Annapolis is a nice town.

The quaint red brick city on the shores of the Severn is a genteel place three and a half centuries old. It’s the type of town where sailing and lacrosse are sports as big as baseball and football and where antique shops and B&Bs are major economic engines.

It’s not just a college town but home to two diametrically opposed educational institutions, the United States Naval Academy and St. John’s College. The two schools face off every year in a grudge croquet match.

The shooting on Thursday happened just outside of city limits; it was in a nondescript suburban office building where the Capital Gazette shared space with dentists and lawyers and across the street from an upscale shopping mall filled with department stores and nicer sort of chain restaurants.

But the shooting changed all of that. It added what its mayor called “a Mayberry kind of town” to the long roll call of American cities that have seen mass shootings. It joins places like Littleton, Colorado, Newtown, Connecticut and Parkland, Florida on a sad ever-growing list.

But Annapolis has faced worse. Its early years were marked by the religious conflict of the English Civil War. It has faced the turmoil of the American Revolution where a British ship carrying tea was burned in the harbor less than a year after the Boston Tea Party. And it seems capable of rallying together even after the unimaginable horror of Thursday.

After all, it is a nice town.