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Ricochet: An American Trauma - A 2023 PBS NewsHour Special Report

Mar 28, 2024
we can prevent it, by addressing concentrated poverty, by addressing dysfunction in schools, by mass incarceration, by hyper-surveillance of communities, by food deserts, by medical deserts, by providing access to quality services. health care. All of these things can contribute to reducing the level of gun violence we have in our communities. -That numbness is that they emotionally protect themselves from what they see. But our deal with them is, "Let's talk about it so it doesn't get buried, so you're not sitting in a therapist's office, you know, 20 years later, writing a list of every

trauma

tic thing that's ever happened to you." related to a gun." Don't let the numbness set in so deeply that they can't empathize and feel like this is wrong.
ricochet an american trauma   a 2023 pbs newshour special report
This isn't normal. This doesn't happen in every community. And wonder why it's still happening in theirs. "We talk about anything. Um, just little things to help alleviate the... the stigma of being a suicide loss survivor. When I started working with different people in support groups, that helped me stay in touch." a really, really safe place, to take that

trauma

out and look at it and figure out how to make it less powerful, you know, and make it heal. When there's been a suicide, the coroner calls us. I have a team with us that goes out and meets with survivors.
ricochet an american trauma   a 2023 pbs newshour special report

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ricochet an american trauma a 2023 pbs newshour special report...

And we started telling them: "Look, this is what you're going to start feeling. You're going to lose your memory. You're going to stop eating. You need to eat. You need to drink a lot of water because "I'm going to cry. Please cry, but make sure you hydrate afterward." And then we started saving... -Actually, they are incredibly practical things. -Yes, it's... it's the little things that you miss. -I was very grateful when someone came that day. I mean, I knew we were going to therapy, but for someone to tell us so quickly that "we'll help you on this path," um... because it's a very lonely place. -Andrea Allen lost her teenage son to a gun suicide in 2021.
ricochet an american trauma   a 2023 pbs newshour special report
Cole Allen was in his first year of college. He had only been away from home for five weeks. -After Cole passed away, there were some people who commented on how she passed away. There were people who told me, "Suicide is for cowards" and all that, and I said, "Did you know Cole very well?" Because if you knew Cole, then you knew that kid wasn't a coward. And they don't know how he feels unless it really happened to his family. -Molly rodeoed in high school and Cole had rodeoed in high school his entire career. And he didn't know there was a problem with cowboys and suicide, that "get up" and "we don't ask for help.
ricochet an american trauma   a 2023 pbs newshour special report
We just deal with it." And we can't let kids think that way because they don't have the resources to fix this. -It's like, "It's okay. I can get through this. Look at me." And... "Cowboy through this," right? -Yes, that's... you know, and in Wyoming, that's... that's... Some of the problems we have, you know, is that people are in the countryside, on the ranches. At my house, it's a football field in any direction for a neighbor, you know, and there are places you walk into where you can't see a neighbor for three, four, five, 10 miles. And you have someone who hasn't addressed his mental issues, it's a perfect storm if all the elements come together for him. -The isolation and stigma around mental health care due to this "cowboy up" attitude becomes even more complicated in a place with so many guns.
Wyoming has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the country. -I really regret having left him the gun. There was a moment where I thought, "Ooh. I don't know if we should do that," but Cole did... Cole has worked with firearms since he was 8 years old. He has been in 4-H. Cole knew how to use firearms. He knew what they were for. He had been hunting. He and Molly will have deer. He was just part of our family. I mean, it's a tool. Yes, he made it easier. Um... But, as a mother, yes. But I have that moment that...
But in retrospect, there were a lot of those moments. I don't blame the gun. -It is not that having a gun at home somehow causes suicidal behavior. The thing is, at that point, if someone picks up a gun, 90% of the time they die. There is still a lot of stigma that suicide is somehow inevitable or simply a personal decision. "It's none of my business." But we know that it can actually be prevented. And we know that most people who attempt suicide are in a temporary crisis and get better. So when people find themselves in the middle of a crisis, for whatever reason, they may not be thinking clearly.
And that's a time when you don't want to be around dangerous objects. -As part of their various suicide prevention efforts, Danno's organization distributes these gun locks for free. -He has a little cable that comes out that would go through the gun, and he has a padlock. We have suggested that people take the keys and freeze them in a block of ice. That, "Okay, if you want to kill yourself, you put the block of ice there, and you..." -Because the time it would take to thaw... -Yes. -That? -They are... they are analyzing: "Is this a very good idea?" Suicidal thinking has stopped. -Did you have anything else?
Like a rifle? - No, I just had, you know, your basic little weapon. -Yeah. As an emergency room doctor, I see... every day I see someone at risk of suicide. But I don't see many cases where someone shot themselves in a suicide attempt because people usually die at home. But I vividly remember a case in which a middle-aged individual who had attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head arrived at the emergency room, but it very quickly became clear that it was a non-survivable injury. And his spouse was there and we had the opportunity to talk.
And it was... it was so clear to me that if they hadn't had a gun that morning, things would have been fine. It was, you know, they were having a stupid fight, the spouse said, which wasn't even a big deal. And... -It's a storm that would have passed. -Completely. And they made a decision they couldn't take back. And if that choice had been with pills or something else, you know, I would have been sitting with my spouse talking about the hospitalization and what was coming next. But instead, I sat with my spouse as we withdrew care and the person passed away.
And that was the only thing I could offer that spouse. And that... was horrible. It's still there... And I realize it's not even a member of my family that died, but it just... it was such a sad situation that, the access to this thing that morning is ultimately what. ..which led to that result. -Well. Which one do you want to listen to today? Do you want to listen to Jackson or Troy? I remember at one point saying, "I don't want to be that mom that everyone feels sorry for when she walks into a room." You know, "That's that mother." Or "That's Jessie's mom.
They killed her," you know? You just... That's where your head goes. And very gently he took me by the shoulders and turned me towards him, and he said, "That's what you are now." -We have breaking news for you. Connecticut State Police and SWAT teams are now responding to a shooting at a Newtown elementary school. It's about 2 hours... -And the way they were covering it, there was something about the way the news was being

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ed. My gut just knew… I just knew it was going to be bad. And as those people, those lovely families walked into the community center, he said, "My God, this is what we looked like five months ago." -27 dead, 18 of them children, in this mass shooting. -That's when we responded to our first mass shooting.
Lonnie, do you want more coffee before we pack everything up? -No, I just want to go... -Pack. Well. -Still grieving the murder of their own daughter, Sandy and Lonnie began what has now become their life's work: traveling across the country to sites where other mass shootings occurred. -We just decided, after Sandy Hook, that that's what has to happen. We can be the people to hold that hand, tell them what to expect, what's in store for them, because we've been through it. And that can be a gift to anyone else affected. -It's like that experience you never want to have, but now you have it, and you might as well... -No, who would want to be an expert in gun violence?
Know? I mean, God. -That started us on the path to 21 public mass shootings. With Uvalde it was our 21st mass public shooting. -I know that talking to other people who have gone through trauma can be traumatic for people who have also gone through something similar. And here you are, putting yourself in this position of, in some ways, constantly reliving this and seeing what you had to go through on other people's faces and broken hearts. And I just don't know how you have the strength to do that. -You know, for some reason, it helps. -Aid? -I can't, it helps us as much as it helps the other person who receives it.
What is that old saying? If you give it away, it will pay you back tenfold. And it really is. Yes, it is retraumatizing and we initially didn't share much of our history with them. We simply say, "Our daughter was killed in a mass shooting. The same weapon was used," if that's appropriate. "We know what you're going through. We've walked in your shoes." When we met this couple in Parkland, I turned to her and said, "I know when you woke up this morning you said, 'Why am I alive and my son is dead? Why am I still here?' "And you wanted to die.
I understand it because it was the same thing I thought. Let me die. I don't want to breathe again." I tell people if I had a gun at home, I'm not sure if I still have it...she would still be here. You know, because it's that moment of so much desperation. How are you? I'm fine. All good. -Yes Yes. -How are you? -Oh, I'm fine. -Yeah? -Sandy and Lonnie came to Washington, D.C., last year to mark the passage of the first major federal gun legislation in decades. -For seven and a half years, we have been living in our RV and responding to mass shootings across this country.
We have seen the worst of the worst. -You have traveled throughout this country and have been to so many communities that have been visited by these horrible events. Do you think this country is suffering a collective trauma from guns? -Yeah. Yes. We have to eliminate all that, "Well, unless you're injured or someone was taken from you, you're not a survivor." No. Almost everyone in America today has been affected by gun violence. And it's like if you don't look around and realize that, you're denying it. Lonnie and I have always tried to bridge the gap between mass shootings and individual shootings, which, as a friend of mine calls them, slow-motion mass shootings that happen every day in America. -And that doesn't attract attention. -No attention and often no investigation.
But you hear these stories and then you start talking to doctors, lawyers and other people. So it's not just about the survivor base. It's the other people who are on that wavelength. And they start telling you, "Oh, yeah, we have 8- and 9-year-old kids who come to the ER every weekend and they're so traumatized and scarred so deeply that they can't function. We have the group that lives in urban America." that they're being massacred every day and no one pays attention to them. And it's like, "This is a traumatized community." -Mass shootings where the victims are white and the shooter is white, that's an American problem.
Community gun violence among Black and Brown communities that have been going on for five decades, that's just a Black and Brown problem, that's just a Hispanic and Black problem, African Americans. -Mass shootings happen every day in the United States. There are four more people who are shot every day. And they typically occur in cities with populations of black people who are victims or survivors of mass shootings. I am definitely concerned about this and the way the media often neglects to similarly illuminate black suffering. and provide the care that is provided to them. It's almost like you deserve to be shot.
Good? And who deserves to be shot in this country? -At some point in our lives, almost all Americans will know someone who has been affected by gun violence. So that should make us all sit up and say, you know, this is not something that happens out of sight, out of mind. This is not something that only happens when the headlines hit us. This is something that is present in society and that affects us all if we are willing to listen to it, recognize it and witness it. -Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Everything that breathes praise the Lord. -Would you welcome this wonderful woman who is doing incredible work to stop violence in Washington, D.C.? and across the country, Reverend Ryane Nickens? -God called me to this job, and this is the work of my life.
This is, for me, the reason to continue. It is the reason to breathe, to live. It is a joy to be around children who still have all their hope. We try to instill in our children: "You are so much more than what happened to you. And there is so much more in this world. And you are still growing and you are still realizing things. So don't let "This piece will be the only one. It's part of your story. But don't let that deter you from who you are and who you are.courage." -We would go out here and climb the mountains and among the rocks and go up and around the rocks and get some really nice scars that, you know, we would carry for the rest of our lives.
Here in Wyoming I think, unless it's something really visible, a small group of people see and feel the trauma, and everyone else just gets on with their lives. You know, you would think that with all these little grieving circles of people who lost people to suicide, you would think that, at some point, they would start clashing and grouping together and someone would say, "Hey, 'This is wrong. This needs to change. You know, we need to talk about this.'" And I think it's partly the stigma that prevents that from happening. A lot of people think, "If we don't talk about it, it won't happen again.
We're the people who go out and become the town crier and say, 'Hey, you've got to look at this.'" ♪♪ ♪♪ -I'm a little tired of the United States building monuments to the survivors and victims of gun violence and not changing the laws that would prevent it. -Sandy. -My pleasure, Sandy. -Lonnie. -Lonnie. -It's survival. I think joy comes from : "Hey, we've been doing this for 10 years." And I was just talking to a young woman who got married last year. And her boyfriend was murdered that night. And it's those stories. That you realize, "Okay. Is there life after death.
There is life that goes on." And, again, you find a different kind of joy in what you do and how you live. But you find it again. -When we see a face that we recognize, we can't help but smile. You know, they are here for the same reason we are. And it just... it feels like a family. And then seeing them 10 years later, how they've grown and matured and how they're living their lives. -Babies have been born, marriages, like you said. - Yes, yes. -Life goes on. -Life goes on. ♪♪ O0 C1 ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -This show was made possible by contributions to Your PBS Station from viewers like you.
Thank you. ♪ You're watching PBS.

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