The ripple effects of mass shootings 

Around the corner from our home and down a bushy gravel path is a small fishing pond. We avoid it for most of the summer because of mosquitoes. But in early June when the air is still cool and the humidity hasn’t choked out the breeze, we walk over and throw pebbles in the pond and watch the ripples fan out. 

Ever since my son and I survived an assault weapon mass shooting last year, I have looked at the world differently. As I stood there watching the rock splash into the calm water leaving a cascade of ripples long after the splash had settled, I thought of how far the impact of a mass shooting can travel. 

The impact transcends the area where bullets ripped flesh and shattered glass and lives. It hops the borders of towns and state lines. When the headlines hit our news feeds, all of us feel the aftershocks. For those of us who have survived a mass shooting, we are always bracing for the next impact because mass shootings can happen anywhere, at any time, to any community. 

After that harrowing July Fourth in Highland Park, Ill., and after I was there on the day six were killed in a Nashville school shooting, also with an assault weapon, I am baffled that we aren’t making more progress to ban these weapons. 

Last year, a Republican lawmaker popped into a meeting I was having with his legislative team and bluntly declared that AR-15-style weapons kill the least number of people. He asked, “Why would we ban them when they cause the least amount of damage?” 

His perception is misguided, but I can see why he felt this way. The way the media currently reports on mass shootings is micro-focused and excludes the majority of directly impacted survivors. The news and police focus on the rock and the splash but not on the ripples. 

I want to change that. I want to open the aperture on how we measure the impact. When a tornado rips through a community, the news and police immediately share the number of residents and homes to alert the Federal Emergency Management Agency and utility companies to estimate the number impacted so they can be ready with resources. We need to be doing the same with mass shootings.  

Our tight-knit community of 30,000 people in Highland Park has thousands attend our Independence Day parade every year. Last year was no different. 

Thousands of people ran for their lives that day. People who were uninjured saw the carnage. They hid in gas stations and local shops for hours while a manhunt ensued for the shooter. One local father made the unimaginable decision to put his son in a dumpster while he searched for his partner. Volunteers trained in the basics of first aid held brain matter and desperately applied tourniquets. Families were separated. Wailing screams could be heard at every corner of town. 

In the aftermath, many struggled to return to work. They couldn’t pay their bills. Our bustling downtown square was guarded by shiny yellow caution tape for more than a week leaving restaurants and stores dark and empty. Our small community came to a screeching halt. Everyone moved slowly and carefully, nurturing unseeable wounds that may never heal. 

This long-term impact on our survivors was not reported on by the press, but it should be. 

Robb Elementary School had 550 students, staff and faculty. That number was never included in the initial reports but that is the number of people directly impacted by the mass shooting that killed 19 children and two educators. Just more than 15,000 people live in Uvalde, Texas. Had it been a tornado instead of a mass shooting, this would have been included in the first very briefing to show the scale of the devastation. 

This exclusion of the majority of directly impacted mass shooting survivors is holding us back from helping communities heal and from increasing awareness of the true damage these weapons of war have on communities across the country. 

Leaving the true number of those impacted by these acts of senseless violence absent from reporting blinds us to the magnitude of irreversible damage assault weapons are causing. We can’t truly know how much assault weapons are impacting our country if we don’t expand the focus to include every person impacted by every mass shooting event. It is not just Highland Park feeling the seismic aftershocks of one of these weapons entering our safe-havens. We are all Highland Park and are all grappling with the deadly impact and psychological grip of gun violence in the U.S. 

The U.S. and our lawmakers will not fully understand the wide-ranging impact of assault weapons until the press expands its focus beyond the splash to include the ripples and how far out they cascade. 

Ashbey Beasley survived the July Fourth Highland Park shooting with her son. She crashed a news conference in Nashville following the March Covenant School shooting.