Shaken by San Bernardino, North Coast residents share unease over mass shootings

Mass shootings this year already had stained in blood an American church, a health clinic, a movie theater and schools when on Wednesday another wave of gun violence hit a social services center in San Bernardino, killing 14 people and injuring 21.

The string of shootings - many of them unfolding in live coverage seen in homes and workplaces - have left many in the country deeply unsettled about the gun violence that has become an all-too-routine part of American life.

“It’s becoming commonplace. You check the news; it’s another shooting,” said Harriet Smith, 60, of Sebastopol, who said she was rattled again by the San Bernardino attack, carried out by a heavily armed couple, authorities said, who were later shot dead by police in a ferocious firefight on city streets.

“The safe places are not safe any more,” said Smith, a special education teacher.

For some North Coast residents the violent onslaught - amounting to more than one mass shooting a day this year nationwide, by some counts - has made them more apprehensive about leaving home or gathering with others in places of refuge, commerce, education and entertainment.

Julie and Bill Middleton, who sing in the Occidental Community Choir, said it occurred to them Thursday morning, after reading about the San Bernardino shooting, that the group might want to hire security for its concerts this weekend in the small west county village with no police presence and spotty cellphone coverage.

“Is this an overreaction or a valid concern? I don’t know,” said Julie Middleton, 73, acknowledging she never before had considered the idea.

Others find some solace in the degree of chance and powerlessness that seems to accompany such tragedies.

“I have come to believe that when it is your time, nothing will save you, and when it is not your time, nothing will take you,” said Marian McDonald, 71, a retired nurse from Sebastopol. “So why worry?”

The reactions, prompted by an open request to Press Democrat readers in the aftermath of the San Bernardino shooting, revealed a shared sense of disquiet over the level and toll of American gun violence and renewed the polarizing debate about how to best curb the problem.

Some favored stronger controls on guns, including background checks and provisions to keep arms away from the mentally ill - a tack taken in recent years by several states but turned down by Congress two years ago in the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

Others said such stricter laws were ill-advised and wouldn’t deter criminals or those intent on carrying out armed attacks.

“More honest citizens … will become absolutely helpless and unable to protect themselves, their children, or you, should it come to it,” said Jeff Thomas of Santa Rosa, who called for loosening laws to allow more Californians the ability to carry concealed weapons, a scenario that he said could help thwart or limit attacks like the one in San Bernardino.

If one person were able to fire back, an assault - even one involving heavily armed individuals - could be disrupted, he said.

“At the very least he’d force those people to take cover instead of continuing to rampage,” Thomas said.

The government and media have created “a state of mass paranoia,” he said, in which firearms are considered inherently dangerous rather than “simply inanimate tools.”

“When left to their own devices, no gun has ever caused anyone any harm at all,” he said.

A database that tracks news reports of mass shootings counted 355 incidents - more than one a day - in about 220 cities in 47 states this year. A mass shooting is generally defined as one resulting in injury or death to four or more people.

The waves of gun violence have driven Americans to arm themselves even further. In October, following the fatal shooting of 10 people at an Oregon community college, the FBI processed more than 1.9 million background checks for firearms purchases, and on Black Friday - as reports of a deadly shooting in a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic filled the news - the agency ran more than 185,000 checks, about two per second.

Barbara Sloat of Dillon Beach, who grew up in a “gun family” and learned from her father how to shoot and clean a weapon, firmly supports gun control. “The United States has got to do something about this. It is just not OK,” she said. “Every time I open the paper and see there’s been another shooting, my heart just breaks.”

Sloat said she and her husband got rid of all their firearms years ago. She said she feels safe personally and thinks she would still be capable of “shooting a bad guy” if circumstances called for such action.

But, she said, “I don’t think more guns are the answer.”

The mass shootings and daily gun violence have changed the way that some North Coast residents go about their daily lives.

Elaine Hobbs, a Ukiah mother of children ages 9, 11 and 14, feels uneasy in movie theaters, which have been targeted in several high-profile shootings, the latest in Lafayette, La, in July, when three people were killed and nine were injured. The deadliest was in an Aurora, Colo., theater in 2012, when gunman James Holmes killed 12 people, an attack that landed him in prison for the rest of his life.

“Are we the next small town who thought it would not happen to us?” Hobbs, 41, said, adding that she considers how she might use her body to shield her children and holds her breath every time the theater door opens.

“Needless to say we use Netflix and Amazon more often,” she said.

“The things happening today nearly every day were not even thought of when I was in elementary school,” she said. “What kind of world are we leaving for our children?”

Barrie Mason, 69, of Santa Rosa, who is taking a drawing class at Santa Rosa Junior College, said she was shaken by an Oregon community college student’s slaying of eight fellow students and a teacher on Oct. 1. Her worries since have faded, she said, but she made note that her classroom’s closet was too small for everyone to hide in and the windows offered an escape route.

“We get kind of used to these things,” she said.

Judson Spruce, 65, of Santa Rosa said he is wary in public spaces like shopping malls and in crowds at the county fair, movies, sporting events and celebrations.

“We all have lost a certain amount of innocence in that we all have been morbidly subjected to the reality of this homicidal ideology and increasingly cold-hearted, greedy world,” he wrote in an email. “I cannot live a day now without that caution that it could be someone I love or myself next.”

Sally Watson of Santa Rosa said she is more vigilant now than she was years ago on the streets of Richmond in Contra Costa County, where she worked as a probation counselor to juvenile offenders. Threats today are from mentally ill people and “political/religious zealots,” she said. “I’d rather deal with the criminal element any day.”

Watson said she pays close attention to her surroundings in places like the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, in crowded stores and on the street. A shooting could happen at a football game or on the SRJC campus, places where the suspect likely would blend into the crowd, she said.

Terrorism is a real threat, Watson said. “I don’t think we should be paranoid, but we do have enemies.”

Harriet Smith, the Sebastopol teacher, said she no longer walks to downtown Sebastopol to meet friends, but goes by car or meets them at her home. She often covers her gray hair with a hat to hide her age, and avoids going out after dark.

Marian McDonald’s defense is her attitude. Gun violence is possible in her life, but not likely, she said.

“I make an effort to pay attention to what is in front of me and pay special attention to the joys and blessings of each day, which are all too easy to miss,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.