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By Petula Dvorak, Updated: Monday, September 16, 2:35 PM E-mail the writers
Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora, Newtown. And now Washington.
At least 12 people were killed in a burst of gunfire at the Navy Yard on Monday morning, including one of the suspected shooters. And the toll could climb higher.
Archive
E-mail
Video
Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis spoke with Nia-Malika Henderson on the emotions that mass shootings spark for him, and how he recovered after the 1999 tragedy at his Colorado high school.
LIVENavy Yard shooting
4:10 PMPolice investigate ID used to enter Navy Yard
3:59 PMReddit bans section looking for shooters
3:36 PMLockdown lifted at DoT
3:25 PMStreets remain closed around Navy Yard
3:20 PMOfficials identify suspect as Aaron Alexis
3:14 PMSenate buildings locked down
3:11 PMNats game postponed
3:06 PMWorst loss of life in D.C. since 1982
Video: Obama on Navy Yard shooting
WATCH | ‘We are confronting yet another mass shooting,’ Obama says at a Monday news conference.
Witnesses: Navy Yard shooter aimed at us
Navy Yard employee: ‘Hard’ to enter without ID
Employee hears co-workers were shot
Chief Lanier describes possible suspects
Navy Yard shooting
Twitter and Instagram updates from news outlets, witnesses and others.
Law Enforcement source says shooter was firing down from fourth floor into atrium. One handgun now recovered. Dogs trying to find long gun.
Paul Wagner
@Fox5Wagner
via Twitter about 17m ago
Aaron Alexis, identified as dead gunman in Navy Yard shooting
Carol D. Leonnig and David A. Fahrenthold 4:00 PM ET
Police say it is unclear if Alexis acted alone.
Witnesses recount gunshots, confusion at Navy Yard
Susan Svrluga, Jenna Johnson and Steve Hendrix 3:57 PM ET
Navy officer who escaped says a civilian worker he was talking to was fatally shot right next to him.
Navy Yard is home to several major Navy commands
About 16,000 military and civilian employees work in the complex’s 2.2 million square feet of offices.
Another mass shooting. And this one hits very close to home.
Petula Dvorak 2:35 PM ET
At least 12 are dead at the Navy Yard, and again we wonder if this is the rampage that will change things.
Another rampage. This one, for me, very close to home. My kids and I biked to the Navy Yard on Saturday.
How can this country tolerate another mass shooting, after we’ve endured so many others? And why have we allowed ourselves to grow accustomed to this awful bloodshed? Because that’s what these slaughters have become: practically routine.
“How many this time?” we ask as we watch the number of dead and injured climb on TV or Twitter.
Even the folks inside Building 197, where the Naval Sea Systems Command is located, knew what was happening. Patricia Ward, who works for the Navy, was on her way to breakfast with two friends when they heard the gunfire.
One of Ward’s friends started to ask, “Was that a gunshot?” But she was interrupted by the sounds of “BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM,” Ward said.
“We knew it then,” Ward told The Post’s Steve Hendrix. “We just started running.”
More than 3,000 people work at the Navy Yard. It’s a complex full of folks who do the paperwork behind the Navy’s fleet. Ordinary people doing ordinary jobs are suddenly confronted with unthinkable carnage.
We’ve been here before so many times. And each time we wonder whether this is the mass shooting that will finally wake us from our numb sleepwalk.
It didn’t happen after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, when a student gunman unleashed an attack that left 32 dead and more than two dozen wounded. It didn’t happen after the Fort Hood attack, when an Army psychiatrist opened fire on dozens of soldiers in 2009, killing 13 and injuring 30. It didn’t happen after a 2011 rampage in Tucson killed a federal judge and left then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) with brain damage. It didn’t happen after the most heartbreaking mass shooting of all: the one last year that took the lives of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.
After Newtown, it took a little longer for our collective numbness to return. But not even the pleas of grief-stricken parents who’d lost their children could make a dent in the opposition to any restrictions on the sales of semiautomatic weapons.
Our love affair with violent entertainment remains unshakable. Bloody movies still top the charts every weekend. Violent video games generate billions in sales annually.
And gun sales have soared. Background checks for gun sales numbered almost 20 million last year, about 20 percent more than the year before.
But people have always had guns in America, and kids have always played violent games — if not “Call of Duty,” then cops and robbers.
That’s not what the problem is. What is changing in this country is our acceptance of the way America is changing.
Our middle class is disappearing, our income gap is back to robber-baron days and none of the people responsible for the global economic crisis went to prison or jail.
How is it possible that we’ve all become so used to mass shootings? It’s the same thing that lets us drive past the panhandlers at intersections and the same emotional armor that gets us past the wounded veterans with prosthetics on the Metro.
Mass shootings are becoming as American as apple pie and baseball. And that’s almost as appalling as the mounting casualties.
For previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/dvorak.
Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora, Newtown. And now Washington.
At least 12 people were killed in a burst of gunfire at the Navy Yard on Monday morning, including one of the suspected shooters. And the toll could climb higher.
Archive
Video
Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis spoke with Nia-Malika Henderson on the emotions that mass shootings spark for him, and how he recovered after the 1999 tragedy at his Colorado high school.
LIVENavy Yard shooting
4:10 PMPolice investigate ID used to enter Navy Yard
3:59 PMReddit bans section looking for shooters
3:36 PMLockdown lifted at DoT
3:25 PMStreets remain closed around Navy Yard
3:20 PMOfficials identify suspect as Aaron Alexis
3:14 PMSenate buildings locked down
3:11 PMNats game postponed
3:06 PMWorst loss of life in D.C. since 1982
Video: Obama on Navy Yard shooting
WATCH | ‘We are confronting yet another mass shooting,’ Obama says at a Monday news conference.
Witnesses: Navy Yard shooter aimed at us
Navy Yard employee: ‘Hard’ to enter without ID
Employee hears co-workers were shot
Chief Lanier describes possible suspects
Navy Yard shooting
Twitter and Instagram updates from news outlets, witnesses and others.
Law Enforcement source says shooter was firing down from fourth floor into atrium. One handgun now recovered. Dogs trying to find long gun.
Paul Wagner
@Fox5Wagner
via Twitter about 17m ago
Aaron Alexis, identified as dead gunman in Navy Yard shooting
Carol D. Leonnig and David A. Fahrenthold 4:00 PM ET
Police say it is unclear if Alexis acted alone.
Witnesses recount gunshots, confusion at Navy Yard
Susan Svrluga, Jenna Johnson and Steve Hendrix 3:57 PM ET
Navy officer who escaped says a civilian worker he was talking to was fatally shot right next to him.
Navy Yard is home to several major Navy commands
About 16,000 military and civilian employees work in the complex’s 2.2 million square feet of offices.
Another mass shooting. And this one hits very close to home.
Petula Dvorak 2:35 PM ET
At least 12 are dead at the Navy Yard, and again we wonder if this is the rampage that will change things.
Another rampage. This one, for me, very close to home. My kids and I biked to the Navy Yard on Saturday.
How can this country tolerate another mass shooting, after we’ve endured so many others? And why have we allowed ourselves to grow accustomed to this awful bloodshed? Because that’s what these slaughters have become: practically routine.
“How many this time?” we ask as we watch the number of dead and injured climb on TV or Twitter.
Even the folks inside Building 197, where the Naval Sea Systems Command is located, knew what was happening. Patricia Ward, who works for the Navy, was on her way to breakfast with two friends when they heard the gunfire.
One of Ward’s friends started to ask, “Was that a gunshot?” But she was interrupted by the sounds of “BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM,” Ward said.
“We knew it then,” Ward told The Post’s Steve Hendrix. “We just started running.”
More than 3,000 people work at the Navy Yard. It’s a complex full of folks who do the paperwork behind the Navy’s fleet. Ordinary people doing ordinary jobs are suddenly confronted with unthinkable carnage.
We’ve been here before so many times. And each time we wonder whether this is the mass shooting that will finally wake us from our numb sleepwalk.
It didn’t happen after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, when a student gunman unleashed an attack that left 32 dead and more than two dozen wounded. It didn’t happen after the Fort Hood attack, when an Army psychiatrist opened fire on dozens of soldiers in 2009, killing 13 and injuring 30. It didn’t happen after a 2011 rampage in Tucson killed a federal judge and left then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) with brain damage. It didn’t happen after the most heartbreaking mass shooting of all: the one last year that took the lives of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.
After Newtown, it took a little longer for our collective numbness to return. But not even the pleas of grief-stricken parents who’d lost their children could make a dent in the opposition to any restrictions on the sales of semiautomatic weapons.
Our love affair with violent entertainment remains unshakable. Bloody movies still top the charts every weekend. Violent video games generate billions in sales annually.
And gun sales have soared. Background checks for gun sales numbered almost 20 million last year, about 20 percent more than the year before.
But people have always had guns in America, and kids have always played violent games — if not “Call of Duty,” then cops and robbers.
That’s not what the problem is. What is changing in this country is our acceptance of the way America is changing.
Our middle class is disappearing, our income gap is back to robber-baron days and none of the people responsible for the global economic crisis went to prison or jail.
How is it possible that we’ve all become so used to mass shootings? It’s the same thing that lets us drive past the panhandlers at intersections and the same emotional armor that gets us past the wounded veterans with prosthetics on the Metro.
Mass shootings are becoming as American as apple pie and baseball. And that’s almost as appalling as the mounting casualties.
For previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/dvorak.
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