ATLANTA — It has come to this — concerned citizens across the nation are filling auditoriums to learn how to survive when a deranged gunman or terrorist goes on a killing spree.
ATLANTA — It has come to this — concerned citizens across the nation are filling auditoriums to learn how to survive when a deranged gunman or terrorist goes on a killing spree.
And perhaps it was fitting that the latest “active shooter seminar” in Cherokee County, near Atlanta, took place during National Lottery Lunacy Week.
The odds seem to be similar.
In fact, million-dollar lottery winners are far more common than victims of such crimes.
A couple years ago, the FBI studied active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013. The agency said there were 160 such incidents, with 1,043 casualties — 486 of those being deaths.
But in just two years ending January 2014, 1,013 people won at least $1 million from the Powerball. And Georgia’s own lottery has minted an average of 35 millionaires a year for two decades, as have numerous other states.
Both the hope of winning the lottery and fear of random death are deeply visceral. People line up to buy tickets on the microscopic possibility that their number will come up. Meanwhile, infamous mass shootings — Sandy Hook, Charleston, San Bernardino — are the inverse lottery, nightmarish events in which regular folks doing ordinary things are suddenly scrambling in terror, pleading for their lives and dying horribly.
The odds, of course, are remote that someone will be such a victim. But it makes sense in some irrational, reptilian-brain kind of way. A Gallup poll last year found that 49 percent of those surveyed were “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” that they or someone in their family would be a victim of terror. This was the highest number since right after 9/11.
To repeat, half of Americans worried that they or a family member — not some stranger in their city or even the guy down the block — will become a victim of terrorism. And this poll was taken before terrorists slaughtered people in Paris and San Bernardino.
Until recent years, people worried little about their chances of being victimized in random shootings. There were, after all, only a limited number of mean, sick, deranged nuts with guns who would enter a theater/shopping mall/school and randomly kill people. It was somewhat akin to getting hit by lightning.
The realization that Islamic terrorists have now undertaken this method of killing has just increased the frequency of the lightning.
It’s like the feeling hip-deep in salt water, the nagging worry of, “Where’s that shark?”
Rational? No. But it’s there.
The question of how many sharks are out there is a moving target. The FBI study, noted above, said that the number of such incidents, while relatively small, is increasing. And the terrible cases occurring in the past year have ratcheted up those fears.
Last month, 800 people packed the Marietta High School auditorium to hear police tell them how to survive when the gunmen come hunting. Two weeks later, the same officers educated 600 more at the middle school. Douglasville had a seminar and more are coming elsewhere.
It’s now another new normal.
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