It was impossible for me to watch the events in Colorado Springs play out on Black Friday and not find myself trapped between two haunting memories.

Watching an army of police respond to the siege of a Planned Parenthood clinic by a gunman took me back to the morning of Dec. 30, 1994, and the trail of terror and carnage John Salvi left behind on two ends of Beacon Street.

And then there was an eerie feeling of deja vu as I watched those squad cars in Colorado Springs block off an intersection yesterday afternoon in a place the locals call “Big Sky Country.”

They were the same police vehicles I saw closing off the entrances to Columbine High School on a brilliant April afternoon in 1999.

In each case these cops were responding to  madness.

It has become an all-too-familiar madness: Whether it was Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris strolling into Columbine in their long trench coats, carrying guns and explosive devices, or the gunman who parked his car outside a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs and unleashed a nightmare on a day  ironically known as Black Friday.

Last night, we began to get scant glimpses of what yet another “disturbed” man toting what cops first described as a “long gun,” left behind in his wake.

Of the 12 people rushed to nearby hospitals with gunshot wounds, three died. One was a police officer, who was among the five cops shot.

If there was a curious wrinkle to this gruesome episode of one more bad guy with a gun, it’s that he wasn’t quite crazy enough to take himself out, or willing to commit suicide by cop.

After the horror and the bloodshed, he surrendered to cops who had stormed the building.

Will we gain any more insight from this killer than we did from James Holmes, the crazy avenger who opened fire at a Batman movie in Aurora, Colo.? Perhaps, but I think not.

Late last night, we did not know this killer’s name, or why he chose Planned Parenthood, rather than, say, the bank across the street, to place his particular stamp of  madness on our holiday consciousness.

But I think it’s fair to say that we will soon discover that just like John Salvi, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, this murderer’s actions were not random.

What we do know is that regardless of what the motive turns out to be, we are bound to hear the same claptrap this political winter about how this tragedy in Colorado Springs might have been averted if only one visitor inside Planned Parenthood had pulled a gun from their purse and killed the gunman.

Yeah, that’s the ticket … to more insanity.

Peter Gelzinis

Author(s):