James E. Holmes, left, appears in Arapahoe County District Court with defense attorney Tamara Brady on Monday in Centennial, Colo. Holmes is being held on suspicion of first-degree murder and could also face additional counts of aggravated assault and weapons violations stemming from a mass shooting last Friday in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., that killed 12 and injured dozens of others.AURORA, Colo. – On the morning of the latest mass shooting, in a place that has become synonymous with tragedy, Tom Mauser’s phone started ringing at 5 a.m. When he turned on the news his first thought was “Oh God,” followed by an immediate: “Not again.”
He’s seen this too often since that April morning in 1999, when his own son Daniel was slain along with 12 others at Columbine High School. In the years that have followed, every time the unthinkable happens yet again – at a Virginia college, a Texas military base, an Arizona strip mall, a Colorado movie theater – Mauser mourns anew.
But he also feels something else, the frustration we all feel when we see the same images we’ve seen before: Hysterical victims fleeing in terror. Anguished mourners crying out for lost loved ones. Stunned citizens praying together at candlelight vigils.
“There was a time when I felt a certain guilt,” said Mauser, a state transportation program manager who became an outspoken activist against such violence after his 15-year-old son was killed. “I’d ask, ‘Why can’t I do more about this? Why haven’t I dedicated myself more to it?’ But I’ll be damned if I’m going to put it all on my shoulders.
“This,” he said, “is all of our problem.”