2 shootings, 2 states, minutes apart − a trauma psychiatrist explains how exposure to shootings changes all of us

Greater numbers of people are being exposed to horrific violence than in the past, in large part through the amplification on social media. Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images News via Getty Images

On Sept. 10, 2025, the nation’s attention was riveted by the fatal shooting of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah. At nearly the exact same time, a state away − in Colorado − an active shooting was underway on a high school campus in a sleepy mountain town, leaving two teens in critical condition and the shooter, a fellow student, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

While differing in context, these events share devastating commonalities that will haunt many Americans for decades and possibly generations to come. And they are only the latest of a very long string of violent acts, some politically motivated and some motivated simply by the intention to harm as many people as possible.