It took everything in my power to not think about what happened last week in Aurora. To do so would remind me of that April weekend in 1999 — the weekend after the Columbine shootings — quaking with fear and apprehension for my nephew who was in his first year of high school in northern California. His was a high school similar to the one in Colorado where the unthinkable took place: two young men planned and executed a mass shooting, killing themselves after killing eleven of their fellow students, two of their teachers, and wounding 21 others.
Aurora reminded me of how vulnerable we were in those days after Columbine. For my nephew going to a public high school and for his younger sister who would follow him soon after, they were now living in a world where this can happen.
I felt as though after everything we’ve done to make this world a better place for them, that we had somehow failed them. In the new reality of dealing with the unthinkable, you learn that even the fear of losing someone so deeply close to you is an emptying of the heart. How much worse is it when it actually happens?
Why haven’t we looked at the Aurora tragedy deeper than the usual ‘lone shooter; mentally unstable; random, senseless act’. Nothing done to curtail sales of weapons. Polite expression of regret but firmly adamant position from the NRA that they are not willing to back down. What have we learned? Twelve years since the Columbine event, 25 mass-killings (including Aurora) have happened. Here in America we have come to expect that this is a part of what happens when ‘life happens’. Columbine was the first and biggest breach of our expectations for ‘normal life’ in small town America where people go to live to be safe from the violence of the cities. It has not been the same since.