Twenty-seven years ago today, I was taking the day off student teaching at John F Kennedy High School to get my fingerprints and background check completed. It was nearing the end of my time with the kids before I finished up classes to become a fully certified teacher. We had moved to a new place in Littleton, CO, so after getting fingerprinted, I went to the DMV in Southwest Plaza Mall to update my driver’s license. Two things I remember about that early morning – I heard on the radio about something going on in a nearby high school with a large police presence, and I saw the helicopters circling Columbine. Southwest Plaza is on the other side of the park neighboring the high school, and I saw the cars of frantic parents trying to find their kids.
By the end of the day, we all had heard what happened – 13 students and one teacher had been gunned down and the killers had taken their own lives. It was the deadliest school shooting until Virginia Tech took the lives of 32 people in 2007. And none of us can forget Sandy Hook in 2012, in which 26 people – including 20 children from the ages of six and seven.
Columbine was not the first school shooting, and it certainly hasn’t been the last. Between 1999 and 2025, there have been an average of 6 active shooter events in K-12 schools per year, 55% in high schools. Every time something happens, there are cries of “never again,” and then the next one happens. Brady United shares that 390 school shootings have occurred since Columbine, with little action taken to prevent the next one.
In May 2022, after the Uvalde shooting, I wrote this post. I am still angry about the lack of gun control in this country. I’m still disgusted that there are those who value ownership of a gun they likely will never need to use1 over the lives of children. No, not all gun owners are murderers. But easy access to guns escalates violence in the US, especially when compared to other countries.
Today’s post is being written after a weekend in which a man, angry at his ex for leaving him, opened fire across multiple homes and killed 8 children, ages 3 to 11. This violence has a ripple effect across a community. Not only do we grieve for the children murdered in their homes by someone they know; we also grieve for the first responders who knew the victims and see the devastation of children’s lives cut short because an angry man had easy access to a gun.
I’m still so angry. And I am so sad. We know it’s going to happen again, yet we as a society have made our priorities clear – and they don’t appear to include the safety of children. Sandy Hook is often seen as the point of no return – if the death of 20 small children wasn’t enough to galvanize the country, what is? So I write this post on the anniversary of the Columbine Shooting – an event that seemed so implausible at the time, yet is almost common at this point. One more voice shouting into the void, trying to get someone to listen.
“But until we stop this violence, the cycle of violence, like I’ve said over and over again, we’re going to still be standing here, and it’s only going to get worse.”
– Shreveport Councilman Grayson Boucher
Surviving Leadership 