How many times have you heard this anguished and furious cry: “We must ensure that something like this will never happen again!” The “something like this” would apply to horrific events like the 9/11 attack on America by Islamist terrorists, the Japanese surprise attack on the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.  Nonetheless, 13 other assassination attempts on U.S. presidents, three of them successful, happened again and again.

Many other terrible things repeatedly happen again.  Like school shootings in Colorado, including the latest one at Evergreen High School, the sixth in this state starting with the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.  That emotional “never again” battle cry is fully understandable, but talk is cheap and the only deterrent to repetitions is strong, effective action.

A week after the Evergreen shooting, several hundred Denver area high-school students took the day off from school for a protest march to the state Capitol. The event was organized by Students Demand Action (SDA), an anti-gun activist group started in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting.  The SDA-ers led the students in anti-NRA chants during the march.  As you’d expect, their solution is gun control, which is a prayer masquerading as a policy.  It won’t end school shootings any more than outlawing illegal drugs ends their availability.  There’ll always be a firearm black market for criminals and others who want them. Chicago has the toughest gun laws in the country to no avail.  Colorado’s tough gun laws mostly inconvenience law-abiding citizens.

Those student protestors interviewed in a story by Denver Gazette reporter Michael Bratihwaite offered little in the way of specific policy measures.  One who said our “state needs stronger gun violence prevention measures” also said “students don’t have to feel like they’re in a fortress.”  He couldn’t have been more wrong; they would have to be in a fortress.

The principal failure of Evergreen High School’s security was the absence that day of its school resource officer (SRO), a full-time trained, armed Jefferson County sheriff’s deputy who was on medical leave.  A part-time SRO who was there earlier had left to deal with a nearby crash.

I’ve dusted off a column I wrote on this topic in 2019.  Demanding that this must never happen again is an absolute statement, if you really mean it. The closest we could come to that outcome would be to fortify every school in the country with a permanent security force of armed, highly-trained paramilitary specialists (not mall cops) on duty to patrol and respond instantly to any attack.  Every point of entry must be guarded and equipped with TSA-like screening devices.  With about 130,000 K-12 schools in the country this would be massively expensive.  Anything less would merely minimize the risk.  And even fortification wouldn’t be foolproof.  Students would still be vulnerable to off-site snipers.

I cited one sanctimonious advocate who called for the confiscation of all guns and proclaimed that “we are avoiding the hard truth about the root cause of a chronic, pernicious illness in this country. We love our guns more than we love our children.” This is irrational blather and a false dichotomy.  Law-abiding gun owners can both love their children and also defend the constitutional right to possess a firearm, which might even be used to protect their family from a home invader.  I also rejected his use of the personal pronoun “we.” We aren’t the  “root cause” of school shootings and our society isn’t sick.  An infinitesimal fraction within it are sociopaths who shoot up schools.  It’s they who are sick.

I’m not minimizing this problem and this may be small consolation, but if you need to calm your schoolchildren’s fear and anxiety about being the victim of a school shooting, you can explain to them that the likelihood of that is also statistically infinitesimal, far less than being hit by lightning.  Although, homeschooling may be your best option.

One last thought about those who proclaim that something must never happen again.  Israelis have pledged to “Never Again!” allow the extermination of Jews like the Nazi Holocaust in Europe leading up to and throughout World War II.  And they take necessary, effective actions to match their words. That explains and justifies their determination to finish the job and wipe out what’s left of Hamas’s militants in Gaza to deter another murderous attack on Israeli civilians like that of October 7, 2023.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.