Every day on my commute, I see two signs — each marking a stretch of road from my house to my office.
From University Boulevard to Santa Fe Drive along Colorado State Highway 470 is the “Kendrick Castillo Memorial Highway.” Just a few mile markers west starts the “Dave Sanders Memorial Highway."
(Read more below the photo)
Some might need a quick Google search to jog their memories, but I’d wager most Coloradans understand from a quick glance the significance of those names.
For some, they’re seared into our minds.
***
This week saw the latest mass shooting in the United States, something that’s becoming almost a daily trend.
Six humans — three adult staff members and three 9-year-old children — were gunned down at a private Christian school in Nashville by a 28-year-old former student.
One of the dead was the daughter of the senior pastor at the church associated with the academy.
I didn’t hear about the news until the afternoon on Monday, when my aunt informed me (as an aside to our phone conversation) that there was another school shooting.
“Where?” I asked, callously. “Nashville,” she responded.
Much like what I fear is the response from most Americans at this point, I’ve grown desensitized to mass shootings, which makes sense considering their frequency in this county.
It’s human nature, methinks, to grow accustomed to the horrors in the world around us. Compartmentalization is often the only way many of us can get through the day without breaking down.
So, I’m not entirely sure why this particular mass shooting had more significance to me than others.
Maybe it’s that it was carried out by a young female, an outlier among these kinds of incidents. Maybe it’s that it was at a religious institution.
Maybe it was that half of the victims were 9 years old. But, then again, I thought the tipping point for public opinion on gun violence in the United States would have been a decade ago, when 20 first graders were slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t.
To be honest, I think what struck a chord in this instance is the casual way I reacted when my aunt passed along the news.
“Where?” I asked, callously. “Nashville,” she responded.
***
I was 11 years old at the time of the Columbine Massacre, perhaps one of the more notorious mass shootings in U.S. history.
My family lived 10 miles from Columbine High School, so we weren’t directly impacted by the shooting. But I find it hard to fathom that anyone who lived in the area didn’t feel the psychological and societal effects of that horrific day.
Many Millennials mark the death of their innocence with the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. But those of us who lived through Columbine — who were the first test subjects for school lockdowns and active shooter drills — lost our innocence as things unfolded that afternoon in April 1999.
Mass shootings have been embedded in the fabric of our suburban Denver communities. Ask most people who’ve lived along the Front Range for a while, and they’ll tell you they knew someone who was at Columbine when the shooting occurred.
… Or knew someone in the Aurora movie theater shooting in July 2012.
… Or shopped at the Boulder King Soopers grocery store where a mass shooter murdered 10 people, including an on-duty police officer, in March 2021.
… Or … or … or …
And this epidemic has spread to communities across the country to the point that it’s not uncommon to know someone who witnessed, knew someone involved in, or was a victim of a mass shooting.
***
So, what do we do?
The quick answer is I don’t know. I wish I knew.
What I do know is the status quo isn’t working — and there are powerful forces working to keep it that way.
Gun violence enablers will point to mental health as a culprit, and I don’t disagree. It doesn’t strain the mind to think someone who systematically executes third grade students and their educators might be going through a mental health crisis.
But blaming mental health is a shameful scapegoat, especially in a country that criminally undervalues mental wellness and care.
Through the first three months of 2023, gun violence accounted for roughly 10,000 deaths in the U.S. Of those, more than half were by suicide.
Pro-gun advocates like to pull out these figures after mass shootings because the number of victims in these large-scale events pale in comparison to those who take their own lives with a firearm.
But they can never answer why it’s so easy for people to obtain a gun, especially when they’re in a full-blown mental health crisis.
“Guns make you safer,” they’ll argue, which is statistically untrue.
There’s no evidence that suggests using a gun in self-defense reduces the likelihood of injury. And the presence of more guns doesn’t have a direct cause-and-effect on crime rates, though it does make said crimes more violent.
What pro-gun advocates really want is to preserve an antiquated right to bear arms — while often forgetting that pesky part about a “well-regulated militia” — over the lives of their community members.
***
I don’t claim to know how to fix the gun violence problem in the U.S., but I do know a few things.
One, had I owned a gun at certain points in my adult life, I don’t think I’d be alive today. As a means of self-preservation, I won’t ever allow myself to own a firearm.
I know gun control — while often half measures — is the only responsible course of action, along with expunging the American psyche of the glorification of guns.
I also know that Dave Sanders would have rather continued to mold the minds of Columbine students instead of heroically dying while trying to save them.
Without significant change, I know gun violence is a stain this country won’t soon wash out.