Trigger warning: Gun violence
My phone was buzzing in my pocket, illuminating the time and date – 21:00 on December 28th, 2019. The day I realized I’m not bulletproof. I was present for a shooting at the Concord Mills Mall in North Carolina.
I remember the speaker system coming on – “ehiefjwleji.” Just a jumbled mix of noise comes out, an eerie harbinger of fear that scrambles any intelligible thoughts. A nearby woman sharply yanks her son’s forearm and sprints, the child skidding as his ice cream cone slaps the off-white tiles, dismembered.
Although the shooting happened over three years ago, I am still processing what happened. It forced me to begin wondering – what does this event really mean for me? How will it impact my dreams of being a doctor devoted to serving others and my outlook on the world?
The fleeting nature of shootings starkly contrasts its permanent effects, stripping families of children and pushing people into the blinding headlights of bullets. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have already been ninety-four mass shootings in America in 2023 (“Gun Violence Archive”). Days after the shooting, I wanted to talk about what had happened. However, I felt invisible hands strangling me, forcing me to think that I had no right to speak on the subject because I was not physically injured or affected. I was not even a local who would stay to mourn the loss of victims. I thought my voice was insignificant.
So I kept quiet and devalued my experience, and it became easier to do so as I was bombarded with suffering from people around the world whenever Dad turned on the news. Another plane crashed. Another child went missing. Another earthquake shatters the lives of thousands. Another shooting. I was desensitized from media exposure of another tragedy, another set of numbers flashing on screen. I thought I had forgotten the raw, emotional dread I felt as I willed my breath to fall silent or my feet to run faster.
As a pre-medical student, I am taught to put the patient first, giving them control over themselves. At 21:30, a time of after-dinner movies and wind-down board games, we did not give the shooter consent to play with our lives. As I grappled with the idea that I was in a situation where I did not have autonomy over my own body, I kept searching for understanding, searching for peace and empathy within the chasm that existed where my heart was supposed to be.
Just as I was searching for the exit to the mall that day. We decided to duck into a Skechers store, the reality of the situation starting to dawn on my parents, my sister, my cousin and I. How awfully ironic it was that we were hiding in a store full of shoes but could not run out of this nightmare.
Growing up in the affluent neighborhoods of suburban Loudoun County, I never honestly thought about mass violence, never truly considered it relevant to my life. When I was hired as a nursing assistant this year, I was required to scroll through modules so I was aware of what to do in emergencies. Mass shootings were grouped together with natural disasters, as if the shootings were inherently natural in human society even when bullets and guns are man-made. Perhaps the environments, mindsets and thought processes mass shooters arise from are natural and probable in eight billion people in the world.
As we were running from the shooting, a woman was hugging someone, shuddering as we heard a stampede of feet, loud enough to mask gunshots. A mom crying with a bunch of little kids. Lights blinding everyone in the parking lot yet illuminating no one. The ambulance rushed by, the “RRRUUUU” sound already tuned out as I hyper-focused on crossing the street to get to our van. The cars clotted at the intersection, trapping us in.
Just as the intersection of income, race and other demographics lead to towns into ideal microcosms for shootings. Some models show that low-income neighborhoods with greater numbers of black and Hispanic residents tend to have higher rates of mass shootings in America (Maher et al.).
So where does this divide exist? Why do these categories of killers and victims fall into patterns, but we cannot do anything with these patterns? Why must we sit back and watch the same gun violence happen over and over again on the news, so often that I often forget to sit back and think – this is the world I live in today?
Frank Farley, Ph.D., professor of psychological studies and education at Temple University, gave an interview about the psychology behind mass shootings (Hamilton). Shooters are not heavily studied because people prioritize punishing over understanding them. Dr. Farley brings up the idea – what if we could predict who could become a shooter? He speaks of the “Type-T” personality who seek the attention and off-kilter adventure of a shooting (Hamilton). Walking through the mall that day, would I have recognized any “Type-T” personalities? Would I ever be able to forgive the shooter by attributing their actions to psychology beyond their control?
Shooters themselves inspire and compound fear even if the likelihood of being killed by a mass shooting is less than choking on food (Mosher). Like in my case, shootings continue to psychologically affect survivors and those far removed from these incidents. The topic reminds me of a concept from psychology: availability heuristic. Humans tend to overestimate the probability of events occurring based on how easily they procure an example of that event. It is the reason why the media has such a large influence on what people rank as their greatest fears. Media coverage makes us overestimate the probability of being killed in mass violence, making shootings all the more frightening. It could be me next. It could be you. It could be the one person who makes your life worth living.
I didn’t feel safe as we dropped our cousin off at his dorm at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, deciding to stay at a hotel overnight instead of driving straight home. Even though we stopped for the night, we were all silently still running away.
I could not bring myself to search up the name of the one person who died because I did not want that fact to cement that memory into reality. Would I have felt relief if I knew the police also had guns and were ordered to shoot the man on site? Or would I have felt more worried that more and more guns were accumulating, wrecking any pretense of safety?
It made me realize similarly that the shooting I lived through holds a complicated truth for my future. Not all people will deserve saving. But it will be my job to do my best for them anyway. It will be my duty to do no harm.
The news and research into the complexities of shootings makes me question our humanity, makes me question my humanity, makes me question my ability to be an open-minded physician, but one thing is certain: I will search up the name of that 13-year-old girl who died someday.
Works Cited
Beard, Jo Ann. “The Fourth State of Matter.” The New Yorker, 17 June 1996, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter.
“Gun Violence Archive.” Gun Violence Archive, Gun Violence Archive, 14 Feb. 2013, https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/.
Hamilton, Audrey, host. “Understanding mass violence (SOP44).” Speaking of Psychology, American Psychological Association, 2016. American Psychological Association, https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/mass-violence
Maher, Erin J., et al. “Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Neighborhood Characteristics Associated with Mass Shootings in the USA – Race and Social Problems.” SpringerLink, Springer US, 28 Oct. 2021, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12552-021-09350-3#citeas.
Mosher, Dave. “The Odds That a Gun Will Kill the Average American May Surprise You.” Business Insider, 29 Oct. 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-gun-death-murder-risk-statistics-2018-3.
National Institute of Justice, “Public Mass Shootings: Database Amasses Details of a Half Century of U.S. Mass Shootings with Firearms, Generating Psychosocial Histories,” USA.gov, February 3, 2022, https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/public-mass-shootings-database-amasses-details-half-century-us-mass-shootings.