25 years post-Columbine, it’s time to invest in ‘violence prevention infrastructure’

Twenty-five years ago this week, two Columbine High School 12th graders gunned down 12 classmates and one teacher at their Littleton, Colorado, school in what was, at that point, the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. It would hardly be the last. That grim record has been broken at K-12 schools multiple times since, most recently in 2022, when two teachers and 19 youth under age 11 died in Uvalde, Texas. Already in 2024, 78 people have lost their lives in 88 shootings at K-12 schools in the U.S. And deaths from mass shootings in general have increased 141% in the last decade, notes Beverly Kingston, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at CU Boulder.