A routine I refuse to pass on

Mass shootings, public health, and policy solutions

Like many of my colleagues in public health, I spent the evening of August 8 glued to my computer. Text message apps arranged on the left side of the screen, a browser window on the right, open to Twitter and CNN. As I hit refresh refresh refresh, a bizarre thought bubbled up. I’ve felt this before. I’ve done this before. This is a routine. Mass shootings in America are routine.

The incident didn’t last long in the news cycle (which is itself telling). In brief, a gunman who reportedly believed he was harmed by the Covid-19 vaccine fired hundreds of rounds at buildings on CDC’s Atlanta campus, hitting over a hundred windows across four buildings. A police officer, David Rose, was shot and killed. Officer Rose is the father of two children, and his wife is pregnant with a third. But as I watched the news coverage fade, I realized this was the latest in a pattern that is too familiar to us all.

My routine is well practiced. I went to graduate school at Virginia Tech a few years after a gunman barricaded the doors to an academic building and massacred 32 students and professors. In 2011, while I was enrolled, another gunman shot and killed a university police officer during a traffic stop. The officer had five children. It was just a few weeks before Christmas.

A few years later, when I was working as an epidemiologist in suburban Maryland, a man killed three of his colleagues in an act of workplace violence just down the road. And in the years since, at least once a year news of a campus shooting lights up my phone.

Each incident restarts the cycle: text messages, social media updates, gnawing fear.

There are routines my children know. My twins had active shooter drills in kindergarten. They came home talking about what to do if there is a bad guy at school. My middle schooler knows to ‘run, hide, fight.’ She knows that when I interrupt her habit of flipping through the newspaper over breakfast, it’s because there’s something in there that I don’t want her to see. A school shooting, often.

I want to be clear that there is no question in my mind that the shooting was a targeted attack on public health workers, and that anti-vaccine and anti-public health rhetoric contributed. Political appointees, including RFK Jr., who wrote a bestseller titled The Real Anthony Fauci (the marketing copy says, “Pharma-funded mainstream media has convinced millions of Americans that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a hero. Hands down, he is anything but.”), are especially culpable. So in that sense, it feels wrong to detract from the specifics of last week’s incident. But in another sense, this shooting wasn’t unique at all. It was routine.

I have a new step now. After every incident, I write to my elected leaders and urge them to take action against gun violence. There are eight policy interventions that the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions prioritizes: supporting states to pass firearm purchaser licensing laws, passing firearm removal laws, addressing community gun violence, prioritizing firearm suicide prevention, supporting strong public carry laws, promoting safe storage, increasing public funding, and preventing illegal gun trafficking. There are common-sense solutions that can protect all of us from becoming victims.

This cycle of gun violence is not one we should ever accept. It is a preventable public health crisis that demands urgent and sustained action. We must continue to push for meaningful change, for the sake of our families, our communities, and the lives that are lost. Because the alternative, accepting that this is just how things are, is a routine that I refuse to pass on to my children.

Screenshot of priorities from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions