How about locking down gun sales rather than schools?

Schools across Colorado, including my own high school – world-famous (all over again) Columbine –were shut down today. The reason? An 18-year-old woman from Florida who was reportedly obsessed with the 1999 Columbine High School shooting had made some threats, flown to Colorado, bought a gun and was on the loose. She’s dead now (shot herself), but I have so many questions …

Why, after 20 years (riddled with copycat incidents and countless school shootings), are people still obsessed with Columbine?

Why must we relive the nightmare we experienced here 20 years ago because America refuses to ramp up gun control?

And the most pressing question … HOW is it possible with all of this gun violence that disturbed teenagers  - or ANYONE for that matter – can STILL roll into a store and buy a shotgun as easily as buying a Slurpee?

I was attending Colorado State University when two student gunmen walked into Columbine High School and shot the place up, killing 12 students, one teacher and themselves.

My siblings and I had already graduated from Columbine. We were not there. Nobody close to me was injured or killed, but I knew many involved. One of the students killed was the younger sister of a quiet kid I’d known since elementary school. The teacher – Dave Sanders – one time ordered me to go outside and simmer down when I was bawling out another teacher for altering my goth poetry. The older brother of one of the gunmen - who I recall as sweet and polite - routinely carpooled to football practice with my brother.  I never met his brother, but of the many thoughts swimming through my head as I watched the CNN newsreel display a string of students walk across the school lawn with their hands on their heads after finally escaping from a choir room where they’d been hiding for hours during the shooting, was that I would have probably been friendly with guys like him and the other gunman when I was in high school.

I was a sad, angry teenager who wore black lipstick and a trench coat. I listened to dark music and was fascinated with violent movies (Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers were two of my favorites at the time). I relished time alone. It wouldn't be a stretch to have classified me as an outcast. 

On April 20, 1999, when I learned about the Columbine shooting, I was overwhelmed with horror. A heavy, sinking sensation that actually felt like a bag of rocks in my gut stayed with me for days. At the same time, a part of me was not incredibly surprised.

A few years earlier, when I was still at Columbine, there was – as I’m sure was the case in many suburban high schools and probably still is – palpable tension among social groups. While I frequently ditched class to go smoke clove cigarettes at Clement Park with a pack of other misfits, I also played lacrosse (although it was considered a renegade sport at the time and was not sanctioned by the school). I experienced misgivings from peers in each of these groups. “Why are you so goth?” my teammates would ask. “Why are you such a jock?” my goth/punk friends wanted to know.

I remember sitting in the park smoking cloves one day and talking to an acquaintance – not a friend, but a dude with whom I’d occasionally chat, who could easily have been one of the shooters had it been a couple of years later. On this particular day, this guy started telling me about how he spent the weekend killing a cat. As a life-long  animal lover who kept a photo of my own cat in a pendant I wore daily, I was disgusted. I told him how twisted and fucked up that was and asked what could possibly compel him to want to do something like that. He couldn’t really explain himself and I remember getting up and storming away, saying something like how I hoped someone would come after him with a baseball bat some day. It occurred to me that if this kid had a gun rather than a baseball bat, he would have really done some damage to innocent beings in his way. All he had to do was save up some money, walk into a store and buy one.

This kid and this conversation rushed through my mind amid the brutal cascade of emotion I experienced on April 20, 1999, and found myself experiencing again today, as so many schools were closed while a statewide manhunt took place. I still love dark music. I embrace my goth side. I’ve had a hard time watching violent movies for the last 20 years. I have trouble sleeping.

Immediately after Columbine, the nation came up with numerous scapegoats. Trench coats were to blame. Goth kids were to blame. Violent movies were to blame. Goth music was to blame. Marilyn Manson (clearly to blame) had an upcoming concert scheduled at Red Rocks. It was canceled.

Less than two weeks later, the NRA still hosted its annual meeting in Denver with thousands of firearms enthusiasts.

Instead of instilling all of this fear, closing down schools across Colorado, investing time and energy into a manhunt, how about, at the very least, making it harder for a kid to walk into a store and buy a gun?

Colorado’s "red flag" law, which seeks to temporarily take guns away from individuals deemed unfit to have them, is a step in the right direction. But how about not allowing them such easy access in the first place?