Why the violence at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner felt familiar to me and my peers

I had looked forward to volunteering at Saturday evening’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner for months. Verifying attendees’ tickets before they went through magnetometers, I helped welcome a wide array of guests, including reporters, sources, Democrats, Republicans and celebrities, all excitedly arriving at the ballroom from receptions and the red carpet. The hotel was filled with a sense of camaraderie rarely felt in our nation’s capital. 

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After most of the guests had filed in, I headed to the volunteer room for a quick dinner break. Minutes after sitting down with other volunteers, we heard a sequence of loud bangs just down the hall from us at the security checkpoint. Recognizing the noises as gunshots, our response at this point was not biological instinct. It was not a result of watching action movies or playing video games during the Covid-19 pandemic. For my generation, video clips and articles about school shootings and political violence are mainstays of our conscience and social media feeds. Lockdown drills are a routine of growing up. 

When I heard the shots, my first response was not shock or surprise. Even though I had never been in a shooting, it almost felt like I had dealt with a similar scenario before. My reaction reflected the motto “run, hide, fight” that I have heard a thousand times before. We immediately bolted through the back of the hotel. At first we considered hiding in a bathroom, but we realized there was nothing to barricade the door with, so we continued through an emergency exit and hid in a staircase.

After some time, and not encountering any additional law enforcement or fearing an assailant would find us in the staircase, we walked out into the hotel’s parking lot, raising our hands above our heads and calling out to anyone who might be in the vicinity. We passed law enforcement agents, running in what seemed like every direction, and headed out into the street. I later found out the assailant assembled his weapon in front of the volunteer station I was next to minutes before. By nature of luck and the grace of G-d, I was on my dinner break.