl saved me from a lot of fractures. And she would recognize that, ‘You’re not doing so well,’” Longdon said. One of the effects of a spinal cord injury is clonis — a neurological condition that creates involuntary muscle contractions, causing uncontrollable shaking movements. “Sometimes clonis will be so bad that it pulls you out of your chair. And for me, the drugs just weren’t the answer,” Longdon said, adding the condition does not bother her as much as it did in the early days of her injury. “If it got bad like that, sometimes she’d just come and put her head on my leg. And just the warmth and the gentle weight would make it stop.” And then there was the intimidation factor of a 110-pound canine escort. “She was amazing. And everyone who knew her loved her. And she was as intimidating as hell, which didn’t hurt.” Longdon, who goes by Jen, since January 2019 has held a seat in the Arizona State House and is an advocate for gun reform. Pearl died in 2016, and Longdon currently lives with two non-service dogs named Porter and Kuma who valiantly bark at strangers and, Longdon quipped, are both “pro floor-holder-downers.” For another gun-shot survivor, a new puppy helped him move back toward life during a horrific and long physical and emotional recovery. Ron and Nancy Barber lost their golden retriever the year before Ron Barber was shot, and decided, in their 60s, they were done with dogs, certainly with puppies. But that resolution dissolved not long after Barber was hit by two bullets in the January 8, 2011, Tucson, Arizona, Safeway shopping center shooting. District Director for U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords, Barber, Giffords and 11 others were wounded by a man obsessed with Giffords. At the public “Congress on Your Corner” event, six people died. For months after the shooting, Barber felt survivor’s guilt, knowing that he was alive while others — including a 9-year-old girl and his assistant, a 30-year-old man, were not. There were months of painful physical therapy, and the emotional work of someone suffering from PTSD. One day at home, he was lying on a chair with his injured leg propped up. His recovery had been slow-going for his body and his mind. “Nancy came home and she said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ “She had three puppies in her hand. Three little tiny dots, right? And I said, ‘Oh, Nancy, you didn’t. We said we’d never do this again.’” “Well, there’s only one for us,” Nancy responded, telling Ron to pick between the three. “And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’” “So she put her on my chest. That was the end of that,” Barber recalled, laughing. “And she cuddled me forever. We were inseparable for quite a long time. And I believe that she really had a healing aspect to her.” The tiny bundle of fur named Tipper helped Ron’s wife, too. “If one of us is hurting for whatever reason, you know, she’s all about licking us, making sure we’re okay.” Barber turns back to the dog, a small poodle terrier mix who offers emotional support, but is not a bonafide service dog. “And she’s the best, aren’t you, girl? Yes, she is,” he said, petting Tipper, who perked up. Obviously, they were both still smitten, seven years later. “She was a very important part of me getting better,” he said. For two survivors of the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting of October 1, 2017, their two pit bulls are there for them during their ongoing recovery. Mindy Scott and her 21-year-old daughter attended the festival, their first concert together after her daughter became an adult. Neither were hit by a bullet, but the aftermath has been intense. Scott’s daughter moved back home for a couple of weeks after the shooting, and it was the dogs the young woman turned to. “When she went home, it was when one of the dogs would walk with her,” Scott said of her daughter’s place, about a block away. “She just did’t feel safe at that time.” Las Vegas is big on fireworks, which can trigger survivors of gun violence. The sound can take them back to the scene of violence and death. New Year’s Eve is often celebrated in Vegas by fireworks over the strip, as is, of course, the Fourth of July. “I hid in my closet,” recalled Scott, a waitress and painter. “I sat with my dogs, my pit bulls, as they snuggled with me.” She and her daughter put on headphones, watched movies on their laptop, and held tight to their rescue dogs. “Roxy just sat there with me. She just laid in my lap,” she said of one of the dogs. “And that’s how we did it through the night,” she said. “It was just getting over that little hump.” For one gun-violence survivor, his dog was there for him after the shooting, and later when he went through his final illness. Now the dog is there for his widow. “Kirra was Bill’s absolute pride and joy,” said Sallie Badger, widow of Bill Badger. A retired Army colonel, he was shot during the 2011 Tucson Safeway shooting, and is credited for helping tackle the gunman that day. “She adored him.” Kirra had been shot and stabbed as a puppy, but found a good life with the Badgers. Bill Badger lived for about four years after the shooting, and the Badgers became advocates for gun reform, traveling across the country to support the cause. A few years after the Safeway shooting, Bill Badger’s health declined. “When Bill was sick, he slept in a guest bedroom because he was in pain and flailing,” Sallie Badger said. “And he said, ‘Is it okay if Kirra sleeps in here with me?’” The huskie-lab mix had never been allowed on the furniture. “I said, ‘Absolutely.’ So she slept on the bed with him. And it was very, very comforting for him.” She paused, and smiled. “I’d go in, and Bill would have this much room [she mimes a few inches] and Kirra was sprawled out, of course.” Bill Badger died in 2015, and Sallie went into mourning. So did his dog. “After Bill died, oh gosh. Kirra went in there and she was in that room 24 hours a day, other than to be taken outside and to eat,” she recalled of the dog in Bill’s final bedroom. “And she was in, this is her pose with the head between her legs and she absolutely would not leave the room. It was the most pitiful thing I have ever seen in my [life]. I didn't know that dogs or any animal could grieve that way.” Sometimes, Sallie would talk to the dog, sharing their mutual grief. “So about three weeks after Bill died I went in there, and I was on my knees next to the bed and I said, ‘Oh Kirra, where's our Bill?’ And she jumped up and went right to the door, flew to the door. I never mentioned his name around her again. But at that point I knew I had to change things. I let this go for quite a few months. She was getting thinner and thinner, losing all this weight.” After six months of the dog mourning, Sallie Badger made a drastic change. She stripped the guest room of bedding, pillows, and mattress. She had the carpet removed and the room redone. “I brought her out and I closed the door and I ended that. And she became my dog. And I had to. I had to. She couldn't, I didn't know how long that would go on. But that was the six-month period. She missed him terribly. And now she is my beloved dog.” Sallie is not someone who appears to live with remorse, but there is one thing she wishes she had done differently. “I really regret that when he was in the hospital at the end that I didn't take her in. They told me I could bring her in. But she's so shy. She’s so skittish. She was an abused dog. “Now most people come, she roars. She really barks. If men come, she really barks. And I'm very happy with that.” Today, Kirra is Sallie Badger’s dog, and the two of them help one another move through the grief of losing their man, Bill. “I’ve read that after a life-changing incident — it doesn’t have to necessarily be seeing six people dead on the sidewalk and 13 wounded — but after a life-changing incident you either become more of who you were — whether to the good, the bad — or you make a 180-degree,” said Pat Maisch, who witnessed the 2011 mass shooting outside a Tucson Safeway store. “And [you] change your life in some way. Good or bad. You know, it’s unpredictable.” For Maisch, the shooting pushed her toward activism, and into public speaking against gun violence and in favor of reforming gun laws. “I think I've become more of who I was, which is compassionate, activist, wanting to see change, working for change,” Maisch said. “It has enriched me in that way, making me more active.” Maisch, who is credited for grabbing the bullet magazine before the shooter could reload, certainly helped stop the rampage on Jan. 8, 2011. Two men tackled the young man who was set on killing Giffords and innocent bystanders. The gunman came to the U.S. Representative Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords “Congress on Your Corner” event that invited constituents to talk, and or to share grievances and greetings. He shot Giffords in the head, leaving her with a brain injury and partial paralysis, injured 12 others and killed six people, including one of her staffers and others who were waiting in line to speak with their representative. After the shooting, Maisch, then 68, became a vocal member of Everytown for Gun Safety (formerly Mayors Against Illegal Guns). On Jan. 8, 2019, Maisch traveled to Washington D.C., and with Giffords and other survivors of shootings, she stood in solidarity as House Bill 8 was put forward in memory of the Tucson shooting on its eighth anniversary. The bill calls for universal background checks of people purchasing firearms, including sales at gun shows. Maisch has spoken out for gun reform outside National Riffle Association rallies, testified in front of various state senates, and backed the signings of gun legislation. “Until or unless you already know how horrible the gun laws are that the NRA and the gun lobby have been working like for 40 years to quietly change legislators in states [and] then to change them federally, you don't realize how poor the gun laws are and how easy it is to access firearms,” she said. “And when I did find that out, I wanted to help change that. Testifying before the Senate in D.C. was my first opportunity.” Maisch became well known for her advocacy in 2013 after she yelled “Shame on You” at U.S. Senators from the gallery after they refused to pass a bill on gun reform in response to the 2012 slaughter of 20 children and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. After her angry outburst, she was questioned by law enforcement for nearly two hours before being released. In 2016, the silver-haired Maisch was arrested in Washington D.C. after she and other gun-violence protesters staged a sit-in on the floor of the Capitol rotunda. “I used to call myself an advocate. But since things have politically changed so drastically, most of us call ourselves activists now,” Maisch said. “We don’t have the patience for advocacy.” Maisch, who with her husband owns an air-conditioning business in Tucson, also has no patience for the NRA or the politicians who are beholden to the organization. “I call him Mitch-bitch-to-the-NRA McConnell,” she said, referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has reportedly received $1.26 billion from the NRA over his political career, and in 2016 said he would not endorse any Supreme Court candidate who did not receive a nod from the NRA. “We have to get the dirty money out of our elections,” she said. In the meantime, Pat Maisch plans to continue her new roll as a gun-reform activist, traveling across the country to advocate on behalf of others, some of whom can no longer speak for themselves. Many are survivors too traumatized to speak. Others are victims who were shot dead. Fifty-eight doves were released soon after sunrise. They flew high over the anniversary crowd, circling overhead, once, twice, white wings flapping, before disappearing into the sky. Each bird was tagged with the name of a person murdered in Las Vegas a year earlier at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival shooting Oct. 1, 2017. It was the worst United States mass shooting in recorded history. Anniversaries bring celebration, memories or milestones. In our world of escalating gun violence, however, the anniversaries — while they may bring survivors together in healing — recall a day of fear, shock and devastating losses. At the first anniversary of the Route 91 Harvest massacre, which killed 58 people and injured more than 500, people spent the day at memorials, a dedication, a survivors-only country music concert, and reconnecting with members of the “family” they inherited that deadly night on the Las Vegas strip. The shooting happened at an open-air venue owned by MGM Resorts International, which also owns the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. It was from that hotel overlooking the festival grounds where the shooter perched and took aim at his innocent victims 32 stories below. At the sunrise service Oct. 1, 2018, right before the flock of doves took wing, the crowd heard from Minda Smith, whose sister was killed at the music festival. Neysa Davis Tonks was a single mother of three, out for a night of music when her life ended. “Our love must motivate us to move forward,” Smith told the crowd gathered at the county amphitheater. “We have the right to feel angry and sad. Embrace those emotions, but don’t let them control you.” She spoke of her sister, and her family’s loss as her — and her sister’s — parents’ wiped away tears. “I refuse to let it take one more thing from me.” At the sunrise service and other memorials, people wore T-shirts that read Vegas Strong, or Country Strong, or Strong 58, or Country Folks Will Survive. Tattoos were commonplace, many of them with the inked words Vegas Strong rising from the Vegas skyline. In the heavy presence of law enforcement officers at the sunrise service, pipes and drums played “Amazing Grace,” followed by a choir singing “When You Walk Through a Storm,” “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and “America, the Beautiful.” People cried, embraced and spoke of sadness, encouragement and love. A woman police officer hugged a young man and woman holding a baby. A middle-aged couple in jeans, cowboy boots and hats, held hands, looking like they would never let go. Some survivors braved speaking to reporters as they fought back tears, but others requested privacy to be alone with their thoughts or with the friends who had experienced the deadly rampage alongside them. Several survivors appeared to find solace while stroking an emotional-support St. Bernard. A woman buried her wet face in the dog’s thick coat. One cop talked quietly to a man. “You only have one life to live,” the officer said. “You have to find your path.” They nodded together. Gov. Brian Sandoval spoke to the crowd. “We will never fully recover from that fateful night, nor should we,” he said. “But from that night of Nevada infamy came one of our proudest moments. We become one people, one community, one family. We cried. We grieved. And we resolved to become Vegas Strong.” The theme of angels was everywhere in the city. In shops, restaurants, and hotels, figures of angels were displayed in memory of those slain, and Vegas Strong signs were taped onto storefront windows. In the evening, hundreds of people gathered at the Healing Garden, built just days after the shooting. It is located on what had been a vacant downtown lot. People placed 58 roses at the new memorial wall. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman recalled how the city was overrun with blood donors that tragic week. People needed something to do with their desire to help. Within hours, the idea for the healing garden was born. Created by volunteers, it opened to the public five days after the shooting. “Seize the day and make your life. You’re blessed to be alive,” Goodman said. “We saw the sign in the sky.” Mid-ceremony, a strange and beautiful cloud shadow created a funnel-shaped beam of light, as if signaling joy or compassion to those who had gathered throughout Las Vegas to remember. Jay Pleggenkuhle, garden project director, spoke. “We planted a garden not thinking of trees and flowers, but of love, hope and passion,” he said. “Take good care of each other, respect each other, love each other. We’ve pushed back with a very deliberate act of compassion.” Thousands of people gathered on the Las Vegas Strip at 10 p.m. to witness the dimming of the marquees in honor of those killed and wounded at the music festival shooting. People stood close to one another, packing foot bridges over Las Vegas Boulevard, waiting. Nearby, dozens of survivors linked arms and created a human chain around the still-fenced-off shooting site. A year after the shooting ripped into the lives of hundreds of country music lovers, the marquees began to dim just after 10 p.m., as did the famous Welcome to Las Vegas neon sign. At 10:05 p.m., the Strip went dark. When people are killed or injured by gun violence, a ripple effect moves beyond the individuals who were shot. It is not just those who were killed, or the survivors and witnesses to shootings who are affected. Also affected by shootings are the relatives, friends, and even people they do not know at the time of the shooting.
Ron Barber was District Director for U.S. Representative Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords, who represented southern Arizona, including Tucson. Barber was shot twice — once in the face and once in the leg — during the attempted assassination of Giffords. Giffords was outside a Safeway store in Northwest Tucson at her “Congress on the Corner” event meant to bring her in contact with constituents who had comments or complaints. The shooter was a mentally ill young man who had become obsessed with Giffords. She survived, but retained serious brain damage from the bullet to her head. She struggles to put her thoughts into words, and is partially paralyzed. During Barber’s long recovery, which included dealing with physical and emotional pain and PTSD, his wife Nancy quit work as a doula to take care of him full-time. They said it was a rough road, and even their grandchildren were affected. “My oldest granddaughter, she’s 14 now. She is still dealing with it. Whenever a family member is missing in action, if you will, or doesn’t came back on time, she gets very, very anxious,” Ron Barber said about the youngster who was 7 at the time of the shooting. “For [her] it’s been a terrible thing ever since.” Nancy Barber added that they turned to a helpful technology, one that might seem invasive but is essential to the health of their granddaughter. “On our phones we have an app called 360. And we, the whole family, all of us, the other grandparents” have the app, Nancy Barber said. “And you can go on that app and know exactly where everybody is. Pull it up and you can even see the buildings they’re in. So that was crucial to her anxiety.” The Barbers said their 14-year-old granddaughter and 17-year-old grandson still struggle with anxiety as a result of the shooting. Their grandson was the same age as Christina-Taylor Green, who died, their birthdays just five days apart. Suzi Hileman was Christina-Taylor’s friend and neighbor, and was holding her hand when they were shot. Hileman still grieves the loss of her young friend, and not long after the murders, she contemplated getting involved in the gun-reform activist movement. That’s when she learned how much the shooting had devastated her husband and grown daughter. Her husband Bill had asked her to hold off on putting herself into public spaces. “I paid no attention to it because I was pretty excited about myself,” Suzi said, imagining being in the spotlight, helping the cause. “And then my daughter Jenny called.” Jenny said she and her father did not want Suzi to become active in publicly speaking out against gun violence. Then Suzi asked her daughter, “Honey, what are the chances?” That’s when her daughter exploded on the phone. “Don’t, God damn it! Don’t you ever say, ‘What are the chances of you getting shot?’ How can you say that? What would I do if you got shot again? I can’t go through this again.” Her husband Bill Hileman explained. “It wasn’t just the fact of what happened. But there was a visceral side to it for Jenny and me, seeing her laying unconscious in that emergency room, the ICU. Tubes coming out everywhere. Filleted, you know, her torso opened up just like a fillet,” described Bill Hileman, fighting to contain his emotions. “And she looked so little and beat up. She was so bruised everywhere. She had all this internal bleeding and she was purple all over the place.” Since then, Hileman has focused her post-shooting energy on working with elementary school children in memory of Christina. Mentoring 6-year-olds in gardening and reading, she considers it her second career. For Bill, his life’s purpose has changed, too. After decades in a high-profile career, he had retired years before the shooting, choosing a quieter life with more time for the family. “I’m very private now, and happily so. But this pushed that process along,” he said of his new perspective. “I just want to protect the family. It’s my overriding sense of things. I just want to protect Suzi.” He said he was happy when Suzi turned her attention to young school children instead of the gun-reform movement. “While we are supportive of it,” he said of those carrying the gun-reform torch, “I just didn’t want the love of my life to be front line on that. Selfish on our part. But my overriding reaction to the entire thing was to protect my wife.” He said after nearly eight years since the shooting he’s not necessarily afraid at home, but careful. “I don’t like anyone coming to the door without checking to see if there’s a bulge at their hip,” he said. And neither Suzi nor Bill is completely comfortable in public, and do not like to sit with their backs to the door. And if there is a gun present, the psychological alarms go off. “We’ve left restaurants and other such things when people come in carrying,” Bill Hileman said. “I don’t want to be around guns. I just don’t want to be around the randomness of human behavior armed with the power over life or death. I just think it’s a bad combination.” It seems hard to believe that within an 11-day period last fall, two mass shootings occurred in the United States. It should not be. In fact, many more people died in U.S. shootings during that time, though not generating the same media attention as the shootings in the Pittsburgh synagogue and the southern California bar. Traveling the country since June 2018 to interview survivors of gun violence — from mass shootings, random shootings, inner-city violence by guns, and more — I have come to see this as almost ordinary. In fact, it is. According to the Gun Violence Archive, a not-for-profit group that offers online access to gun-violence statistics, the Thousand Oaks Borderline Bar & Grill shooting was the 307th mass shooting — taking place on the 311th day of 2018. That means an average of one deadly mass shooting happened every day last year. As I transcribe the interviews I’ve gathered, a dark, sickening realization hits me: This is how the new normal feels. It is a tragedy that we have thousands of witnesses who can tell us exactly how a shooting feels, and about the physical and psychological pain that continues for years. And when I read the newspaper accounts or hear the radio and TV reports about the most recent shootings, I feel I almost know the latest survivors. I’ve not yet met anyone who was at the Thousand Oaks, California, bar Nov. 7, when the murderer stepped inside with the intent to kill at “college country night.” But I have met people who attended the Route 91 Harvest country western music festival in Las Vegas Oct. 1, 2017, when 59 people were shot to death and more than 500 were injured. One survivor of this shooting, Mindy Scott, wept as she told me her story. Scott had gone to the music festival with her 21-year-old daughter — the first country western concert they had attended together since her daughter became an adult. “I didn’t sleep for two days. And she stayed in my arms for two weeks,” recalled Scott, a waitress. She and her daughter still flinch at loud noises, a common trigger for gun-violence survivors. Fireworks can be the worst triggers, even if the brain tries to assure the survivor all is well. “On the Fourth of July,” she said, “me and her sat in my closet with headphones on, watching movies, with our dogs at our side. The dogs get us through this, to this day.” Scott and her husband, an Uber driver, carried dozens of shooting victims from the shooting site to the hospital in their two vehicles for several hours following the shooting. Not long before the one-year anniversary of the shooting, the family moved into a different rental house, because from the first one she could see the Las Vegas Strip where the shooting occurred — that was just too painful, Scott said. I’ve not met the members of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where shots broke out October 27, 2018, leaving 11 dead and six injured Oct. 27. I have, however, interviewed those who survived another hate-crime shooting, at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. I spoke with survivor Satpal Kaleka, whose husband Satwant Singh Kaleka was the spiritual leader of the temple, and who was shot to death as he struggled with the gunman in 2012. Five other worshipers died, too. Satpal Kaleka is deeply spiritual, and believes “all is in god’s hands.” Still, she and others who hid from the gunman that Sunday, today find themselves imagining exit routes during the weekly service. Several people were injured, including a police officer who was shot 15 times, and survived. I have not yet interviewed the Parkland students who witnessed the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day, 2018, leaving 17 dead and as many injured. Since then, many of those who survived that shooting have become activists in the gun-reform movement. Finding a new path is not unusual for people who survive shootings. After time, many survivors and those connected to shootings find a new direction for their lives. For those of us who have not been disabled by gunfire, witnessed a fatal shooting, or had our loved ones murdered, this may seem a distant reality. It may seem surreal as we watch the news in the safety of our living rooms, or follow along on our smart phones. One trauma surgeon turned policy-maker, however, says we ought not to fool ourselves. Dr. Randall Friese was just coming off a 24-hour hospital shift when the calls came in about the Tucson shooting. He performed surgery on 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, but was unable to save her. He then turned his attention to U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a shot in the head in an assassination attempt Jan. 8, 2011. She has brain damage and is partially paralyzed, and has become active in gun reform. After that very long day of blood, death and surgeries, Friese was changed. Over time, he decided he might do more as a legislator than as merely a trauma surgeon. He ran for office, and now is a state representative in the Arizona House, pushing for changes in gun laws. None of those bills he has introduced in his red state have made it to a hearing, however, even one that simply requested the creation of a study committee on gun violence. Still, he believes in pushing for reform. “Just because it’s never touched you or your immediate family, it may have touched a neighbor, and you’re not aware of it. Or a child that goes to school with your child,” said Friese, who divides his time as surgeon and legislator. “So I’m trying to get people to understand that it’s closer to you than you think,” said Friese, who was re-elected Nov. 6, 2018. “And if we don’t do something to change that trajectory, it’s going to eventually touch you, or someone very close to you.” The U.S. gun violence epidemic leaves thousands dead, injured, and forever changed
When people are killed or injured by gun violence, a ripple effect moves beyond the individuals who were shot. It is not just those who were killed, or the survivors and witnesses to shootings who feel the impact. Also affected by shootings are the relatives, friends, and sometimes even people they did not know at the time of the shooting. Last year, more than 14,600 people were killed by guns in the United States. Another 28,000-plus were injured in approximately 57,000 incidents, including 340 mass shootings, according to the not-for-profit Gun Violence Archive, which provides statistics on gun-related violence. (These 2018 numbers do not include the 22,000 annual suicides.) In Tucson, Arizona, a survivor of the 2011 “Gabby Giffords shooting” says his granddaughter, who was not even at the deadly incident, still suffers from anxiety brought on by the shooting of her grandfather, Ron Barber. Also in Tucson, the wife of a man who tackled the gunman that sunny Saturday morning, said for two years she was very afraid every time she left the house. Sallie Badger absolutely “knew” a gunman would be waiting for her after she got into her car. She was not even at the shooting that claimed six lives and left 13 people injured, including her husband Bill Badger. A woman who was there, holding the hand of a 9-year-old girl who did not survive the shooting, has spent months and years recovering from her wounds from the three bullets that entered her body. Suzi Hileman is forever impacted by the trauma of losing her young friend. Only after she told her own family that she hoped to join activists fighting for gun reform, did she learn about the trauma her grown daughter had gone through during the long days her mom lay unconscious in the hospital. “It’s just the ripple effect of it,” said Hileman of gun violence. “How it touches everyone.” In suburban Milwaukee, a gunman came to a Sikh temple with the intent to kill. He murdered six people including Satwant Singh Kaleka, the temple’s president and spiritual leader, as many of the congregation hid in the pantry while gunshots exploded. Since then, Kaleka’s wife Satpal Kaleka has a difficult time concentrating on the Sunday service. She and others who were there imagine an exit route — while they would rather be concentrating on their spiritual lives. One of their sons, Pardeep Kaleka, changed his career after the shooting, becoming a trauma counselor focusing on men’s anger. He was driving his children to the temple when the shooting occurred. And a mom who took her 21-year-old daughter to a country music festival in Las Vegas that turned into the worst mass shooting in U.S. history to date, tells of eight months later when the two hid in her closet with headphones on and their dogs at their sides, trying to block out the sound of fireworks exploding. Neither Mindy Scott or her daughter was shot, but they suffer from PTSD and will never forget the shooting. My name is Mary Tolan, and I am a journalist and journalism professor. On sabbatical this year, I am reporting on the survivors of gun violence. I’ve interviewed people in Tucson, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, a random-shooting victim in Phoenix and a nursing student who witnessed her two professors being shot to death during her 2002 midterm exam at an Arizona university. I will travel to other states to continue my reporting. Disturbingly, there is no shortage of places to visit regarding these tragic, all-too-common events. I have never been at a shooting, and I hope I never am. But with the numbers of gun-related violence on the uptick in this country, I half expect that I will witness a shooting in my lifetime. I pray my children never will. Deaths by gun fire in the United States are among the highest in the world. In 2017, 12 people out of every 100,000 died in this country, compared to 0.2 deaths in Japan, 0.3 in the UK, 0.9 in Germany and 2.1 in Canada, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that “just six countries in the world are responsible for more than half of all 250,000 gun deaths a year. The U.S. is among those six, together with Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela and Guatemala.” Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the gun-related murder rate in the U.S. was 25 times higher in 2010, according to the American Journal of Medicine. What I’ve discovered on this path of reporting is the bravery, insightfulness, despair and hopefulness of the survivors I’ve met. People who were interviewed by the media for many hours immediately after the shootings, and who are still willing to open up — and often open up their homes — to yet another reporter. When a shooting happens, especially a mass shooting, journalists swoop in, often focusing on the victims who died or the actions of the perpetrator. These are important stories, of course. But too often those same journalists leave when the next big story breaks, and the tales of the survivors are forgotten. I’m not sure why I feel called upon to share the stories of these survivors. Simply, I do. Some survivors I’ve spoken with years after the shooting, others at the first anniversary or even earlier. Meeting with them has been inspiring, emotional, and deep. Being shot or having a family member killed or wounded by gunfire changes a person forever. What I’ve discovered is the ripple effect of these shootings. Many survivors mention this phenomenon. Like a stone tossed into a pond that creates rippling circles, a gun shot’s impact travels from the people hit, beyond those individuals and outward into the world. My blog, “The Ripple Effect, the Stories of Gun Violence Survivors,” will encourage survivors to express in their own words what they and their circle of friends and acquaintances have been through, and the impact on their lives months or years after the shootings. I thank all the survivors who have so generously shared their stories with me. I welcome others to join them as I travel the country, listening. |
AuthorMary Tolan is a fiction writer and journalist. Her first published book Mars Hill Murder, a mystery set in Flagstaff, will be published by The Wild Rose Press in autumn of 2023. Archives
May 2023
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