Medical Building Is Latest ‘Catastrophic Scene’ Of Mass Gun Deaths

CNN: Tulsa, Oklahoma, Hospital Shooting: 'It Was Just Madness Inside' St. Francis Campus
Four people were killed in Tulsa on Wednesday after a gunman -- who was later found dead -- opened fire on the second floor of a medical building, authorities in Oklahoma said. "It was just madness inside, with hundreds of rooms and hundreds of people trying to get out of the building," Tulsa Police Department Captain Richard Meulenberg told CNN. The mass shooting is the latest instance nationwide of first responders and civilians coming face-to-face with the threat of gun violence, as Tulsa joins several cities mourning recent tragic attacks at public places, places of worship and educational facilities. (Rose, Simonson and Caldwell, 6/2)

AP: 4 Killed In Shooting At Tulsa Medical Building, Shooter Dead 
St. Francis Health System locked down its campus Wednesday afternoon because of the situation at the Natalie Medical Building. The Natalie building houses an outpatient surgery center and a breast health center. Dalgleish said an orthopedic clinic also is located on the second floor where officers discovered the shooter and several victims. ... Philip Tankersley, 27, was leaving his father’s room at nearby Saint Francis Hospital around 5 p.m., when hospital staff said there was an active shooter in the building across the street, locked the doors and warned them to stay away from the windows. Tankersley said he and his mother sheltered in his father’s hospital room for more than an hour, trying to learn scraps of information from the TV news and passing nurses. He said they heard “code silver” and “level 1 trauma” announced on the hospital speakers and wondered if they were safe in the room. (Murphy and Wallace, 6/2)

The New York Times: Medical Worker Rushed To Escape ‘Labyrinth’ Of Offices In Tulsa
Gannon Gill was wrapping up an appointment with a new patient on Wednesday when a loud noise startled him. A few seconds later, he heard it again. Mr. Gill, a physician assistant and a hunter, recognized those sounds as gunfire. “There was an initial ‘What was that?’” said Mr. Gill, who runs an orthopedic urgent care clinic at the facility in Tulsa, Okla., that was the site of a deadly shooting on Wednesday. He turned to his patient and said: “Let’s go. I don’t think this is good.” (Traub, 6/2)

More on gun violence and mental health —

NPR: 'Red Flag' Laws Become Bipartisan Option As Senators Look For Compromise On Guns
In what might be characterized as an exercise in the art of the possible, a bipartisan group of senators led by John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., have spent the past few days focused on a limited set of new policies targeting gun violence. They're still in the earliest phases of brainstorming, but three broad areas are showing promise: incentivizing states to pass red flag laws, updates to school safety protocols, and possibly some narrow changes to background checks. (Hopkins and Snell, 6/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Less Than 5% Of Violent Acts Are Linked To Mental Illness, Research Shows
Mass shootings in the U.S. have revived discussion around the interplay between mental health and violent acts. Most violent acts are carried out by people with no diagnosed mental illness, say psychologists and epidemiologists. Mental illness can contribute to violence, research shows, but predicting who might act violently is all but impossible. The American Psychiatric Association on Wednesday said stigmatizing people with mental illness could dissuade them from seeking treatment. “The overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators thereof,” the group said. (Wernau, 6/1)

The Texas Tribune: Texas Program For Troubled Students Hadn’t Reached Uvalde Before Shootings 
By most accounts, the Uvalde school gunman was the type of person a fledgling $290 million Texas youth mental health program was designed to reach — before his apparent distress and instability could escalate to mass violence. But it hadn’t reached Salvador Ramos by the time the 18-year-old high school dropout — whose adolescent years were reportedly beset by truancy, cruelty to animals and violence at home and at school — walked into Robb Elementary with an assault rifle last week and killed 19 kids and two teachers, health officials said. (Harper, 6/2)

The Hill: Gun Groups Ready For Aggressive Effort Against ‘Red Flag’ Legislation
No-compromise gun rights groups are preparing to mount an aggressive campaign against any “red flag” legislation in Congress as a response to the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas. ... Nine states currently have “red flag” laws, protection orders that allow a court to prevent an individual deemed a danger to themselves or others from possessing or obtaining firearms. Those include New York, where it did not stop a shooter from targeting black people at a grocery store in Buffalo last month. It is unclear if such a law would have stopped the shooter in Uvalde. (Brooks, 6/2)

The Atlantic: How News Of Mass Shootings Affects People Psychologically
A horrific news event is a tragedy for those it directly affects, but simply reading and watching coverage of it is associated with an uptick in symptoms of acute stress, such as intrusive thoughts about the event and avoiding reminders of it. For instance, one study published in 2014 found that the more coverage people saw of the Boston Marathon bombings, the more such symptoms they experienced. (Pinsker, 6/1)

Also —

ABC News: Texas Man Makes Custom Caskets For Uvalde School Shooting Victims 
A Texas man worked for days on end to customize caskets for the 19 children who were killed after a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last Tuesday. Trey Ganem, the owner of SoulShine Industries, a company that specializes in custom caskets and urns, said he was contacted by a trooper and funeral directors after the shootings to see if he could help. (Yu, 6/1)