Like most of you gentle readers, I know where I was 20 years ago, when I first heard the news of a school shooting at Columbine. I was in my office at the Air Force Academy, but the evening before, when presumably the two shooters (whose names I shall not repeat) were in their final stages of prepping for horror, I was at Coors Field with the rest of the Political Science Department, out for our annual ball game.

I couldn’t help but ponder that while my colleagues and I were enjoying a Rockies win, only a few blocks away Hell was being planned.

Many Coloradans, I suspect, have particular memories and feelings associated with Columbine. As the first mass shooting in a school, at least in many years, Columbine shocked the nation. But for those of us here in our home of Colorado, it was especially painful. These were our neighbors, and we ached for their lost futures. And, many of us thought, something needs to be done. Something, please!

In the years since, our news has all-too-often been dominated by school shootings. When I was an Air Force cop, I often patrolled around the three public schools that were on the Academy’s grounds. I knew that my presence was likely both reassuring and troubling to some. 

When I go to a school to officiate a basketball or a football game, I am escorted past locked doors and metal detectors, past students who likely had an active shooter drill in their school schedules. But something more needs to be done, and I’m proud of Colorado trying to be a leader in this area, specifically the recent Red Flag bill that was signed into law. I’m not going to re-argue the now-law, and I understand that good people can disagree on this issue, but the recent news story of the troubled young woman from Florida, seemingly intent on harming students somewhere, demonstrates both the potential and the weaknesses of this new law.

If the media has it mostly correct, the young woman was obsessed with the Columbine shooting. She is alleged to have travelled from Florida, to have purchased a shotgun and ammo, and then, presumably, to be planning another horrific shooting. We’ll never fully know, because that deeply troubled young person took her own life with her new gun. 

Her social media postings paint a picture of an angry and dangerous person, with an obsession regarding Columbine and death. And her case shows the possible strengths of this new law as well as its limitations. If such a law was national, and a national database was kept (as we do for cars. I could “run a plate” on any car I pulled over), it is not unreasonable that her erratic behavior and postings might have gotten the attention of her family or of local authorities, who might have placed the temporary block in place to keep her from buying a gun. 

As it happened, she got her gun easily, as was the case with each of the several guns I’ve purchased. I just had to hang around the gun store for about 30 minutes while they ran a very basic background check, and then handed me my weapon. The Colorado gun store did nothing wrong, in my view, given that they had no information about the young woman, nor did she act in any way that might give them pause about selling to her. 

But had this law been in effect, and had she been a Coloradan, her family (and my heart goes out to them) might have picked up the phone and just might have prevented the gun sale and the subsequent tragic outcome. And her death is a tragedy, but I know many of us can’t help but think how much worse it could have been if she had made it to a school with her shotgun.

In Florida, where they have such a law, in the first 4 months of the new law, state officials had taken guns from 450 individuals purported to be an immediate danger to themselves and others, in a state with a population of over 21 million. Not exactly “they are coming for our guns!” kinds of numbers, and I suspect there were lives saved in those 450 cases. A Duke University study estimated that one suicide was prevented for roughly every 10 temporary gun removals or refusals. With the veteran suicide rate hovering around 20 per day, I find this issue intensely personal.

But, until we have a national law, the weak point of any Red Flag law will be the state border. If conservative Indiana and liberal California can both have Red Flag laws, perhaps we could get beyond politics on this one, and actually, well, do something? I doubt it, but fingers crossed. 

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.