In Colorado Springs on Saturday night, Richard Fierro, a U.S. Army vet who’d deployed three times to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, went to an LGBTQ nightclub with his wife to celebrate a friend’s birthday. There was dancing and a drag show.
In came a man with a head full of hate, wearing body armor and wielding an AR-15-style assault rifle, both of which are legal in Colorado, 23 years after the Columbine massacre and a decade after the mass shooting in an Aurora movie theater. He possessed that gun despite just last year having threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing crisis negotiators to her home. Colorado has a red flag law — but, like New York’s, it is frayed.
The shooter started firing at people on the dance floor. He wounded 18 and killed five and began to head toward the patio.
