columbine

How do conservatives get the number of school shooting down from 74 to just 15? It's all elementary math, whether bullets are flying around the classroom or not. So what happened to the other 59 additional shootings that were previously reported? Only an honor student killing himself in front of a class or a principal getting murdered by her an ex-husband. Gang violence or drug-related shootings don't count either.

Almost unnoticed, something remarkable happened in Colorado over the last month: The common sense gun safety regulations passed in the wake of the Aurora and Newtown massacres survived despite attempts to overturn them. Once again, Colorado’s legislature has achieved what Congress could not. The gun safety laws made in Colorado have stayed in Colorado.

It is too soon to know why it happened or exactly how it happened. But we know this: A man walked into the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. Monday morning and killed at least 12 people and was himself killed.

The heavy and immediate emphasis on gun laws stands in contrast to the social media conversation following the Tucson and Trayvon Martin shootings. While each of these events had its own tragic elements, the issue of gun control was inherent in all of them. But, the volume and intensity of the discussion in the Newtown case far exceeded that of the Tucson or Martin shootings.