'I've Never Seen This Level of Fear.' Why Asian Americans Are Joining the Rush to Buy Guns [View all]

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https://time.com/6080988/asians-buying-guns/


(Svetlana Kim practices shooting her new handgun while standing next to Tom Nguyen, instructor and founder of L.A. Progressive Shooters, at the Burro Canyon Shooting Park in Azusa, CA on July 18, 2020. Nguyen founded L.A. Progressive Shooters in the hopes of diversifying the population of gun owners.)

Six months ago, Svetlana Kim was so scared of guns, she couldn’t even look at an image of one without feeling anxious.

If she was home watching a movie that suddenly depicted gun violence, the 47-year-old accountant would scramble to hit the fast-forward button on the remote. If she couldn’t skip the scene, she would shut her eyes, and her husband would gently put his hand over hers until the scene was over. Kim knew it was just a movie, but in those moments, she couldn’t help but feel like she was in the victim’s shoes, staring the shooter in the eye.

“My brain was always signaling danger. I just felt like, it’s here, it’s present,” says Kim, who blames empathy and imagination for her visceral reaction, since she has never personally experienced gun violence. “It was bad like that, and I couldn’t control it.”

That all changed when something scarier came along. Months into the pandemic, people who looked like Kim were being shoved and kicked to the ground, punched, stabbed and slashed, while doing everyday activities like walking around the neighborhood, shopping and riding buses and trains. One after another, unprovoked, racist attacks against Asian Americans being unfairly blamed for the COVID-19 virus started to increase in major U.S. cities. Kim wondered if she could be the next victim.