On the afternoon of September 3, I noticed multiple helicopters circling overhead while I worked from my apartment in Lowell, Massachusetts. At first, I thought little of it—helicopters are a common sight where I live. But after two hours of incessant buzzing, I searched online and found a public Facebook post about a possibly armed man walking around a nearby college campus.
The University of Massachusetts at Lowell campus police issued a shelter-in-place order and evacuated students around 2:30 PM in Lowell, after reports surfaced of an armed man carrying what appeared to be a rifle. The Lowell Police Department followed with a Community Advisory instructing residents and visitors to “avoid the area” without offering details. A student recorded a video from her dorm window allegedly showing the man walking with the weapon and at one point raising and aiming it into the distance. The police never found the suspect, and the shelter-in-place order was lifted at 5:49 PM. Authorities confirmed that while the man was said to have been armed, there were no reports of shots fired and he was not considered an active shooter. The investigation remains ongoing.
Still, I find myself holding my breath as I write this. Knowing that there may be an armed man somewhere nearby is deeply unsettling. The fear sharpens because my son is still at his aftercare program. I just received a notification that his building is on lockdown with the children inside. I can try to reach him, but there is a danger in doing so. Outside my window, police have blocked off the streets and helicopters continue their search overhead. Yet, the order has been lifted and the man remains at large. Children are outside playing as though it were any other day. I have to ask myself: am I overreacting? Or have we Americans decided this is normal?
A similar scenario unfolded only weeks ago in my home state of Maine, when a driver reportedly pulled up beside a motorcyclist and opened fire, killing him before taking his own life. The incident triggered a six-hour shelter-in-place order for all residents and the shutdown of a major road while police gathered evidence.
Before that, in 2023, Maine endured a two-day manhunt after an Army reservist shot and killed 18 people in a mass shooting. Survivors and victims’ families filed a negligence lawsuit this week against the United States government, alleging the US military’s failure to act on mental health warning signs exhibited by the shooter.
Even earlier, in 2020, my sister found herself trapped in a locked-down Walmart store in Maine while an active shooter roamed the parking lot after shooting and seriously injuring a customer.
I’m afraid to even write that my own son has already endured multiple bomb threats, mass-shooter threats, and knife-violence threats—by the time he left the second grade in rural New Hampshire. I’ve lost count.
These are not isolated events in the United States; they are just the ones that have touched me personally, even if indirectly. Each day, gun violence feels closer to home, an ever-present danger creeping into daily life.
In 2024, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory declaring firearm violence a public health crisis. The statistics confirm this. Each year, more than 46,000 people in the United States die from gun violence. As of September 1, the Gun Violence Archive reported 16,873 deaths by homicide, murder, or unintentional shootings in 2024. Among them were 503 mass shootings and 30 mass murders. Children are among the most vulnerable: 251 killed and 551 were injured in 2024. The worst part is that when I scanned these numbers, I thought, “oh, they’re not as bad as I expected”—a testament to how commonplace gun violence has become for most Americans.
Gun violence is so rampant in our society that initiatives like the Giffords Law Center have begun partnering with government officials, public health experts, and survivors to challenge weak gun laws, advocate for stronger regulations, and defend existing protections in court. These efforts aim to counterbalance the influence of powerful gun lobbyists who have long impeded reform.
As helicopters circle over Lowell and my son waits out a lockdown, the personal fear becomes inseparable from a broader legal question: how can the rule of law protect citizens when gun violence remains so prevalent? Until laws are enforced effectively and strengthened where necessary, Americans will continue to experience these threats—not as isolated anomalies, but as a persistent feature of everyday life.
