Residents across the US are afraid and expressing their new reason for anxiety and fear after two back-to-back mass shootings took place over the weekend.
20 people were killed and 26 were injured in El Paso, Texas, in an apparent act of terrorism. Then the next day, nine people were killed and 27 more were injured in Dayton, Ohio.
Americans who slept with fear after the news alerts of the first mass shooting, woke up to alerts of a second mass shooting, are posting online that they “don’t feel safe anywhere.” They said they feel like they can be confronted with a gunman whenever they leave the house.
Steve Reveles, an 18-year-old from Oregon told BuzzFeed News these anxious thoughts are “just getting worse” for him.
“I’ve kinda had this fear for a while but it’s just getting worse because they’re happening more frequently and who knows where the next mass shooting is going to happen or how many are going to happen?” said Reveles. “Am I safe anywhere?”
Jes Karakashian, 43, of Rochester, New York, shared her own experiences. Karakashian told BuzzFeed News she needs a therapist for this type of fear. She wants to keep speaking about it so that “others would know they are not thinking differently.
She shared some of her experiences by listing the mass tragedies that she’s had to confront on a scary personal level:
“In 1992 a student shot a teacher in the face at my high school.point 57 | I was in class two doors down.point 81 | When I lived in Denver, I watched Columbine happen in real-time on the news.point 144 | The Aurora Century theater is a theater I frequented years before the shooting there.point 216 |
Several months after Sandy Hook — which was 20 years to the day of the shooting at my high school, by the way — I sent my eldest to kindergarten, where on the first day of school there was a lockout because the police were looking for a man who had shot his girlfriend in Rochester the day before.point 243 |
point 0 | 1
“I’ve never been more terrified in my life for my child’s safety,” she said.
Also, a pro wrestler Brandi Rhodes tweeted that she use to sit at a proper place every Sunday at church because it’s her “best route to exits in case someone comes in and opens fire.”
She added that the frequency of mass shootings makes everything difficult.
Even Dayton’s mayor, Nan Whaley, said in a press conference that she understands these sad new realities.
“These senseless acts of violence that occur have been happening anyplace, and I don’t mean to scare people, but frankly we’re at a situation now in our country that — these are so random, there’s no place that you can say, ‘Oh I just don’t want to ever go anywhere,'” she said.