LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The school shooting last week in Bend, Oregon, is part of a trend - a decades-long, deadly trend. And because the pattern just keeps repeating, we will now repeat one of our stories. It's from 2018, after a school shooting in Florida. It was a different school with a different name - Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. But many of the awful details were the same. Security measures did not stop a teenager with a gun who opened fire and killed. Here is commentary from Steve Inskeep as he said it live on the air eight years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: People in certain jobs develop a working relationship with death. In many years of listening to people, I've learned it's a necessity. Nurses know that for all their efforts, many patients die. Soldiers and police see the deaths of comrades and may also kill. War correspondents walk devastated cities. Who would have guessed, though, that the people called upon to work so closely with death might include teachers and students?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BARACK OBAMA: The majority of those who died today were children - beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.
INSKEEP: President Obama spoke after a man shot 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in 2012. In later years, more shootings came, including those in Marysville, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: I mean, just telling us that someone has a gun. Someone has a gun. And so we just ran into a classroom.
INSKEEP: Aztec, New Mexico.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: We were sitting in a corner, up against the wall. And I could, like, feel it vibrating, and then it stopped. And we were - we - when we evacuated out of that room, there was a dead body outside.
INSKEEP: Benton, Kentucky.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You just heard a bunch of people screaming run, and get down. And you could - just saw, like, everyone going, trying to get out, trying to get to safety.
INSKEEP: And then yesterday, news of a shooting brought a man named Rohan Williams (ph) to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in South Florida.
ROHAN WILLIAMS: My daughter was the closest to the incident. And she texted me the second it happened, and I've been out here since. And there was a period of time where she could not text. They told them to silence their phones, no texting, because the shooter was still at large. And that 20 minutes to half an hour was just death.
INSKEEP: When communications reopened, he learned that his daughter was safe. Mass shootings, including school shootings, have grown common enough that any of us may grow a little like the hospital nurse or the firefighter - accustomed to carnage. We arguably have to. Lawmakers and presidents have agreed on no effective solution to mass shootings - neither gun control nor mental care, neither a policy nor a prayer.
If the shootings continue, it follows that we have to bear them. Yet we run a risk if we cease to feel the effects. Nurses and cops and soldiers know it's a risk to mental health, a risk to moral health, to the soul. So it's appropriate to ask ourselves a question. Yesterday, a teenager with what's believed to be an AR-15 rifle opened fire in crowded hallways and walked away after 17 people were killed. Do we still feel it?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
FADEL: What you heard was commentary from 2018 after what was then the most recent shooting at an American school. Education Week has tracked school shootings across the United States. By their count, since the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, there have been 261 school shootings in which at least one person was killed or injured.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
