The New York Times
The shots rang out at 8:13 a.m. and echoed across the high school football field and elementary school grounds. They continued nonstop for 49 minutes. It was a semiautomatic rifle with .223 caliber bullets in the middle of a community that didn't even question whether a massacre was taking place.
It was just a typical morning in Cranston, Rhode Island, where more than 2,000 children go to school less than 500 yards from a police shooting range. There, local police officers sometimes hone their skills in handling firearms until 8:30 p.m.
Some days they shoot Glock pistols. Other days they use semiautomatic rifles. Many parents tried in vain to move the shooting range to a more secluded or enclosed area to block out the disturbing noises. They wrote letters in support of a bill in the state legislature that would ban outdoor shooting ranges around schools. But police opposed the law and the bill is now “withheld for further consideration.”
“This facility is necessary to train members of the department in the use of the weapons they carry to accomplish their mission to protect the public,” said Col. Michael Winquist, police chief.
Excessive noise is harmful to children's health and wellbeing, research shows, and medical experts say the sound of gunfire, which can trigger a fightorflight response, may be even worse.
But while many students say they remember the initial alarm caused by the shooting, they are now exhibiting what public health experts say could be a potentially more dangerous reaction: desensitization.
“I remember thinking, 'We shouldn't get used to this,'” said Valentina Pasquariello, who graduated in June. “But it’s gotten to the point where you have to get used to it, you have no other choice.”
Sara Johnson, a professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University who has studied how guns affect child development, says students engage in “mental gymnastics to feel safe and make peace with such an environment.”
While the situation in Cranston is unique, Johnson and others said it reflects a country where the threat of gun violence has seeped into the everyday lives of children in schools.
“Whether you attend a school near a shooting range or not,” Johnson said, “you will be asked to confront the challenges that come with growing up in an environment with guns.”
Morning: Psychology class
One morning last month, the first shots of the day came as Maranda Carline, 17, a high school student, was in psychology class, learning how childhood trauma can affect a person's longterm development. The sound of 50 shots hit Maranda again as she left for her next class at 9:01 a.m. Another 50 shots were fired at 10:56 a.m. as she rushed to finish an essay on the ban for her history test.
Maranda long ago memorized the training steps for shooting attacks, as automatically as solving an algebraic equation: barricade the door; hide in the corner; Use scissors if necessary and throw away trash cans, chairs, or anything else you can find.
But her mother, Carmen Carline, had no confidence that Maranda would follow these steps in a real situation, for the simple reason that she didn't know it was real. “If a shooter shows up at school and hears the shots and no one is looking, that’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, crying.
Midday: lunch break
In September 2022, residents turned to the city council with their complaints. Board member Jessica Marino said tradition must take precedence: “I believe the shooting range is in the right place because it has been there for a long time.”
Another board member at the time, Matthew Reilly, a former student of the school, said: “It was never a traumatic situation. It didn’t affect me or my friends, and I can only speak from personal experience.”
The police department's training academy applied for $1.6 million (R7.8 million) under the American Rescue Plan to fence off the shooting range, but the grant was rejected.
The department said it has reduced the number of outside groups using the shooting range, replaced soundabsorbing panels and added mounds of dirt and shrubs to muffle the noise.
“This is our lastditch effort,” the department’s deputy, Maj. Todd Patalano, wrote to the mayor and police chief in a February 2023 email obtained by The New York Times. “We will not be taking any further precautions at this time.”
Afternoon: soccer training
For Antonella Pasquariello, mother of three, the memory of picking up her children from school feels like a slowmotion movie in her head: She stopped the car, rolled down the window and saw “sweet children left the school unfazed while she was there,” the sound of gunfire.
She looked at bus routes and tennis courts to “make sure no bodies were falling.”
Tormented by this experience, she wrote to the school principal and asked why shooting during school hours could not be banned. It was forwarded to the mayor, who responded that it would “take time and money.”
Pasquariello was walking his goldendoodle, Cleo, when the shooting started again at 12:03 p.m. They fired again at 2:47 p.m. as the junior varsity Falcons walked onto the soccer field for practice, and then at 3:21 p.m. as the elementary school children got off the buses.
When Pasquariello's youngest son, August, came home from school, she asked him about the shooting. He said he didn't hear anything.