Zornio: Gun violence in Colorado is out of control. Expect more of it.

Last Thursday, I woke up to the news of an active shooter less than six miles from my house. The four-hour standoff with police left one woman dead.

An hour later, the stylist at my long-overdue hair appointment shared how the alert scared her. She had been in a grocery store nearby when she found out and suddenly heard a series of pops across the street at the gas station. She panicked, thinking it was the gunman.

Ultimately the noise was an untimely coincidence of a woman attempting to stuff balloons in a car trunk. But for my stylist, panic had already taken hold. She left, her heart still racing.

After leaving the salon, I went to a dealership in South Denver to test drive a used car. The salesman explained he was very sorry his usual mechanic wasn’t available to discuss the vehicle’s condition. I asked when he’d be back. They couldn’t say. He had been shot in the leg after an ill-timed trip to a local gas station and was in the hospital for a few weeks at least.

By Thursday evening, newspapers nationwide were headlining a story about a Colorado teenager who had been shot in the face by a Mountain View elected official. Apparently, the teen had trespassed on local property trying to get the owner’s permission to take homecoming photos by their lake. His penalty was a bullet.

Gun violence in Colorado is not new, but it has hit a 40-year high in recent years. In 2021, the number of firearm deaths has more than doubled from prior decades, with population increase not accounting for the overall increase.

In 2022, Colorado experienced 13 mass shootings, ultimately breaking the mass shooting victim record. At the same time, overall firearm deaths and suicides have been massively on the rise since at least 2006. The state now ranks higher than most others for gun deaths, with the exception of homicides, with most shooters and victims being males under the age of 45.

But Colorado isn’t the only state with concerning levels of gun violence. Nationwide, gun violence is a public health crisis. In 2024, there have already been at least 47 deaths per day due to gun violence as of Sept. 5, and that excludes suicides, the leading cause of death by gunfire. This leads to some 47,000 people in America dying by firearms every year, with gun-related incidents remaining the leading cause of death in children and teens. 

Contrary to what Republican Party leaders say, it doesn’t have to be this way. No other country in the world with America’s wealth and resources deals with the chronic fear of their child dying in school or being shot in the face. 

The rates of gun-deaths in the U.S. now rank just below the 10th leading cause of death and are nearly 100x greater than gun-death rates in the United Kingdom. This isn’t normal, and yet our political leaders have normalized it all the same. 

This brings me back to my hair stylist. She is terrified of being shot. She could recount every active shooter drill she and her two young kids had been taught in school. She knew stories of children smearing blood on themselves to “play” dead. She even preemptively apologized if she ever had to drop her scissors and run out in the middle of a haircut if she ever got a call like the parents in Georgia.

As someone who grew up during Columbine, I completely understood.

So where do we go from here? How do we stop something that has become as pervasive as liver disease? Certainly, better gun safety laws, better mental health services and an overall public health approach would help. But is it enough anymore?

After decades of increasing gun violence, I fear it’s not, at least not for a while. In Colorado, Republican elected officials and political groups like Rocky Mountain Gun Owners still fight against most of the safety measures needed. At the same time, they blatantly disregard gun safety principles by taking family photos with rifles and leaving guns in public areas. At the home where the teen was shot in the face after a gun was unnecessarily the go-to, there’s a Trump flag prominently displayed. 

In these circles, guns have become an extreme display of cultural pride, consequences be damned.

That’s when it hit me. Perhaps in Colorado, gun violence actually is our new norm. We’ve already scarred two generations since Columbine, and a third is underway. Any efforts to fully curb violent trends at this point will take just as long to undo as they took to create, which could be years. Making those strides without the help of Republicans will take even longer. This isn’t hopelessness, it’s reality.

So buckle up Colorado, because no matter how many legislative efforts Democrats pass in the coming years — and I hope they do — we’ve still got a long way to go before gun violence stops.

Trish Zornio is a scientist, lecturer and writer who has worked at some of the nation’s top universities and hospitals. She’s an avid rock climber and was a 2020 candidate for the U.S. Senate in Colorado. Trish can be found on Twitter @trish_zornio

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