25th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre proves that the gun lobby won

EJ Montini, Arizona Republic
·4 min read
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I arrived in Littleton, Colo., on April 22, 1999, two days after two young men, one 18 and one 17, walked into Columbine High School and opened fire, killing 12 students and a teacher and wounding more than 20 others.

The massacre was a gut punch that took the air out of … everyone. The entire nation. Mass shootings actually had that effect on us back then. Not anymore. Not 25 years later.

Much of the public grieving in the days after the attack seemed to happen in a place called Clement Park, not far from the high school.

There were bouquets of flowers everywhere. The saplings that lined West Bowles Avenue were covered with ribbons. They drooped under the weight of teddy bears and mementoes left by visitors.

Dozens of helium balloons were attached to trees, bobbing and nodding in the wind.

In 1999, gun law changes seemed certain

There was so much pain. So much anger. So much determination. You just knew things would change. That common sense would finally enter into our conversation about firearms.

You felt it even more a few weeks later, when the National Rifle Association decided that it would hold is planned convention in nearby Denver.

Thousands of protesters showed up.

The actor and then-NRA president Charlton Heston was defiant, even mocking. He told a cheering audience, “Each horrible act can’t become an ax for opportunists to cleave the very Bill of Rights that binds us.”

It was desperate, tone-deaf bravado on Heston’s part. But … it worked.

Columbine isn't in top 10 shootings anymore

Crosses with the names and portraits of the victims of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre are seen at the Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 2019. (COURTESY GETTY)
Crosses with the names and portraits of the victims of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre are seen at the Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 2019. (COURTESY GETTY)

There were many, many calls for changes after the Columbine massacre. And change happened.

Things got worse.

Philip Cook, professor emeritus of public policy at Duke University, recently put it this way, “One thing that has changed is the availability of AR-15-style rifles with large capacity magazines.

“The vast increase in availability of such weapons was facilitated by the sunset of the federal ban on assault weapons in 2004, followed by the congressional act that immunized the firearms industry from lawsuits in 2005 and the Supreme Court’s Heller decision in 2008. The surge in sales of such weapons parallels their increasing use in mass shootings nationwide.”

There have been more than 4,800 firearms deaths so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and we are only in April.

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The Columbine attack isn’t even among the top 10 of mass shootings in America anymore. It has fallen to number 16.

Sixteen.

And since the killing in Colorado back in 1999, there have been 404 school shootings.

Arizona police manage gun threats daily

An Arizona Republic investigation has highlighted how police here respond to thousands of calls to schools involving guns and gun threats. According to The Republic’s reporting, officers dealt with an average of two gun threat incidents a day in 2022.

Such issues don’t seem to bother those who control the Legislature, however, where the work they do is to make access to weapons even easier.

Those working to get common sense gun laws passed have gotten better organized. And their efforts to improve safety have yielded results in places outside of Congress.

Good work is being done by Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and others.

Admit it: The gun lobby won

But the fact is, the gun lobby won.

Not just in the proliferation of weapons or the lack of firearms legislation or even the horrendous number of deaths since Columbine.

The worst part is that we no longer see mass shootings as something we can prevent, or even deter. It’s as if we think of them now as not being human caused, but as acts of nature, like floods or tornadoes or wildfires.

After the NRA convention ended in 1999, I drove back to Littleton. In the weeks since the killings the balloons that had been attached to the trees had deflated and hung like withered fruit, as if mourning had lost its freshness.

And in the 25 years since, it has.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Columbine High School anniversary proves the gun lobby won