As I drove by the corner of Wadsworth and Alameda in Lakewood on Friday, I saw a group of high school students on the corner holding up signs. As I got closer, I could see their hand-drawn signs condemning gun violence in schools.
The kids are not OK.
They are not OK going to school every day knowing that theirs might be the site of the next mass shooting.
They are not OK knowing that someone with a gun could make them another victim before their graduation.
They are not OK with parents, policymakers and politicians fretting for a few days and then forgetting about them.
They are not OK with learning how to hide under desks, away from windows, behind locked doors, while staying silent, in between English Lit or Social Studies lessons.
I pulled over and talked to the students and asked to take a quick picture of them. The students took their lunch break or off periods to stand at the busiest intersection nearby to make their voices heard. They all attend Lakewood High School, not far from my home and the longtime rival of my alma mater.
It is also in the same school district as Columbine and Evergreen.
As it turns out, the former influenced the latter. More than a quarter century ago, Columbine entered the American vernacular as shorthand for school shootings. While it was not the first mass school shooting — there is a long, long list that pre-date Columbine — the combination of the deaths, injuries and realtime media coverage gripped the world.
On Thursday, just as most of the world learned about the assasination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus, a 16-year old walked into Evergreen and began shooting at his classmates and teachers alike. Reporting after the fact indicates he had a fascination with Columbine; he reposted TikToks analyzing it and wore a “WRATH” shirt reminiscent of one Columbine killer. Radicalized by an online community that embraced violence and gore, often in the name of antisemitism and white supremacy, it seems he saw following in the infamous duo’s footsteps would be his own path to infamy.
Unfortunately for his twisted motive, the world we live in takes little note of such action anymore. That is particularly true when the body count is not massive and the carnage is less outrageous. In this case, he ended up critically wounding two others before taking his own life.
In the callous world we have created for ourselves, that hardly registers as a blip among mass school shootings. It fell far short of his idols in Columbine or other, later, tragedies like those in Newtown, Connecticut, and Uvalde, Texas. Between the comparatively low death toll and the assasination of Kirk, the Evergreen shooting did not justify much more than a brief mention and a chyron for media in most parts of the country.
That’s the real gun violence culture America has implicitly adopted: wait for the next school shooting, count our dead, compare it to prior records and move on a few days later if it does not stack up.
Don’t believe me? How many mentions did you hear last week about the Annunciation Catholic School shooting? That happened just two weeks ago.
I would say that we were on track to have a school shooting every month this year, but that would not be accurate. According to the data collected by the gun safety organization Everytown, in 2025 there have already been 100 instances of gun violence in schools resulting in 32 deaths and 98 injuries. So it is closer to three times a week closing in on daily.
The damage could be worse if not for some of the actions that have already been taken. For example, a few weeks ago I sat in a local gameshop painting miniatures when a large group of women wearing red filtered in and swooped up every available chair. They were volunteers for Moms Demand Action and were there to talk about implementing safety precautions for schools in the event of a mass shooting.
It was not lost on me that the closest high school at the time was Columbine.
Of course, many of those precautions have been adopted in schools across the state and country. Almost a decade ago I wrote about my wife, a teacher, using those lessons to hide in her classroom with an active shooter outside her school. The students and teachers at Evergreen, drilled monthly in mass shooting responses just like every other JeffCo school, found shelter that limited the damage the shooter inflicted.
Furthermore, police forces have made adjustments to be more responsive and efficient. Law enforcement in Evergreen began arriving within one to two minutes of shots being fired and moved quickly to help the people trapped inside. That saved lives, too.
But can we really be content just saving some lives and making schools relatively safer?
That is the world those students stood out on the corner to cry out against. I hope their demands will not continue to fall on so many deaf ears.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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