Two mass shootings in two American cities this month left one man dead and 17 wounded. The government couldn't prevent either one. But in Denver, the city wasted no time revoking licenses and shuttering the nightclub — while in Tucson, the suspected shooter was already on probation for a previous shooting, thanks to a progressive prosecutor who let him walk.
The pattern never changes: the state fails on the front end, then overreaches on the back end, punishing everyone except the people who pulled the trigger.
In Denver, a 25-year-old man was killed and eight others shot at Ultra Lounge East on July 20. Denver police say at least two shooters fired 66 rounds inside the club, continuing a dispute that started hours earlier at a community water fight in Aurora. No arrests have been announced. Instead, the city's Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection ordered the club closed immediately, citing three violent events in five months and alleging owner Dionte Wilkins didn't hold proper licenses.
Wilkins said Monday he won't fight to reopen. "It was a crazy scene, out-of-nowhere situation," he said, according to the Denver Post. He told reporters he ran for cover "just like everyone else did." The Denver Post framed the licensing crackdown as a straightforward public safety measure, burying the fact that the city's regulatory apparatus — which couldn't stop 66 rounds from flying — now claims the authority to permanently kill a business while the actual shooters remain at large.
A thousand miles south, Tucson got a different look at the same broken system. On July 20, 21-year-old David Leroy French opened fire into a crowd outside a pizza parlor on Congress Street, striking nine people. A Tucson police officer on the scene dropped French with return fire in ten seconds — the one government action that actually worked.
French was already on probation for a 2024 shooting. Pima County Attorney Laura Conover's office gave him probation instead of prison. HotAir reported that court documents revealed French's prior case, and critics say Conover's progressive prosecutorial strategies put a known shooter back on the street — where he shot nine more people.
HotAir framed the Tucson shooting as a direct consequence of soft-on-crime prosecution; the Denver Post framed the Denver licensing action as necessary regulation. Both frames miss the core problem: the system that's supposed to protect citizens failed in both cities, and the people paying the price are the victims and the business owners — not the shooters or the prosecutors who cleared the path.
Along Denver's Hampden Avenue corridor, five homicides and 11 shootings in seven months tell the story of a neighborhood the state has already failed. Violence prevention specialist Lawrence Goshon put it plainly: "If one person takes their gun to the club, it makes everybody feel unsafe."
The question neither city is answering: when will accountability fall on the people who commit the violence — and the prosecutors who enable them — instead of the owners who were running for cover alongside everyone else?
