The gunshots rang out at 8:13 a.m., echoing across the high school football field and middle school garden. They continued for 49 minutes without interruption: an AR-15-style rifle, with .223-caliber bullets, ripping at 94 decibels through a community that did not even pause to wonder if a disaster was unfolding at the schools.
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It was just a typical morning in Cranston, R.I., where more than 2,000 children attend school within 500 yards of a police shooting range. There, local police officers sharpen their gun skills, sometimes until 8:30 at night.
Some days they shoot Glock pistols, like the weapons used in the mass shootings at Virginia Tech, the Charleston church and Thousand Oaks, Calif. Other days, they use AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles, similar to the ones used in the killings in Newtown, Conn.; Las Vegas; Parkland, Fla.; Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas.