From USA Today:
Sandy Hook Elementary was demolished after 26 people were shot and killed there. After 14 people were killed at a conference center in San Bernardino, Calif., the building remains closed. But in Orlando, after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Pulse’s nightclub owner vows to reopen.
Experts say reactions to this decision may vary. Some may see the club’s reopening as a painful reminder of the 49 lives lost, others may see it as a symbol of strength in the community.
Owner Barbara Poma, who founded the nightclub as a safe haven for Orlando’s gay community, welcomed the victims’ relatives into the Pulse family.
“We just have to move forward and find a way to keep their hearts beating and keep our spirits alive,” she said on Today. “We’re not going to let someone take this away from us.”
Not all locations of mass shootings require the same responses, and different communities have handled the aftermaths of these attacks differently.
One week after a gunman shot and killed nine people at a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., last summer, churchgoers gathered again in the same room where bullets had been flying.
At the Century Aurora 16 movie theater in Colorado, it’s business as usual almost four years after James Holmes opened fire in 2012 during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 and injuring 70. The movie theater reopened after six months of renovation.
It took about one month for the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif., to reopen its offices after married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 people Dec. 2, but the conference center where the shooting took place remains closed indefinitely.