Flashbacks and Lingering Questions for Survivors

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TUCSON — Randy Gardner had stopped by Representative Gabrielle Giffords’s community event on Saturday to thank her for supporting the health care overhaul when he heard the “boom, pop, pop, pop” and the cries of the wounded. Ducking for cover, he found the scene more than terrifying. He found it unbelievably familiar.

Mr. Gardner, 60, had survived a shooting once before. On May 4, 1970, he was a student at Kent State University when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fired on students protesting the Vietnam War, killing four people. He was in the crowd that day and ran for his life, 75 yards, before diving to the ground.

It was a landmark event for the country, but for Mr. Gardner it was a personal tragedy that stole a young woman from his English class, Allison Krause. And Saturday’s killings, which left him with a bullet through the right foot, took him right back.

“These types of experiences,” he said, “you change.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/13survivors.html?pagewanted=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

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1. Gabrielle Giffords will need psychological help for years to overcome survivor's guilt,

the belief that those people would not have died if it were not for her. That is of course, false, but it is hard to overcome. Those people would not have died then if Loughner had not shot them.