Colorado 1993 to 2021

Chuck E. Cheese – 12/14/93

Ben Grant, 17

Colleen O’Conner, 17

Margaret Kohlberg, 50

Sylvia Crowell, 19

Columbine High School – 4/20/99

Matthew Kechter, 16

Daniel Mauser, 15

Daniel Rohrbough, 15 

 Dave Sanders, 47

Rachel Scott, 17

Isaiah Shoels, 18

John Tomlin, 16

Lauren Townsend, 18

Kyle Velasquez, 16

Cassie Bernall, 17

Steven Curnow, 14

Corey DePooter, 17

Kelly Fleming, 16

Platte Canyon High School – 9/27/06

Emily Keyes, 16                

Aurora theater shooting – 7/20/12

Jonathan Blunk, 26

AJ Boik, 18

Jesse Childress, 29

 Gordon Cowden, 51

Jessica Ghawi, 24

John Larimer, 27

Matt McQuinn, 27

Micayla Medek, 23

Veronica Moser-Sullivan, 6

Alex Sullivan, 27

Alexander C. Teves, 24

Rebecca Wingo, 31

Arapahoe High School shooting – 12/13/13

Claire Davis, 17         

Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood Shooting – 12/27/15

Garrett Swasey, 44 

Ke’Arre M. Stewart, 29

Jennifer Markovsky, 35  

Thornton Walmart Shooting – 11/1/17

Carlos Moreno, 66

Victor Vasquez, 26

Pamela Marques, 52  

STEM School Highlands Ranch Shooting – 5/17/19

Kendrick Castillo, 18     

King Soopers, Boulder Shooting – 3/22/21

Denny Strong, 20

Rikki Olds, 25

Tralona Bartowiak, 49

Suzanne Fountain, 59

Teri Lieker, 51 l

Eric Talley, 51

Jody Waters, 65

Kevin Mahoney, 61

Lynn Murray, 62

Neven Stanisic, 23

The dictionary defines a mass shooting as a single incident involving the shooting with one or more firearms of a number of people, but more than two and typically a large number, especially when the victims are random.

In the Platte Canyon, Arapahoe High School and STEM School Highlands Ranch shootings, more people would have died but the shooters were stopped. In the Platte Canyon shooting, the murderer raped Emily Keyes in front of her class then killed her. In the Arapahoe High School shooting, Claire Davis knew the student who brought guns to school. She tried to talk him down but he shot her. At the STEM school, two kids came with enough guns for multiple victims but Kendrick Castillo disarmed one of the kids but was fatally shot doing so.

In the Aurora Theatre shootings, most of the young men there with dates put themselves between the shooter and their girlfriends or wives, losing their own lives. Fifty eight others were wounded during the assault. While their physical wounds have healed, the emotional ones continue and are exacerbated every time another shooting occurs.

My husband was friends with the father of a Columbine student who died. They umpired girl’s softball games together. The devastation caused by his son’s death still is just as fresh twenty one years later.

The Chuckie E. Cheese shooting happened one block from my condo. I’d been out to dinner with friends and came home to police cars, ambulances and helicopters-all night long. The restaurant stayed empty for at least ten years and was finally divided into two stores. There have been many different tenants, no one succeeds for very long.

Look at the faces. These people are more than names on a memorial wall. More than names being read out at a candlelight vigil. They were someone’s son or daughter, sister or brother, mother or father or grandparent. They had lives and dreams and hopes for a future. Don’t look for common motives for these horrendous crimes because the reasons why don’t really matter, do they? If this moves you, write your representatives in Washington and insist they do something other than offering “thoughts and prayers”. The time has come for them to put life ahead of politics. Thank you.