USA Today, March 2021
Colorado was once again thrust into the national spotlight Monday as the scene of a mass shooting when 10 people, including a police officer, were killed at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder.
Some of the nation’s most high-profile acts of gun violence have occurred in Colorado, which has taken a toll on its residents and leaders. In 1999 at Columbine High School, two students killed 12 others and a teacher before dying by suicide. In 2012 at a movie theater in Aurora, a gunman killed 12 and injured 58. The gunman, who had sealed off doors and used tear gas, was sentenced to life in prison. In 2015 at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, a shooting left three dead and nine injured.
According to a database compiled by USA TODAY, Northeastern University and The Associated Press, Colorado had the sixth-highest rate of public mass killings out of the 50 states.
