Video of 8-year-old girl saying she 'expects' mass shootings to happen is breaking people's hearts

Trigger warning: This story contains themes of gun violence that some readers may find disturbing

The video of an 8-year-old girl saying she "expects" mass shootings to happen has once again thrown the spotlight on gun violence in America. Faris Nunn, 8, has already experienced two shootings in her short lifetime and sees them as the natural order of things in the US. She was present at the Washington Nationals baseball game at Nationals Stadium in Washington D.C. when a shooting happened outside the stadium causing people to panic inside the stadium. Three people were injured in the shooting outside the stadium and the shots were audible inside the stadium causing panic. The video was posted on Twitter with the caption: "This is America."

People on Twitter were horrified at the video, with many adding that it shouldn't be this way. No children should ever grow up with the fear of getting shot but Faris' video just showed how much kids as young as eight need to process. "I just saw people looking that way, and I didn't know what was going on until I heard someone say, 'Get down,' so I just started going under the seats," explained Nunn in the video, reported Newsweek.

When she was asked by a woman how she was feeling, in the wake of the shooting, Nunn responded, "It was my second shooting, so I was kind of prepared, because I always am expecting something to happen." The 8-year-old said this as she bit her left fingernails. Not to mention American children are usually made to undergo active-shooter drills to prepare them for when it happens. A student told CNN that they had undergone 70 shooter drills by the time they had graduated. 

The shooting outside Nationals Stadium was her second such experience. Her mother, Lora Nunn, said that her daughter, Faris, was present at a toddler playgroup on the morning of November 6, 2020, when a man was shot to death outside of a Northeast D.C. recreation center. At the baseball game, she was sat at the third baseline along with her parents and her younger brother during the Saturday night game, reported WUSA. It was concerning for Faris' mother that her daughter was coming to accept this is as normal. "We just tried to reassure her that this is not normal, that nobody's targeting her, that it's just a really stressful time right now with the pandemic," said Lora Nunn. She added that there were a lot of kids at the Nationals' Saturday night game against the San Diego Padres. "At least the people around us were relatively calm and just checking on the kids," Lora Nunn said.

"I just want to assure the public that at no time during this incident were individuals inside the stadium attending the game in any kind of danger," said Ashan Benedict, executive assistant chief of police for the local Metropolitan Police Department. Fans also hailed three San Diego Padres players — Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, and Wil Myers — who opened the gates and allowed fans to hide in the dugout until the situation was under control and deemed safe by the authorities.

Gun violence is so bad in the United States; a child or teen was killed with a gun every 2 hours and 36 minutes in America in 2019. Gun violence was the leading cause of death for all children and teens ages 1-19 in 2018, surpassing motor vehicle accidents for the first time in history. President Joe Biden has called gun violence in the U.S. “an epidemic” and “an international embarrassment.” The President added that he wants to implement better gun laws. “While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, we know there are some things that work. And the first of those that work is stemming the flow of firearms,” said Biden, reported VOA News.