We tried to pass a law in Colorado to stop mass shootings. Remember that today

“Mom, where are you?” Those were the first words out of my mouth after I reached my 72-year-old mother on the phone. My mother lives on the edge of Arvada, Colorado, which borders Boulder – the city where ten people were killed yesterday in yet another mass shooting and the city where, just ten days before, a local judge blocked a 2018 city ordinance that prohibited military-style weapons. The NRA applauded the judge’s decision (and jumped to defend gun ownership in the wake of the subsequent mass shooting). Yesterday’s shooter reportedly used a rifle.

My mom had told me that she was going to try and go for a walk yesterday, and maybe stop by the library and the post office. Residents of the surrounding areas had been warned to shelter in place as law enforcement looked for the active shooter — and that worried me. I knew that if she was home then she was a good twenty minutes from the Table Mesa King Soopers, where the shooting happened. But what if she wasn’t? What if she chose today to go see her holistic health practitioner whose office is down the street from the supermarket, and decided to stop in to get some produce?

It turned out, after an ID this morning, that the alleged shooter lived in Arvada, that same small suburb as my mother. That was a possibility I hadn’t even countenanced.

For those of you reading this article from your desk or bed in another country, you must keep in mind the context in the US. While most mass shootings here are acts of domestic violence and happen in private homes, anywhere is fair game for a public mass shooting: high schools, pre-schools, temples, churches, mosques, office buildings, nursing homes, newsrooms, movie theatres, concerts, and now my neighbourhood King Soops – nowhere is safe. It’s ridiculously easy to get a gun here, even as a convicted domestic abuser, or someone under a restraining order for intimate partner violence. Getting a firearm is much easier than getting healthcare in the land of Lady Liberty.

“Shelter in place, lock the doors, stay tuned-in to the news.” Our politicians remind us what to do when there is an “active shooter on the premises” but they won’t take action on gun control. They won’t take action after yesterday’s shooting; they won’t take action after last week’s mass murder where eight people were shot to death in what appeared to be a racially-motivated femicide in the Atlanta area of Georgia. And I blame our elected representatives and the laws that let lobbyists write legislation for every single gun-related death. Every life ruined and lost in the 611 reported mass shootings in 2020, and all the others since the start of 2021, should be on the conscience of every Republican and Democrat who votes down gun laws. 

For decades the GOP has willingly, knowingly and systematically paved the way for violent men to run amok, armed to the teeth with military-grade weapons. And today, while Republicans decry stimulus payments for millions of Americans who don’t have enough money to turn on the heat in their homes or feed their children, they will take no action on the human cost of gun violence they enabled.

All these years after Columbine – when I was told to shelter in place at my high school 30 minutes away from the site of the 1999 shootings as we awaited news about possible “white male active shooters” – I am still writing about women and children being shot to death by batterers who were able to get their hands on a gun with no questions asked. I am still writing about mass shootings years after working with domestic violence victims and across the street from the Aurora movie theatre where in 2012 another mass killer would take the lives of twelve innocent people. Even the courthouse where I worked in Aurora became the scene of such a crime when a police officer in divorce proceedings shot his wife and her lawyer in court. Today, I am still writing about Republicans blocking laws that attempt to take military-style weapons out of the hands of a civilian population.

It’s no mystery why Republicans will not pass comprehensive, up-to-date gun legislation, either. Their constituents and donors don’t want them to, no matter what the human cost might be. And after the dystopian nightmare that was the Trump White House, we know that today’s breed of GOP members of Congress will do anything to stay in power, including denying reality. So, when we see the Violence Against Women Act (which the House just renewed and now goes to the Senate) get to the Senate floor in the coming days and weeks, rest unassured that they won’t vote to close the boyfriend loophole (and others) that restrict gun rights for domestic abusers. The US will continue to rank at the top of the macabre list of gun-related deaths in high-income countries, and every shopping trip, every school day, will remain a risky venture.