Once again, mass violence puts spotlight on Colorado

Colorado has long been defined by its jagged mountains and an outdoor lifestyle that lure transplants from around the country. But it’s also been haunted by shootings that have helped define the nation’s decades-long struggle with mass violence.

After the latest massacre, many in the state were wrestling with that history — wondering why the place they live seems to have become a magnet for such attacks. Why here — again?

“People now say, ‘Gee, what is it about Colorado?’” said Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was killed at Columbine High School in 1999.

Mauser, now a gun control advocate, was fielding phone calls in the wake of the new attack — among them was a panicked call from a friend whose daughter was shopping in the supermarket and just escaped the shooting. Again, the violence felt so close.

“It just affects so many peo- ple. It’s become pervasive,” he said.

Colorado isn’t the state with the most mass shootings — it ranks eighth in the nation, in the same tier as far larger states like California and Flor- ida, according to Jillian Peterson, a criminology professor at Hamline University in Minnesota.

But it is indelibly associ- ated with some of the most high-profile shootings. The massacre at Columbine High School is now viewed as the bloody beginning of a modern era of mass violence. The Aurora shooting brought that terror from schools to a movie theater.

The search for answers leaves no easy explanations. Despite its Western image, Colorado has a fairly typical rate of gun ownership for the country, and its populated landscape has more shopping centers than shooting ranges. It’s close to the middle of the pack in terms of its rate of all types of gun violence — 21st in the country, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Peterson, who has written about mass shootings as a viral phenomenon where one gunman is inspired by coverage of other attacks, says the Columbine attack may be one reason Colorado has suffered so much. Two student gunmen killed 13 and “created the script” that many other mass shooters seek to emulate. The attackers died in the massacre but landed on the cover of Time magazine and were memorialized in movies and books.

“Columbine was the real turning point in this country, so it makes sense that, in Columbine’s backyard, you’d see more of them,” Peterson said.

The attack was nearly a generation ago: The man police named Tuesday as the gunman in the Boulder massacre, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, was born three days before the Columbine shooting.