There’s not much new when it comes to finding ways to influence human behavior.

For the most part, appealing to people’s sense of fear and greed continues to be the leading options in all kinds of human transactions, including Aurora law enforcement.

Aurora police and leaders of the city’s Youth Violence Prevention Program are working together under a new program in an effort to stop kids and young adults headed to the abyss.

While the two city agencies may be frightening city officials into backing the idea, successfully selling it to youths deep into lawlessness is yet to be seen.

Standing Against Violence Everyday, SAVE, apparently adopts the eons-old theory that people are motivated most by fear, and some by greed.

You don’t have to be a stock market salesperson or marketing guru to understand that one size of this strategy by no means fits all.

For generations, the government has issued fearful warnings about the effects of “your brain on drugs,” the fear of being horribly injured by not wearing a motorcycle helmet or the fear of languishing in prison for decades for robbing someone at gunpoint – or worse.

Despite those efforts, not only is illicit drug use prevalent, the very real threat of being killed using street drugs laced with a lethal amount of fentanyl doesn’t slow America’s appetite for rolling the dice. It’s the same story for limiting endless other harmful behaviors from smoking, to eating too much animal fat to harboring a gun.

The data is consistent and unequivocal. You are almost twice as likely to be shot to death if you live in a house with a handgun than someone who lives in a house without a gun. Studied repeatedly, that fact was emphasized last year in an Annals of Internal Medicine study of 600,0000 households in California. Despite all this, city officials believe that they can change the behavior of Aurora’s “most violent, prolific offenders” by threatening them with swift and serious justice and at the same time offering them access to social-service-like programs.

First off, we can all hope that Aurora’s “most violent, prolific offenders” are in prison. While some conservatives blame courts for being too lenient, the people who are actually the “most violent, prolific offenders” are indeed incarcerated.

While an increasing number of Aurora metroplex residents are afraid of those exhibiting lawless behavior – simply driving on highways, or encountering someone with a gun – it’s not the “most violent, prolific offenders” we need to fear most. It’s the growing number of everyday kids and young adults who see arming themselves as a normal, acceptable way of life. They dabble casually in flirting with death.

The accused East High School shooter this week seems to fall into this category of kids with guns.

The sheer flood of firearms into the public mainstream makes gun violence little more than a numbers game, with people living among the highly armed increasingly losing the odds of being unaffected by gun violence.

Just last week, state Sen. Rhonda Fields – a leading proponent of gun control – appealed to the Aurora City Council to do something about rampant gun violence after a stray shot shattered a window in her central Aurora home.

Unless Aurora police have evidence to the contrary, the more than 200 people shot in Aurora last year were not shot by a dozen or so of the “most violent” among us.

It’s unclear just what Fields and others think police can do to stop the shooting. Former Police Chief Vanessa Wilson had the best advice for Aurora after nearly back-to-back school shootings in the fall of 2021.

She appealed to parents and others to stop their kids and young adults from arming themselves and shooting at each other. She insisted they know what is in their kids’ rooms, their cars and where their children are at all times.

“We can’t police ourselves out of this,” Wilson said.

She was right. While offering young adults an “off ramp” from a life of crime by directing them to social services certainly makes sense, food stamps after-school programs aren’t enough. These wayward people need serious counseling, possibly drug addiction treatment and without a doubt earnest and effective education and job training, not just job assistance.

But more importantly, all of these things need to be the focus of the community from daycare to college, not just people on probation.

Gov. Jared Polis’ press for free preschool and kindergarten are good first steps. But Aurora and Colorado must do much more to ensure children are deeply supported as they move through public schools, even and especially when their parents cannot provide the support children need.

Waiting until children become the most violent among us to provide threats or services in hopes of steering them away from prison will not solve the problem, and history has shown repeatedly, it never did.

The region’s gun violence quagmire is far beyond the ability of police to stop. Meaningful gun control laws, gun buybacks, gun accountability and a huge increase in programs that give kids and young adults an on-ramp to a more meaningful, rewarding life before they require an off-ramp from a life of violence should be the goal of the city, the community and the state.

Sentinel Colorado Editorial Board

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