Those Impacted by a School Shooting? Thousands.
Yesterday I posted to my blog about the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, that killed 4 and wounded 7. I'd been considering whether or not, and how, to write about it for a few days. These events are tragedies, and they're sadly becoming too frequent to write about all of them without turning this blog into "The Tragedy of the Day". What finally tipped me over to writing about this one was an interview I heard on the radio yesterday with a major news media reporter who's covered numerous school shootings. One of the points he made in his interview is that the set of people harmed by a shooting is much broader than just the people killed or injured by gunshots.
This makes sense when you start to think about it. Every student killed has a family who's devastated. Every student wounded may be permanently injured and has a family who'll have to live with the consequences of that and probably support them. Adults killed or injured in shootings have families, too, and they're not just somebody's spouse, sister, brother, child, or parent; they're also a family's breadwinner. With this consideration the number of people you can imagine being impacted grows from 11 (those killed or wounded) to dozens, maybe even 100+.
But the circle of harm is broader still, the reporter explained. Every student in the school is harmed. Hundreds of students hid from the shooter, afraid for their lives for tens of minutes and not knowing whether they'd get out of school alive. Every student in the school likely knew at least one person who was shot. Every student in the school has got to wonder when it's safe to return- if it's safe to return. Their parents are wondering the same thing, too! And it's not just the students and their families; it's all the teachers and staff, too. They were all in fear for their lives. And many of the staff will also tormented by thoughts of, What could I have done differently to protect more students? The number of people harmed, psychologically, is in the thousands.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/152180.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
This makes sense when you start to think about it. Every student killed has a family who's devastated. Every student wounded may be permanently injured and has a family who'll have to live with the consequences of that and probably support them. Adults killed or injured in shootings have families, too, and they're not just somebody's spouse, sister, brother, child, or parent; they're also a family's breadwinner. With this consideration the number of people you can imagine being impacted grows from 11 (those killed or wounded) to dozens, maybe even 100+.
But the circle of harm is broader still, the reporter explained. Every student in the school is harmed. Hundreds of students hid from the shooter, afraid for their lives for tens of minutes and not knowing whether they'd get out of school alive. Every student in the school likely knew at least one person who was shot. Every student in the school has got to wonder when it's safe to return- if it's safe to return. Their parents are wondering the same thing, too! And it's not just the students and their families; it's all the teachers and staff, too. They were all in fear for their lives. And many of the staff will also tormented by thoughts of, What could I have done differently to protect more students? The number of people harmed, psychologically, is in the thousands.
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/152180.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]