Gun violence is now a defining feature of American life. In just eight months of 2025, the U.S. has endured more than 300 mass shootings, 30 mass murders, nearly 17,000 deaths and 32,000 injuries. Wednesday’s attacks in Evergreen, Colorado, and Orem, Utah, are only the latest tragedies in a relentless cycle.
“Thoughts and prayers” are offered, and we offer them sincerely. Yet they are not enough. What matters is what we do about the political, social and cultural forces that make such violence routine.
Young people know this reality best. From grade school through college, they live with active shooter drills and, too often, with actual bloodshed. It may be their generation, scarred but unwilling to accept the status quo, that finally forces change.
We cannot keep blaming gun violence solely on mental health. Firearms are too easily available and reasonable limits on access must be a part of the solution.
Colorado’s Legislature recognized this last year, enacting a suite of reforms: universal background checks, limits on high-capacity magazines, safe storage requirements, expanded red-flag laws, regulations on homemade or improvised “ghost guns” and a waiting period for purchases.
The Legislature’s Democratic majority passed these measures, and many are now being challenged in court on Second Amendment and due process grounds. Opponents argue that such laws burden lawful gun ownership and self-defense rights. Supporters counter that no right is absolute and that public safety requires reasonable limits.
Too often, both entrenched gun-rights advocates and gun-control activists talk past each other. Progress will require a middle path: dialogue, compromise and solutions that protect both safety and liberty, and that balance rights with responsibility.
Rhetoric matters as much as laws. President Donald Trump has repeatedly stoked violence, from urging supporters to “rough up” protesters to telling Jan. 6 insurrectionists to “fight like hell.” On Wednesday, he blamed the Utah shooting on the “radical political left,” ignoring the fact that people of all political stripes have been targeted and killed. And last week, he escalated violence internationally by ordering the U.S. military to blow up a Venezuelan boat, killing 11 people – an action critics call murder without evidence or trial. Such rhetoric and acts normalize violence at home and abroad.
The Orem shooting was not random but a targeted assassination attempt, one of several this year. Violence is increasingly premeditated and political, not spontaneous. From Evergreen and Orem to the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, to Israel’s strike on the sovereign nation of Qatar, and Russia’s incursions into Polish airspace, tensions are rising, violence is spreading, and respect for domestic and international law is eroding.
Nonviolence may feel elusive, but it is not impossible. Ending this cycle will demand discipline, restraint, courage and collective action. It requires rejecting extremes, upholding the rule of law and prioritizing human life over ideology.
On Thursday, the La Plata County Republicans released a thoughtful message recognizing the violence in Utah and Evergreen and commemorating Sept. 11. “Each of these moments reminds us that freedom is precious, but fragile, and that violence, no matter the cause, tears at the very fabric of our shared humanity. Let us pray for healing, for unity, and for the strength to build a society where debate, respect, and compassion prevail over hatred and harm.”
Amen.
