More than 30 fellow human beings gone in moments, in public places exactly like those where huge swaths of the
American population go without a second thought.
It's really scary being out by myself," preschool teacher Courtney Grier, 21, said Sunday outside a grocery store in
Virginia Beach, Virginia, where a gunman killed 12 in a city building in late May.
Add other daily-life institutions that have been visited by mass shootings — houses of worship, movie theaters, malls, a newsroom and, of course, schools — and the question becomes more pressing: Are these loud, sudden events starting to fundamentally change America in quiet, incremental ways?