How on earth did Anderson Lee Aldrich have a gun? That's one of the biggest questions lingering in the aftermath of the shooting at Club Q on November 19. On December 6, Aldrich was formally charged on 305 separate criminal counts after a shooting left five people dead and 22 injured, all staff and customers at an establishment that has been characterized as a "sanctuary" for LGBTQ people in the largely conservative community of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Despite conservatives seizing on Aldrich's lawyers saying the defendant is nonbinary in a court filing, the Republican district attorney, Michael Allen, included 48 counts of bias-motivated crimes in the charges.
This was not Aldrich's first brush with the law, though the word "brush" really underplays what allegedly happened in June 2021. Stories have trickled out of Colorado for a couple of weeks now, but on Wednesday the Associated Press released a stunning, in-depth report that should raise the question of why Aldrich had been allowed to own guns.
