So much sorrow and sympathy to the people at that concert in Las Vegas last night. My mother’s family lived in Las Vegas (and one or two still do) and she graduated from Las Vegas High School in the 1940’s. I thought I might revisit Colorado’s record of mass shootings, so I went to Wikipedia. Here is a link to their page.
This page is woefully incomplete, since they specifically title it “shootings”, not “killings”. I can remember some shootings at schools that didn’t make this list — one at Platte Canyon High School in Jefferson County and another in 2010 by a man shooting at random children at Deer Creek Middle School (that link says that another shooting, one where a child was killed, happened at that school in 1982 as well). This page also does list the Ludlow Massacre a century ago, but specifically leaves out that as a tragedy, even with deaths somewhere in the 20’s, it isn’t notable the way Columbine and the Aurora Theater were notable. And finally, there’s no mention on that page of the Sand Creek Massacre, which was totally a mass shooting/killing by people with guns.
When the Colorado legislature finally passed three measures to partially try and limit future mass shootings after the Aurora Theater tragedy, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and the NRA both fought tooth and nail and then spent massively to recall/oust three Senators so Republicans could take control of the state Senate. State Democrats haven’t been able to recover that elected body in the multiple elections since then, so it’s still something of a win for the moar gunz for everyone crowd. The loss of the Senate is still a lesson to all politicians interested in gun control legislation.
Just not feeling the love these days.