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I have never been personally affected by a school shooting, but they do make me very upset :-/. DH and I have wanted to homeschool our kids from the start, not for this reason, but it does certainly make it seem even more appealing. Unfortunately this isn't limited to schools, just going out in public seems to put you at an increased risk these days its very sad.

I'm always basically nervous about crowded places, but school schootings in particular made me not like the little neighborhood elementary school I went to as a kid. It has "open" type classrooms. I don't know how that school could go on lock down. A gunman could just wandered through all of the classrooms. If I ever have a LO, I will not send him/her to that school.

Only in the sense that we regularly practice lockdowns at school. I get that they are necessary, but they are scary for me and the kids.

I haven't been personally affected, and my LO is not born yet, but they do make me nervous for the future and also because my mom works in a school. I know the security in my mom's school is not great (typical suburban "we don't have that sort of problem around here" mentality). Luckily she's retiring this year. I'm sure I will be nervous about this once my kids are in middle/high school. I don't think I'll worry too much in daycare or elementary school because although it has happened, it is SO much rarer than the student going to their own school in their teens.

I have never been personally affected, but I'm a teacher and now that I'm a mom, I think about it almost every day. I now keep my classroom door shut and locked all the time to make it more difficult for someone to come in. I'm definitely scared to send Liam to school one day. But I know that the chances of something happening to him at the mall or park or on the sidewalk are the same at school. We live in a scary world.

@jedeve: If pressed I say "this is what we would do if someone came in the school who wasn't supposed to be here and we needed to stay safe." After Sandy Hook though, even the 2nd graders know what it means. I was shocked last year how much tv coverage parents let their littles watch about it and what they came to school reporting.

I haven't been personally affected and I do feel scared about sending LO to school in the future. My younger sister is so freaked by the lockdown drills that she no longer goes to use the restroom during class for fear of being locked out.

I live four hours from Blacksburg. At the time of the shooting most people I knew had already graduated from VT, except a close friends little sister was a freshman (she was unharmed).
Both of my bosses though (two in a row, current and former) were VT students at the time (one undergrad, one grad) and were deeply affected by it.

I think about it a lot. I work at a college so it's always in the back of my mind as a possibility. The shootings at high schools, and elementary schools? Just heartbreaking. One of the teachers killed at newton was the mother of a college classmate of mine.

We had active shooter training at the college I teach at this year. I live next to an elementary school and mid semester we came out and heard lockdown over the intercom from the school. My first instinct was someone with a gun near the school. But it was a guy driving around town with two people in his trunk shooting at people. The school was running out to cars and hustling students into the gym. My college and my sons preschool weren't notified at all. I got my information from Facebook. Response is getting better but information isn't.

I have not been personally affected, but being a teacher, it's on my mind a lot. After the newtown shooting, I was so shaken up and scared that something similar could happen at my school. Now that I'm also a mom, it worries me even more

I was a freshman in high school when Columbine happened, which was less than 10 miles away from my high school. (And Arapahoe HS is about 10 miles in the opposite direction). A lot of kids at my church went to Columbine. We went to the memorial in the days after and left flowers and stuff. So it was pretty scary and emotional. We were all nervous going to school the next day, and the next year on the anniversary, but we learned we couldn't just live in fear and we had to move on with our lives. It's just so sad how much more common it has gotten. It does make me wonder what it will be like in 15 ish years when my son will go to high school (or ole been in 5 when he starts school). I hope something changes.

Our news stations said they would stop giving school shootings so much attention to decrease the "notoriety incentive" but they won't stop covering Arapahoe, so that only lasted until another one happened in CO! Very frustrating!