As the mayor of a small town in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Emily Styron knows that her constituents count on her to remain calm.
But two days after the May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., Styron snapped when she saw a comment on Facebook from someone who appeared to discount the role that guns played in the slaughter of children and teachers at Robb Elementary School. She let loose on Facebook with an expletive-peppered rant.
"I am so sick and tired of the stupid useless rhetoric … when it comes to gun regulation," Styron, the Democratic mayor of Zionsville, Ind., wrote, angrily lamenting the "mass murders" of the nation's children.
Styron's anger reflects a sober reality for local officials across the nation. They say they are pessimistic that a federal — or even state-level — solution to the violence is forthcoming, even as President Biden renews his push for Congress to act on gun restrictions. Instead, armed with little more than fresh outrage, elected officials, police chiefs and school leaders are scrambling to find other ways to keep their own communities from becoming the next to be shattered in the country's unrelenting season of bloodshed.
Besides beefing up response plans and fortifying potential targets, local officials say they hope to revive public service campaigns that encourage even the nation's youngest students to report suspicious behavior. Local governments also hope to scrape together enough funding to expand mental health services to try to reach troubled residents before they lash out in violence.
"Everyone is on high alert," said John Tecklenburg, the nonpartisan mayor of Charleston, S.C., where 10 people were wounded in a mass shooting on Monday night. "I am fed up with this situation and will certainly try to do anything we can, but it is a daunting situation."
Over the past month, gunmen have killed nearly three dozen people in attacks at a grocery store in Buffalo, the school in Uvalde and a medical office in Tulsa. Those shootings were just part of a deeper pattern of violence besetting a rattled nation.
Since May 14, when an allegedly racist gunman attacked the grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, there have been more than 35 mass shootings, including more than a dozen over Memorial Day weekend. So far this year, there has not been a single week in the United States without a mass shooting — defined as a gun attack in which four or more victims are injured or killed — according to the Gun Violence Archive, a research group.
Other cities have been grieving over more isolated violence. Last Saturday, an 8-year-old boy was shot in Florence, S.C., after an alleged assailant randomly fired his weapon at passing vehicles. The boy died two days later. On Sunday, an 18-month-old boy was killed in Pittsburgh when he was hit by random gunfire. On Thursday, gunfire erupted in Racine, Wis., as a family was burying a son; two people were injured at his gravesite.
The nation's recent bout of high-profile gun violence is part of a terrible trend that began in 2020, when a swirl of factors — including pandemic-induced stress, a spike in gun sales and a frayed relationship between police and the people they serve — drove shooting deaths to the highest level in decades. Last year was even deadlier, according to the archive.
Through June 1 this year, more than 8,000 people across the United States have been killed in gun violence, 300 fewer deaths than during the same period in 2021 but over 1,000 more than in 2020, according to a Washington Post analysis of the Gun Violence Archive's data.
With that, 2022 is on track to be among the deadliest years for shootings since the turn of the century, even if it falls short of 2021's devastating toll.
Tecklenburg, the Charleston mayor, said he and other local officials are increasingly perplexed trying to understand what is driving the violence. Much of it, he said, appears to be connected to armed individuals who have a far lower "barrier for pulling out a gun" than in the past.
He said the weekend mass shooting in his city occurred after a police officer responded to a report of a large, noisy party. When police arrived on the scene, he said, someone fired a weapon at an officer, shattering glass on the police cruiser. Others at the party then started firing their weapons indiscriminately, striking a total of 10 individuals, Tecklenburg said.
"It just feels like we are killing ourselves, and it just feels like as a nation we are on a suicide path," Tecklenburg said. "It's a sickness our country has to address and remedy, or I am fearful of the trend continuing to increase, and it will tear the whole fabric of the country over time."
Just this week, 500 police chiefs were in San Francisco for a conference on violent crime co-sponsored by the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). On Wednesday, Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin, who was attending the gathering, rushed to catch a flight back home after the shooting there, said Chuck Wexler, PERF executive director.
On Thursday, Wexler said, Franklin's deputy briefed the conference on the timeline of the shooting, noting that the gunman, who shot and killed himself, bought a semiautomatic rifle just hours before carrying out the attack.
"These incidents are so time-sensitive; so much can happen within a few minutes," Wexler said. He said chiefs are reviewing their policies and trying to determine "how they would respond in similar situations."
In Los Angeles, Police Chief Michel Moore said threats of mass violence have been "an ongoing concern," particularly in the local schools. Police on Thursday morning were helping investigate a threat discovered through a gaming application based in Mexico, he said.
Moore said his department has proactively approached houses of worship and other potential targets, asking the community to be on alert for vandalism or hate crimes and to report anything suspicious. In some cases, he said, officers will add patrols as a deterrent. The Los Angeles Police Department also has continued to update training regimens, Moore said.
"It used to be called an 'active shooter' situation, but we now term it 'mass violence,'" Moore said. "The key is stopping the threat and at the same time recognizing that the threat has evolved, and we want to get to the location and gather information as quickly as possible. … Those are the strategies. The key, like anything else, is execution."
In the nation's capital, police said in recent days that they have added patrols at schools, hospitals and shopping centers after recent mass shootings elsewhere.
"We are worried about copycats," said Ashan Benedict, executive assistant to D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III.
Groups of officers in every police district are trained in handling rifles and other long guns, and carry such weapons in their vehicles, along with ballistic shields and equipment used to breach doors — all to help them respond quickly.
"There are so many different ways things can play out" with an active shooter, said Benedict, who before joining the D.C. police was an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "We have to be fluid and flexible in our response."
D.C. police preparedness was put to the test on April 22 when a lone gunman fired 239 rounds at the private Edmund Burke School in Northwest Washington, wounding four people, including a security guard and a 12-year-old student on an elevated walkway.
A D.C. police officer working school security ran toward the shots and was quickly relieved by uniformed U.S. Secret Service officers who happened to be in the area. The gunman killed himself as authorities closed in on an apartment from which he was firing.
But the executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association said he worries the nation's police agencies are unprepared to handle the volume of mass shootings taking place in the United States, in terms of manpower and equipment.
"Texas has four times as many law enforcement agencies as any other state in the union. We have almost 2,900 different agencies, almost 1,000 of which employ exactly one officer," said Kevin Lawrence, the executive director. "Sixty percent of all the law enforcement [departments] in Texas employ fewer than 10 officers."
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey B. Norman issued a call for greater public involvement to avert mass shootings.
"There are no bystanders in this crisis," Norman said. "We all have a role, a personal responsibility, to intervene early and often" when a friend or acquaintance is troubled or showing signs of distress.
Schools, churches and private businesses also have been reviewing security plans.
Several school superintendents said they feel they have already done all they can to harden school buildings. Their focus now is to expand mental health services for students and families, while drilling into students how best to identify and report possible threats.
"We're fearful this problem will grow if we don't continue to really focus and double down on resources for mental health services," said Heather Perry, the superintendent of schools in Gorham, Maine. The district's pandemic-era mental health needs outstrip its ability to provide care, she said.
"We're doing the best we can to provide what we can on-site. But our school social workers and counselors are not meant to do long-term treatment; they're intended for triage. They're intended to pick up the issues and then pass them on to a community partner, but those partners are overrun as well. The whole system's overrun right now."
Rodney Shotwell, the superintendent of Rockingham County Schools in North Carolina, said he's imploring students to speak out quickly if they see something suspicious, whether on social media or on school grounds. On the basis of his own recent visit to a playground, Shotwell said, even kindergartners have become more adept at sensing potential danger.
"I was two steps out of the door heading toward the playground, which was probably about 30 yards away. And I heard two kids say, Hey, Miss So-and-so, who's that man coming right there? Who is that man?" Shotwell recalls. "You don't want to frighten kids, but at the same time, one of the best deterrents is having people say something when they see something."
Shari Camhi, the superintendent of schools for Baldwin Union Free School District on Long Island, said the threat of gun violence increasingly centers on "things that are outside of our control."
"If we really want to solve a problem, you need to get to the root of the problem," Camhi said. "Schools are not at the root of the problem. The guns are the problem."
Many mayors also said they believe that the country's violent trajectory will continue if stricter regulations on firearms sales are not introduced. The U.S. Conference of Mayors on Friday released a letter signed by a bipartisan list of 255 mayors asking congressional leaders to pass heightened background checks and other gun safety bills. (The Post separately sought comment from Republican mayors without success.)
"Our nation can no longer wait for our federal government to take the actions necessary to prevent people who should not have access to firearms from being able to purchase them," the mayors wrote. They also pointed out that they had sent the same letter after a flurry of shootings in 2019, to no avail.
Tensions have been rising in recent days as mayors try, once again, to be heard on the issue.
On Wednesday, Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Jeffrey J. Mims Jr. and city commissioners wrote a terse letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) noting that DeWine and state lawmakers had loosened gun laws after an August 2019 mass shooting in the city in which nine people were killed.
A few days after that shooting, DeWine announced that he would support mandatory background checks and "red flag" laws in Ohio. But the governor quickly backed away from those proposals. DeWine instead supported several measures to weaken state gun laws, including signing a bill that allows residents to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.
"You chose to put politics over the people of Dayton," the letter stated. "You chose to put politics over the promises you made."
Tecklenburg, who took office in Charleston a few months after a white supremacist killed nine people at a local church, noted his frustration that Congress has so far rebuffed his calls to close a loophole in federal background checks named after his city.
The "Charleston loophole," which the gunman at Emanuel A.M.E. Church used to obtain his weapon, allows some licensed gun sales to be completed before a background check has been completed.
"How would you feel being mayor of a city that is known for a loophole that allows someone to be able to buy a gun just because the government didn't fully have the time to check their background?" Tecklenburg asked. "It feels pretty bad."
Meanwhile, Styron, the mayor of Zionsville, is facing pushback from some of her constituents over her profanity-laced remarks. But Styron said she won't apologize for them because the anger that spilled out represents the pain and despair gripping the nation.
"I am angry as a mom. I am angry as a mayor of a community that has four elementary schools, two middle schools, a high school, churches, community centers, libraries," said Styron, who has three children. "And I work in a public building, and I just don't understand why we can't elect policymakers who are going to introduce and pass meaningful, responsible safety measures for gun ownership."
"Why aren't we all screaming mad about it?" Styron said. "Why aren't we all so frustrated and so angry that we want to see change?"
