Students hold a vigil on the campus of Virginia Tech in 2007.

On the normalization of mass shootings— and how I’ve been preparing for this day in my city.

CONTENT WARNING: This post will discuss topics related to gun violence.

Last night at around 11 p.m., a mass shooting took place in my home city of Indianapolis, Indiana at a major FedEx hub near the Indianapolis International Airport. As of this morning, eight people have died, more were injured, and around one-hundred had been evacuated from the facility.

All at once this morning, two facts hit me:

1. A thing I’d been preparing for for years with the hope that it wouldn’t happen — happened. I felt a mixture of gratitude and guilt that it occurred in a place that wasn’t where we’d assumed it would.
2. Somehow, it was the anniversary of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. Is it that these tragedies follow me? Or that they’re so frequent that it’s like this for everyone?

I have many friends who live all over the world. This comes mostly from being part of the Wikimedia community. In my travels I’ve experienced what life could be like in a country without such a pervasive gun culture — from Australia to the Netherlands. I’ve also experienced extremely militarized countries, like Israel, where I was stopped by an IDF officer, gun in hand, and made to open and rummage through my luggage in full-view of the public on the floor of a train station in Haifa. Still, nothing is quite like the U.S. and guns in the private hands of its citizens. The normalization of mass shootings in this country is like nowhere else.

How do you grapple with the need to prepare for “the worst?”

How do you rationalize the fact that there are so many mass shootings in your country, and your place of work is such a likely target, that the smart thing to do is to be ready for if it happens?

Should you be relieved that you’re prepared?

Or are you now worried that it’s imminent?

I have come to truly love crisis communications. It became an integral part of my previous job. I like planning ahead and thinking through every scenario so that I can remain calm in the moment of chaos. For nearly every other circumstance, like natural disasters, typical human accidental things, or other incidents, I am solid. Gun violence, in particular, is so avoidable as a society that it’s much more gut-wrenching to plan for. “To plan for.” That’s hard to type.

While local and state law enforcement collaborated and did extensive trainings at my workplace, I’m not sure how many other large Indianapolis employers they coordinated with. I don’t know if those one-hundred employees at FedEx were ready for an active shooter. I don’t know if those SWAT teams and first responders knew the facility that they were walking into. These were the first thoughts that went through my head. “Oh no. It’s happened. But at FedEx. Did they have the same resources I had?”

Is that normal?

It shouldn’t be normal.

So now we’re grieving new shootings on top of past shootings.

Today I found myself deciding between tweeting about two mass shootings that are related to me: The Indianapolis FedEx shooting and the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007.

This is not normal.

I decided to write this post instead.

In April 2007 I was walking the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, working towards my Masters in Education, a year past earning my History degree. I was working in an early childhood center, 9 months newlywed, and was still a couple months away from finding out I was pregnant with Teddy. I remember how worried I was about my friends at Tech when I heard how many had lost their lives, even though I still had to be focused, perky “Miss. Lori” for my two-year-old students. I remember going to class in the evening and the memorial being held on GMU’s campus. 32 lives lost. America’s largest mass shooting was in my state where my friends were attending class.

Is it weird to list off the connections one has to mass shooting incidents? Yes, it is. But maybe if we do, we can raise awareness around the normalization of mass shootings for Americans.

1. Columbine, 1999: I was in 8th grade and very involved in my church youth group. When it was claimed that some of the victims were targeted for their faith, this hit me really hard as someone at the same age.
2. DC Area Sniper Attacks, 2002: The murders were at gas stations along the highways I took between college and home. The fear got even worse when a man was killed at the gas station in my hometown of Manassas. They eventually were caught at a rest stop not far from where I traveled.
3. Virginia Tech, 2007: Somehow, like Columbine, I was also the same age for this shooting, though this one happened closer to home.
4. Sandy Hook, 2012: This was the first time as a social media manager that I wrote a memorial post for a current event directly related to my work. You know what shouldn’t be normal? Writing about the mass shooting of children (at Sandy Hook) for the social accounts of a children’s museum.
5. Noblesville West Middle School, 2018: This time the school shooting was in the Indianapolis area. But my first thought wasn’t what the museum should do. It was as a mom and a friend. I nearly ran to the office of my friend whose son was at the school. I just sat with her. He was okay.
6. FedEx Ground Facility, 2021: As late as 8 a.m. this morning at the Holiday Inn near the Indianapolis Airport, families were still waiting to hear that their loved ones were safe — 9 hours later. That hotel parking lot — where the nation’s media had descended upon the latest mass shooting incident — happens to be where we meet Teddy’s dad every Friday afternoon to swap for co-parenting weeks. Needless to say, we met elsewhere today.

So that’s it — #MyList of mass shootings that I feel connected with… Columbine, DC Sniper, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Noblesville, FedEx.

What’s your list? What are the mass shooting incidents that you feel connected with? It feels weird to list them. It doesn’t seem normal. Because it’s not. That’s the point. This shouldn’t be normal.

What is normal? To feel sincere shock by news of a mass shooting.
As Americans, we’ve lost the ability to feel that. But maybe if we bring awareness to everyone’s connection to so much gun violence, it will at least spark…surprise? I’d even take “surprise” at this point, if “shock” is too much to ask for.

Because one thing’s for sure. No one’s surprised or shocked when a FedEx Ground worker making $15 an hour has to run from a gunman on their lunchbreak. No one’s surprised or shocked when a mom has to worry if their son was the victim at that school shooting today, and hasn’t receive the text yet saying he’s okay. No one’s surprised or shocked when the social media manager calls their third meeting of the quarter to discuss how they should handle this deadly current event, asking for approval on the carefully crafted social post.

What is normal?