Highlands Ranch Shooting

The school in question is only about 4 miles from me, about the same distance as Columbine so I'm beginning to wonder if there's actually something in the water around here or if we just have an abnormal population of whack jobs in the general population.

As of right now, little enough is known that a detailed story isn't possible BUT unlike most of these things, both shooters are in custody and only one person is dead so detailed information may actually be forthcoming.

So far Gov. Polis has not issued a carefully prepared statement calling for more gun control, but I expect that will happen very shortly if not today.* What is known about the shooters is that the 19-year-old male (the adult) is a vehemently anti-Trump liberal, and the 18-year old (the juvenile ) is a female in the process of transitioning to becoming male. Both of them sound like perfect candidates for the Red Flag process which becomes effective(?) in January of next year, maybe.

Frankly I see this as confirmation of my own personal theory on gun control, namely that if we simply disarm and prohibit gun ownership to all Democrats, we can at a single stroke, reduce mass shootings like this by about 95%. Given the political proclivities of criminals in general, this in theory would also nearly eliminate gun-involved violent crime. In practice however, as criminals tend to ignore the laws anyway, that aspect would probably go on unchanged.

The good news is that the male shooter was rushed, knocked down and disarmed by one of the students at the school. This is consistent with what I've been told about dealing with a shooter when you have no weapon of your own and retreat may not be a viable option. A gun is a distance weapon and is hard to aim when you have multiple assailants piled on top of you trying to disarm you. I hear the hero here is planning to join the Marines when he graduates. Sounds like he'll do well there.

UPDATE 1: Sure enough, later this same day I got a form letter from the Giffords group calling for more gun control and asking for money. No mention of any mental health issues of course as that might cut in to their voter base.

Update 2: Seems the local politicians set up a "vigil" for the one dead student in order to press their anti-gun agenda and lo and behold, most of the students dragooned into attending didn't buy in to the narrative and walked out, put off by the use of Kendrick Castillo, who died defending his fellow students, as a prop. Amazingly prominent pols and anti-gun groups were able to attend a next day event:

The event also featured two Democratic politicians, Colorado Congressman Jason Crow and Senator Michael Bennet. Moms Demand Action, a group that advocates for gun control legislation, also had representatives at the event.