Transcript
Into America
It’s Not Supposed To Happen Here
Trymaine Lee: The Stevens never thought gun violence would find them here. Here in northwest Indianapolis where the streets are quiet but for the sound of bird song and the clatter of neighbor sprinklers watering the green lawns that line their block. A lush tree with deep roots is planted firmly in front of their solid brick house. The air is a little sweet.
Sophia Stevens: Indianapolis is like family oriented. It’s not super fast-paced.
Lee: In the summer of 2012, Lance Stevens and his wife, Sophia Stevens, moved to the neighborhood. Now, they’re the parents of two small boys, Levi and L.J. And family is everything. Lance’s mother, Kim Tillman, spends every moment she can doting on her young grandsons.
Kim Tillman: They are my world, basically.
Lee: When the family isn’t spending quality time together at home, they’re on the road piling into a car together for a road trip. Like the 10-hour jaunt they took to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina earlier this year.
S. Stevens: I was just so overcome with joy to see our boys being able to laugh and play and get extra spoiled. My grandma and dad on vacation together.
Lee: That’s that good spoiling too, that grandma spoiling that’s the best.
S. Stevens: It was extra, you know. They’re like can we have, no, grandma, yes. So —
Lee: Give the babies some ice cream.
Tillman: Yes.
Lee: In northwest Indianapolis the close-knit family has been able to enjoy a quiet slow pace of life. It’s a far cry from the east Indianapolis neighborhood where Lance grew up.
Lance Stevens: Post Row, you know what’s up, and especially 42nd. It’s like, OK, people would hear that and it’s like wow, how did you, like some people are like how did you make it out of there? I’m like my family really, our faith in the Lord.
Lee: Lance was raised there as his mother’s only child. For decades abandoned houses, violent crime and drug activity have burdened this area and the people who call it home.
L. Stevens: Guys I knew that got shot, got killed in my neighborhood. You saw the violence, but it was, you know, I didn’t hang in the streets. My mom kept me from that and my family they really kept me from going down that road.
Lee: Lance’s mom, Ms. Kim, who still lives there, was a powerful buffer between him and what was going on in the streets.
Tillman: I just thankful that he didn’t join any kind of gang or anything. You know that was my number one concern. He wouldn’t allowed anywhere. I wouldn’t have allowed it.
Lee: You wouldn’t allow him to be —
Tillman: Nope.
Lee: Wow.
Tillman: No.
Lee: Ms. Kim ran a tight ship. But her love for her son was fierce.
L. Stevens: My mom would call me in, she was like one of the only parents that would call me when the streetlights came on, right. You could hear her saying, Lance, like she would scream my name.
Lee: Send the Lance signal out into the area.
L. Stevens: Yes.
Lee: It’s like all right, come on home.
L. Stevens: And the guys I was with, they just like, man, your mom calling you, you got to go home. So I had that.
Lee: Despite all the odds stacked against him, the mother and son duo thrived. Ms. Kim, a woman of great faith, built their life on religion and family.
L. Stevens: We always went to church. So the guys in the neighborhood call me church boy.
Lee: Lance grew up going to bible study, spending time with relatives at cookouts and family gatherings. And Mr. Kim kept him busy with sports and extracurricular.
L. Stevens: So I just kind of like started distancing myself from kind of like that neighborhood, like the life.
Lee: He went to college and got a stable job as an auditor. He met the love of his like, Sophia, when he joined her church. And the two went on to marry. For Lance’s mother, Ms. Kim, watching her son’s life evolve and blossom has been a blessing.
Tillman: Prayer answered. It’s like, I mean, I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised at all.
Lee: Ms. Kim did everything she could to keep him away from the violence of the streets and for a long while she thought she had. But on May 29, 2021, the Stevens family’s peace came to a screeching halt when bullets came crashing home.
A stranger with a gun and a drum full of fire shot Lance and his mom in front of his house, leaving both severely wounded.
Tillman: He just started shooting, and I was sitting in the car. And I didn’t even realize I was shot.
Lee: Over the years I’ve interviewed gun violence survivors far and wide, from suburbs to cities, north and south. And while some communities have grown weary of guns and violence, there’s often another thread that comes up. We never thought gun violence would happen here, to us.
S. Stevens: I was so confused, actually. I said, was Lance going to his mom’s house? I’m so confused on how this could have happened at my house.
Lee: Many people never think it can happen to them until it finally does.
L. Stevens: I can’t even believe this really happened.
Lee: Really, it’s not supposed to happen anywhere. But in America gun violence can feel inescapable. America’s murder tally makes headlines, but each year more than 100,000 people are shot and live.
In Indianapolis, Lance and Ms. Kim, were among the nearly 750 people who survived shootings last year. That’s more than two people every day. And from 2019 to 2021, Indianapolis saw a 63 percent increase in homicides, nearly all involving guns. That’s been the story across the country, too. For decades beginning in the early ’90s, gun violence had been falling until a sharp increase in 2020.
Archival Recording: Another mass shooting in America. This time at a July Fourth parade in Highland Park, which is a suburb just north of Chicago. Police telling us —
Archival Recording: It sounds like more shots are still being fired. Keep a distance.
Archival Recording: New bodycam video showing the chaos in Times Square after a gunman turned the crossroads of the world into a crime scene.
Archival Recording: Fear took the field Saturday night at National’s Park in Washington when gun fire could be heard.
Archival Recording: Please remain calm.
Lee: Experts say the rise coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. And they say that could be because the pandemic brought isolation, disruption to social services, the loss of work and housing, and a huge surge in gun sales.
Archival Recording: FBI statistics show a marked increase in the number of firer arm background checks related to gun sales following each mass shooting in America.
Archival Recording: Shootings are now the leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S. Every day, 22 of them are shot.
Archival Recording: We’ve already seen more kids this year with bullet wounds than any other year total in history at this Children’s Hospital.
Lee: Dealing with gun death is one thing. But surviving comes with its own cycle of grief and mourning. There’s the loss of limbs or mobility, the physical cost of gun violence. But the costs go much deeper. When bullets shatter bodies, there’s often a mental and emotional wounding that cuts just as deep.
L. Stevens: I had terrible nightmares the first like two months. You know, thinking people are going to shoot me, attacking me. Fearful for life for her, my kids. It was messing with my head.
Lee: Let alone, the steep financial costs to survivors and their communities.
Tillman: When I was first starting to get the bills, I got so scared because I was like, how am I going to do this. This is crazy.
Lee: This is what survival looks like.
Tillman: OK, I have to let it go. I have to let it go.
Lee: I’m Trymaine Lee and this is Into America. Today, the story of one family whose lives changed in an instant, becoming the unlikely faces of gun violence and their long winding road to recovery.
Most people don’t picture a typical gun violence victim as a 62-year-old grandmother. But on the eve of Memorial Day last year, Ms. Kim and her son became the poster family for America’s gun insanity.
As Lance sits in his sitting room next to his wife, Sophia, he tells me the story of that terrible day, a day that started like any other in suburbia. He was doing yard work in his front yard when he noticed a stranger.
L. Stevens: He was walking down the street. You don’t think nothing of it. But this is the first time that I ever saw him.
Lee: A little later the guy approached Lance with a really odd request.
L. Stevens: He had clip of money, I later found out by the detective it was like $400. And he was trying to give it to me. I thought that was weird and I was kind of like, no, I don’t want the money. And he walks off.
Lee: At this point, Lance was on guard. It was strange, but he didn’t think too much of it. Meanwhile, his mother was on her way to his house to drop off his boys, who spent a few nights at grandma’s house.
Tillman: And by the time I pulled in the driveway they were both in the backseat knocked out.
Lee: Lance and Ms. Kim greeted each at the front of the house, with her at the steering wheel and the boys sleeping in the seats behind her. Then the 6-year-old woke up and had to use the bathroom.
L. Stevens: So my mom gets him, takes him inside. I’m trying to get my 3-year-old out.
Lee: That’s when the stranger from across the street approached Lance again.
L. Stevens: That’s when he comes from behind the car with the 22 with the drum, 50-round drum. I see him walking and he’s coming towards me.
Lee: Lance noticed the man was now carrying a handgun with a large drum magazine attached at the bottom. With his youngest son, Levi, just 3-years old, still in the backseat Lance’s mind began to race.
He was completely defenseless with his little boy trapped in the car between him and some guy with a gun. What could he do?
L. Stevens: There’s nobody else outside. I have to face this. So, he comes towards me with the gun, and he still has it down. And first thing I say, “What’s up? Like, what’s going on?”
Lee: The man started shouting some nonsense, something about his dead mother, but it was hard to make out.
L. Stevens: And I’m like, “Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And he raises the gun up to me because I’m just trying to diffuse the situation, I’m trying to calm him down.
Lee: The man eventually put the gun down and ran back across the street to his truck. At this point, Ms. Kim had been watching the whole ordeal from the doorstep.
She rushed out to her son in disbelief. L.J. was still inside the house using the bathroom. Ms. Kim was getting back into the car ready to leave, then before Lance could get Levi from the car the gunman returned, and this time Lance said he knew the gunman was going to shoot.
L. Stevens: He’s shooting at me first. I had a hat on, and I think one of the first few bullets grazed my head and blew out the back of the hat. Then he turns it to my mom, who’s in the car.
Tillman: He just started shooting, and I was sitting in the car. And I didn’t even realize I was shot. And all I was thinking of was how do I get this baby out of here because he was right behind me in his car seat.
L. Stevens: I said, “Ma, if you can get out of here, just drive off. If you can,” I said, “just drive off, please.”
And I looked back at my son, and I don’t know if he’s hit, but there was no time to check. I was trying to just get her to get out there.
Tillman: And then my son was screaming, like, “Ma, Ma, can you leave?” And I was like, “Yes.” And I just put the car in reverse. And as I backed out and drove off, I went to grab my phone and my arm looked like shredded wheat. I’ve never seen nothing like that.
Lee: Ms. Kim had been shot in the forearm, nearly destroying it, in the armpit and chest and in the face, shattering her jawbone.
She tried to drive away, put distance between her and the shooter. But soon, the pain from the wounds was overwhelming and she swerved into a neighbor’s driveway, frantically screaming for help. The ambulance and the police arrived shortly after.
Tillman: And they ended grabbing me and putting me on a stretcher. And then, the last thing I saw, I turned and seen one of the police officers have my grandson in his arms and I don’t remember nothing else.
Lee: Levi, in the backseat, somehow avoided being hit by the spray of bullets. Back at the Stevens’ house, the gunman had driven off, but Lance was bleeding badly. He’d taken a shot to the head and the leg.
As he waited for the ambulance to arrive, he rushed into the house looking for L.J. Luckily, with more than a dozen shots fired, many of them into the house, not a single one hit L.J. But he wasn’t completely spared.
L. Stevens: My son is just like, “Are you OK?” Like, “What happened?”
I said, “I just got hurt a little bit.” And he’s already seeing me, my head bleeding. My son’s like, pretty much, “I don’t want to be without you. I don’t want to just be with mommy.” He’s saying like, “I don’t want you to die.”
Lee: Lance and Ms. Kim never thought the wrong side of gun would find them in northwest Indianapolis of all places. But according to experts, gun violence isn’t only rising, it’s expanding to unlikely demographics.
Since the start of the pandemic, researchers told us that there had been an increase in women who are the victims of gun violence in Indianapolis. And they’ve also seen an uptick in survivors over the age of 30.
Lance and Ms. Kim were both rushed to the hospital. Sophia, Lance’s wife, wasn’t home at the time of the shooting but remembers getting to the hospital completely in shock and Lance having just one thing on his mind.
S. Stevens: When they finally let me see Lance, I walk through and he’s like, “How is my mother?” And that was the only thing he cared about. They wouldn’t give him any pain medication because they wanted him to be able to tell the story and all of that. So, he was in a whole lot of pain. He’s like, “Forget all of this. I just need to know how my mother is.”
Lee: But Ms. Kim’s injuries were so severe that even after she had surgery, she needed to be heavily sedated and placed on a ventilator for more than a week. All that time Lance was in the hospital too, getting surgery on his leg. But he wasn’t allowed to see his mom.
At that point, did you realize how bad she was hurt? What was that feeling like? Obviously, you saw her get shot, but then, you know, in the hospital did you know if everything was going to be cool with her or not?
L. Stevens: That was one of the worst times I think in my life. The last thing I saw was a hole in her face. That’s what I saw. So, I’m fighting with that.
Lee: For two days Lance pressed doctors, the hospital staff and police detectives for information about his mother.
L. Stevens: I’m asking everybody that comes in checking on me, “How’s my mom?” “Oh, we don’t know. We can’t tell you that.” And so (ph), the doctors really couldn’t tell me. So, I’m just kind of alone and there’s no answers.
Lee: Lance was finally able to see his mother, but she was still out of it.
S. Stevens: He didn’t get to see his mother for I think two days after they were admitted and that was just agony for him.
Lee: Finally, when Ms. Kim woke up, mother and son were able to reunite.
Tillman: And they wheeled him in, in a wheelchair. I thought I was going to die.
Lee: Just seeing him in a wheelchair like that?
Tillman: Yes. Yes. It’s like, “Oh my God.” I started crying. And he’s like, “Ma, I’m OK.” He had wheeled over to me, he’s grabbing me, “I am fine, Ma, I’m fine.” So, I didn’t know.
Lee: You needed that. You needed him to touch you —
Tillman: Absolutely.
Lee: — and look in your eyes and say, “Ma, I’m OK.”
Tillman: Yes, absolutely. Yes. Yes. I’m going back there now; I might need a Kleenex. Can we cut?
Lee: Not long after that, Lance was released from the hospital, but his mother had taken the brunt of the gunfire. She ended up staying in the hospital for a few weeks longer.
As I sat with her in Lance’s living room a year later, she pointed to the places on her body where the bullets had torn into.
Tillman: My front tooth was gone. And I don’t know how many teeth they took back here, about eight of them I think, and the bone. That’s why my face kind of droops down.
Lee: You have scars on your hand, your arm —
Tillman: See? Yes, here.
Lee: — and then your?
Tillman: And here. And like, this is dead right here.
Lee: Ms. Kim gestures to a portion of her lower jaw where a large, knotted scar stretches from her ear to her chin. During the early days after the shooting, she had lost all sensation in her mouth and jaw.
Tillman: And I had two bullet wounds right here, one here and one here. I’m feeling them through my blouse. Yes.
Lee: So your arm, your chest and under your jaw?
Tillman: Yes.
Lee: But through all of this, Ms. Kim’s mom instincts still kick in. She can’t stop herself from thinking of her son’s injuries, all that he had gone through.
Tillman: I hate that he got shot, you know. But I’m glad that the one bullet just split his cap open, it didn’t go through his head. It was crazy, so.
Lee: Literally always your baby, like no matter what?
Tillman: No matter what.
Lee: It’s like he’s 40, but you’re like, “I wish I would have been the only one hurt and not my boy.”
Tillman: Yes. Absolutely.
Lee: And Lance feels the same way about his mother’s pain.
L. Stevens: My mom took the worst of it. That will never sit well with me, ever. As long as I live, it’s not going to be OK with me.
Lee: It’s not what happened to you but to see your mother hurt like that.
L. Stevens: Yes. That’s my mom. I mean that’s, you know.
Lee: As the two settled back into their lives in the weeks and months after the shooting, they braced themselves for the long road to recovery. That’s when we come back. Stick with us.
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Lee: Over the course of weeks and months, mother and son worked through their physical wounds. Ms. Kim remembers a lot of pain in her mouth during the first few months of healing.
Tillman: It was months before I could just really eat. Like, I had to eat all this soft stuff and it got on my nerves. Yes.
Lee: Lance, who was shot in his leg, struggled to do basic things.
L. Stevens: I couldn’t walk and getting around was hard and just getting dressed was hard.
Lee: Slowly though their scares started to heal, and they began to regain their physical strength and mobility. But the experience of gun violence goes far beyond physical injury. As the wounds on their body were closing, the shooting left deep emotion wounds they had trouble mending.
L. Stevens: I had terrible nightmares the first like two months. Just waking up thinking people were going to shoot me, attacking me. Fearful for life for her, for my kids. It was messing with my head.
Lee: Then there was the agony of trying to make sense of what happened.
Tillman: I don’t even know why he came over there and why he shot us. I mean look at my mouth, look at my arm. I mean there was no reason. There was no reason for that.
Lee: When you think back and you’re recounting the story, and clearly there’s a lot of emotion in your voice remembering looking at your mother there, wounded.
L. Stevens: Yes.
Lee: Does any of this make sense to you as you process it now a year later?
L. Stevens: I have questions, but I don’t know in this lifetime that it could ever be answered.
Lee: And not being able to answer those questions has a way of amplifying the trauma that many survivors experienced. For Lance it was, why did this person target me? Why there or then?
Doctors say these kinds of questions become a part of the trauma experience. The way one’s mind and body become overwhelmed by what happened. And those questions continue to weigh on Lance.
The family has gotten some information. The police later identified the gunman as 21-year-old Keith Allender. He doesn’t live in the neighborhood, but his grandmother lives right across the street.
After Allender shot Lance and his mom, he also shot and wounded a police officer after a car chase. Police eventually shot him, leaving him paralyzed. Allender has since been charged with 23 criminal counts, including aggravated battery and attempted murder. He’s still awaiting trial.
Have you all had a conversation with the woman whose grandchild shot you? Have you talked to the grandmother?
L. Stevens: No.
Lee: Has she ever come over to say I’m sorry or engaged with you at all.
L. Stevens: No, we haven’t had no contact with her, and she hasn’t had any contact with us. I think the prosecutors —
S. Stevens: It’s court ordered. It’s a court ordered no contact.
Lee: OK.
We’ve reached out to Allender’s attorney for comment, but they didn’t respond. There are still so many unknowns.
Recently, Indianapolis police released an edited video of the shooting captured on home surveillance cameras in the neighborhood, detailing the events of that day. On camera you can see the gunman squeezing off shot after shot at the innocent mother and son.
Lance admits that he’s gone back to the video over and again hoping to find some clarity, a breakthrough, something to make sense of it all.
L. Stevens: Like it’s on YouTube. And I’ll go through the whole situation again, like some days a couple times a month. I just did it, I think, two weeks ago.
Lee: What are you looking to see in there? What are you looking for?
L. Stevens: I have to see it. It’s kind of like just to believe it. I go through the whole incident again over and over. I don’t know if it’s like therapeutic for me, but it’s like I have to see it.
Lee: When you hear your husband talking about how he’s still working through the emotional pangs of what happened, how does that make you feel?
S. Stevens: It’s definitely unsettling. I think that I can see their physical wounds are healing but definitely the mental. And so, even this is news that he’s looking at the video. I have never watched the videos of that day, and so it’s disheartening to know that that’s kind of something that he goes back to.
But we have several moments, just when we think that we’re at a place of normalcy or we’re at a place of this feeling of safety, that anything could just kind of disrupt that.
Lee: Amid the good days and bad and all of the confusion this family carries, there’s also another emotion. An emotion they don’t know what to do with.
Tillman: Emotionally, just anger. Same thing with mentally. I’m still mad. I’m hoping the day comes when I am not so angry about it (ph). When I think about what he did, then it makes me mad. And then I have to be like, OK, I have to let it go. I have to let it go.
Lee: And that anger, that rage brings Lance and Ms. Kim back to memories they don’t want to relive. Though Ms. Kim was referred to therapy, she hasn’t gone yet. Sometimes it’s just easier to bury the feelings.
Tillman: I don’t like how it makes me feel when I talk about it.
Lee: Though none of her grandchildren were shot, they still remember that day.
L.J., the oldest boy, was in the house when bullets came flying in from the open garage. And though he doesn’t mean to, he sometimes pulls his grandmother back to the day of the shooting.
Tillman: He has said this to me a couple of times. He said, “You going to get shot again?” I’m like, “No, L.J. I’m never going to, no. Nope, it’s never going to happen again.”
Lee: Sophia says it’s taken their boys a long time to be able to go outside and feel safe in their neighborhood again. For a long time they were on high alert. Any sudden movement or sound would flood them with bad memories.
S. Stevens: It has been extremely tough, especially coming back to the home after the shooting, wanting them to feel like this is their space. Although it was imposed upon by violence, this is still your home.
And so, when they feel scared, we talk about it. Again, even my younger son, going to therapy is how we came to know and learn how much he saw. He didn’t come right out and tell us what he saw and what he experienced the day of the shooting. But we went to therapy, and he just unloaded. And we were amazed, but grateful because now we know how to navigate him.
Lee: More than anything this family just wants to move on from the horrendous events of last May. But beyond the physical and emotional debt they continue to pay, the shooting has also cost them financially.
A year later Ms. Kim is still getting medical bills for her injuries.
Tillman: I got a bill in the mail yesterday.
Lee: The mother and son were both insured at the time of the shooting. We didn’t review the documents, but the family says all combined their medical bills have totaled more than $35,000.
Tillman: When I was first starting to get the bills, I got so scared because I was like, how am I going to do this? This is crazy.
Lee: She says it’s like she’ll be paying some of these expenses for years to come.
Tillman: First thing you have to start with is the ambulance. That was a humongous bill in itself. My surgery was six hours. Being in the hospital, rehab. I was in rehab for a week.
Lee: But the financial costs go beyond the medical bills. While Ms. Kim was sedated in the hospital, her car insurance company learned that her vehicle had been released from police custody and into an impound lot.
Tillman: I’m in the hospital and they’re calling my home. I live alone.
Lee: Without word from Ms. Kim, the insurance company ended up repossessing her car.
Tillman: So I had to end up getting another car. I mean, this is just crazy.
Lee: It sounds crazy.
Tillman: It was just crazy.
Lee: While Lance was able to do his job remotely, Ms. Kim lost several months of work. She had to max out all of her sick days before she was forced to return to her job. And then there was immense property damage to the house.
S. Stevens: Our entire downstairs, there is not a room that was untouched by a bullet in this house.
Lee: On the wall that sits above the family dining room table you can still see the place where a bullet left its mark. It’s now filled and covered over with paint, but it still shows through.
S. Stevens: And so, while we have homeowners insurance, because we are middle-class citizens, we work, we’re still left with the deductible if we want to walk through our home and not see bullet holes in the walls.
Lee: When I spoke with the family, I asked them if they had ever considered moving to another home all together, you know, get a fresh start. But Sophia said they have already invested so much financially and emotionally into their home it wouldn’t have made sense to leave.
Across the country, states have victims’ assistance funds that help survivors of violent crimes cover some of their crime-related costs. Indiana’s is called the Violent Crime Victim Compensation Program.
L. Stevens: Victim assistance that did help, you know, but —
S. Stevens: They have not helped us yet.
L. Stevens: Well, my mother —
S. Stevens: They’ve helped her. It’s a really great program in theory, but there’s so much red tape that he’s not necessarily aware of.
Lee: As Sophia says, while her mother-in-law has had some luck with the fund, there are significant barriers to accessing this money.
S. Stevens: You have to apply for the assistance and then you have to submit a lot of documentation. And then within that documentation they say, you know, send your medical bills. You send your medical bills. Oh, actually we need an itemized statement. OK, well that’s not how they send them to us. OK, we’ll go back and request that. There are certain things that they don’t pay for.
Lee: The expense of the new car, that’s not covered by the compensation fund.
S. Stevens: There’s nothing we can submit for our, like, homeowners insurance deductible. They really pay for the medical bills. And they pay for therapy, but they only pay for his therapy. They didn’t pay for our boys’ therapy.
Lee: If you weren’t physically injured in a shooting, you’re not covered by the fund. And in Indiana the fund only covers up to $15,000 in medical expenses. And they can only cover bills within the first two years of the shooting. After that, victims are on their own.
To this day, Lance and Sophia say they have yet to receive a single cent from the state’s victim compensation fund. Hurdle after hurdle, the Stevens are pushing through. But the future is unclear.
As you stand here now, are you at a clearing in the grass, right?
L. Stevens: Yes.
Lee: You feel like you can see the light?
L. Stevens: Being honest, knowing how the world is now and pretty much no place is safe, not even when you think you’re in a decent neighborhood, things like this happen and for no reason.
Lee: No place is safe. That’s a new sentiment for many Americans who’ve had to contend with the widening scope of gun violence in this country. No matter what you do or where you live, it can reach you when you least expect it, in the last place you thought it would show up.
S. Stevens: I might be at school one day and get shot by a weapon that someone was legally allowed to procure. I might be at church worshipping one day and get shot by a weapon that someone was legally allowed to procure.
Lee: Throughout Lance’s recovery he was overwhelmed by this feeling of defenselessness. Why hadn’t he been able to protect his family? Would things have been different if he had a gun?
L. Stevens: I’ve thought about it, especially last year over the summer leading to like the fall. I think the four months I was home I was thinking about it real like heavily.
Lee: He came close to buying one this year. But then this June, his son L.J. was playing outside when someone in a passing car shot him with a pellet gun filled with small frozen gel balls called Orbeez.
S. Stevens: Just recently I became aware of a TikTok challenge where kids are taking Orbeez and freezing them and shooting them out of air guns. I became aware of it because our son was running down the sidewalk just this past Sunday, and a car drove up and shot him twice with one of these Orbeez. And he ran in the house and was saying, close the door, close door. And he was so frantic.
Lee: When Sophia told Lance what happened, at first, all he felt was numb, then enraged.
L. Stevens: I was thinking, I was like, well, if I had a gun, I don’t know how I would respond. Trying to look for this car or something, and I wouldn’t be thinking straight.
Lee: It was a sign. Lance wasn’t ready for the emotional responsibility of a gun.
S. Stevens: I was relieved this past week when he came to the conclusion that he didn’t want one. I think that after the incident that was something that he really struggled with because he felt like he didn’t do enough to protect his family.
And so, I spent the past year trying to get him to see that there was not much else he could do. And if he was a gunowner, the likelihood that he would have been cutting the grass with his weapon on his hip, it’s just not likely.
Lee: But many people have come to the opposite conclusion. Gun sales continue to remain high as they have throughout the pandemic. And recently, Republican lawmakers in red states have moved to pass more permissive gun laws.
In March 2022, Eric Holcomb, the Republican Governor of Indiana, signed a bill that allows people to carry handguns without first getting a permit. Ohio and Alabama have passed versions of this same so-called constitutional carry law earlier this year. And in June, the Supreme Court struck down a New York state law that restricted people’s ability to carry guns in public.
Congress has passed a bipartisan gun bill, signed into law by President Joe Biden last month, that includes some measures aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people. It also includes funding for gun violence prevention efforts and mental health resources.
But in order to get Republican support, the bill was limited when it comes to substantive gun control measures. It doesn’t go far enough for Sophia.
S. Stevens: When I think about this man who was able to come across to our driveway with a 50-round gun, for what purpose? How was he allowed to have that? How was that OK? How is that something that we just have to accept, 50-round drum automatic weapons? There has to be something put in place on a national level that gives us a greater sense of surety.
Lee: As the Stevens family tries to move on from the shooting that flipped their world, I asked what they’d say to lawmakers who are reluctant to make gun reforms a priority.
Tillman: Shame on you. Just shame on them. In my home I always say, the only way that they’re going to make the change is when it happens to them. When it happens to their family, their children, you know? But until it hits home, and I believe it will one day.
Lee: When Lance and Ms. Kim were shot last year in front of their home and family, they lost something. Their sense of security was compromised, their mental health rattled. And their resolve to see the world as a place where being good people and doing good things is a shield or at least a bubble was destroyed.
Still, they’re fighting each and every day for their lives and their joy.
What brings you joy in this moment, even with the dark times lingering behind you?
Tillman: Look at my scars. I have, I’m not, I have two scars here on my chest. I have a scar here, under here. Look at the scar on here. And my tooth was missing. I can smile again. I really wanted my smile back. I kept this covered up for months. But it was just like, it’s a scar. It just is a reminder of what I’ve gone through and that it healed.
Lee: As I gathered with the Stevens outside of their home, I could feel their love for one another. They’re an incredibly close-knit bunch, working their way into some semblance of normalcy. And the backyard has become a safe place for them, a place they come to at the end of a long day to be close to each other. Play basketball with the boys and watch them on the swing set, reaching for the sky.
(KIDS PLAYING BASKETBALL)
Tillman: All right, Levi.
S. Stevens: Good job.
(LAUGHTER)
S. Stevens: I didn’t know you could do that.
Lee: You can find photos of the Stevens family on our social media. We’re on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, using the handle @intoamericapod. And if you want to write to us, our e-mail is intoamerica@nbcuni.com. That was intoamerica@nbc and the letters U-N-I.com.
Into America is produced by Sojourner Ahebee, Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Aaron Dalton, Max Jacobs, and Joshua Sirotiak. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. Special thanks this week to our colleagues who put in work on this episode, including Peter Shaw, Eric Arnold, Bud Osborne and John Freeland. And many thanks to Drs. John Rich and Lauren McGee for their research support. I’m Trymaine Lee. We’ll see you Thursday.