Yesterday began with the promise of hope and change. After all, there was an election in Denver that offered so many possibilities. It would have been a natural to post about that today.
That didn’t happen because of what occurred around 2 p.m. yesterday. The day became about death and injuries – another school shooting in Colorado. Two young people – students — with guns killed one student and injured eight more students. This STEM school in Highlands Ranch has 1,800 students, ranging from kindergarten to 12thgrade.
I cannot imagine what is going on in the minds and hearts of those students, those teachers, and those parents — especially mere days after the lengthy coverage of the 20thanniversary of the deaths at Columbine.
What remains is incredible anger, alternating with depression, and I do not think I am alone. What needs to happen is to face facts: Vote out representatives at local, state and federal levels who do not understand how angry many people have become. How have guns become some type of mystical objects? I have no clue.
A gun rights group is suing the state over a new law that would allow officials or family members to take a gun away if a person appears to be potentially harmful to the gun’s owner or others; it was known as the “red flag bill.” As Colorado Public Radio noted, “An extreme risk protection order would allow family or law enforcement to petition a court to remove someone’s guns for up to a year if they are a danger to themselves or others. It goes into effect in 2020. More than a dozen states have a similar law on the books.”
The suit is based on a procedural issue; the head of the gun rights group also said the law was unconstitutional. Many Colorado sheriffs do not want to follow that law. Think recall. There’s a link below to that CPR story, as well as to a story in today’s Colorado Sun, which says that this new law would probably not have applied to the shooting yesterday.
It does not help that the NRA doles out money and gives “scores” to legislators who vote the way they want them to vote. There’s a link below to The New York Times that shows how classy that group is, with a power struggle between two “leaders.”
Finally, there are links below to updated coverage today in The Denver Post, and coverage of the incident in The Colorado Independent.
There will be more school shootings across the country, unfortunately, until people come to their senses. Guns are not totems; they’re killers.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/05/08/stem-school-highlands-ranch-colorado-shooting/
https://www.cpr.org/news/story/colorado-gun-right-group-filing-lawsuit-over-red-flag-law
Highlands Ranch school shooting suspects were too young to purchase handguns used in deadly attack
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/us/oliver-north-nra.html
Chandler in Denver 