Adams County Magistrate Michal Lord-Blegen was a school administrator in Aurora when two teenagers killed 13 people and each other at Columbine High School in 1999. The massacre was a lens through which she considered her later work as a director and lawyer.

“We have a lot of kids with guns,” Lord-Blegen said earlier this month. “But these kids aren’t shooting up schools. Either they’re not at school or school is actually one of the places where they feel safe.”

Lord-Blegen was one of the speakers at an Oct. 16 discussion sponsored by the Colorado Bar Association, covering extensively children’s access to guns 25 years after the Columbine shootings. Prosecutors and defense attorneys discussed their handling of juvenile gun cases, as well as the different security strategies schools have turned to.

“I think SROs contribute greatly to the safety of schools, in that they are there for the purpose of building relationships with students,” said Lauren Asher, a prosecutor with the 17th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, making reference to school resource officers. “I think the myth is, ‘If we don’t have an SRO, the police won’t contact our students.’ This is simply not true.”

As a truancy magistrate, “when I ask children if they have a trusted adult, they often name the SRO,” Lord-Blegen added.

Are school resource officers improving safety or unnecessarily furthering the criminalization of children’s behavior? has been the subject of multiple studies. Denver Public Schools Board of Education voted to dismiss the police during the 2020-2021 school year, but returned them in 2023 after a shooting at East High School.

Erin Pier, a former school psychologist and executive director of the Transformative Justice Project in Colorado, described a case study in which the same student was disciplined twice for punching a hole in his school’s wall.

The first time, the principal accompanied the student to the SRO, who gave him a ticket for destruction of property. The student was subsequently suspended. The second time, during the following school year, the student entered Pier’s office after damaging the wall. The principal came in and thanked the student for only hitting the wall and not another student, and for asking an adult for help. The director also suggested that they would come up with a plan to help repair the damage.

Pier said the student cried, came out of his office and hugged the student he had initially gotten angry with. He also apologized to his teacher and helped repair the hole.

“Same kid. Same problem,” Pier said. “But the response to that behavior has been so different across these different leadership styles.”

Asher, the prosecutor, echoed the concern that administrators should not reflexively call an SRO because it’s “easy.”

“In the DA’s office, we receive documents from an SRO because they have to send them to us,” she said. “And we’ll look at it and say, ‘I don’t want this case. This should have been a school matter. This should have been handled in the school building – restorative justice, potentially. This doesn’t need not be a state affair.” charge.'”

“I would like to draw our attention to the fact that the minors, the children that we are talking about,” Lord-Blegen added, “these are not generally the kinds of children who participate in the mass school shootings at Columbine. We are I’m talking about a type of school safety right now, the kind of safety that we all touch every day and encounter, but it’s really different from Columbine type things.

To that end, Lord-Blegen said it would be “very rare” for her to detain a child if the only charge was possession of a handgun. She said a second arrest or escalating threat would be necessary for incarceration.

Panelists noted that students’ learning disabilities or difficulties navigating the COVID-19 pandemic have led to disruptions and even violence — in some cases, without a clear path for intervention.

“I don’t want to say it’s too late for a 17-year-old,” Asher said, “but if I already know his name from law enforcement contacts, we should have been there seven years ago.”

Potential Gun Charges for Adults

The discussion also touched on how adults can be charged for children’s use or possession of firearms. Recently, a couple from Michigan was found guilty and sentenced to prison for their role in the murder of four students by their teenage son in 2021. Last month, Georgian prosecutors also charged a man for allegedly allowing his son to kill two students and two teachers through his own actions.

“In Colorado and most states, the parent-child relationship itself does not automatically create liability for the parents,” said Renée Franchi, a personal injury attorney and former prosecutor. “The true basis of liability in these cases is the parents’ knowledge of the potential risk of harm and their ability to control the child and his or her actions.”

She added that if a parent provides their child with a gun and later discovers the potential for violence, they have an obligation to remove the gun.

“Generally speaking, nationwide, courts place great weight on whether the child’s actions were foreseeable to the parents,” Franchi added.

First Assistant Attorney General Robert S. Shapiro walked through Colorado’s various gun laws, which cover, among other things, illegal furnishing of a handgun to a minor, safe storage of firearms and failure to report a lost or stolen firearm. For an adult to be held responsible, their actions must generally be knowing or reckless.

“This is not a Second Amendment issue. This is about adults violating their obligation to make society safer,” Shapiro said. “It is our duty to ensure that law enforcement is knowledgeable about these laws…so they can ask the right questions when developing evidence.”

Denver Handgun Court

Finally, Denver Juvenile Court panelists spoke about the “Handgun Intervention Court,” an idea born in 2018 and designed to address the root causes of why children acquire guns. Handgun possession charges among Denver juveniles nearly doubled between 2005 and 2022, from 63 to 118, with the increase largely occurring after 2015.

The specialized court, which will welcome its 11th group of participants next month, is intended for people charged with possession of a handgun, but who have no criminal history.

Juvenile defendants who are accepted into diversion receive a six-month deferred adjudication, provided they participate in a seven-week program.

“Basically what this means is that a person pleads guilty to the charge. The guilty plea is not actually entered into their record – so it is deferred for a period of six months,” said Magistrate Courtney Denson, emphasizing that the child will be on probation during this period.

As a former defense attorney, “it’s a pretty sweet deal,” Denson continued. “We are looking not only for the commitment and involvement of young people, but also that of parents.”

In response to a question about recidivism among program participants, panelists responded that an analysis was underway.