Columbine survivors raise children in world shaped by attack

DENVER (AP) — Twenty years after teenage gunmen attacked Columbine High School, alumni of the Littleton, Colorado, school have become parents.

The emotional toll of the shooting that killed 12 classmates and a teacher has been joined by fears about their own kids’ safety, spiking each time another shooter enters another school.

Survivors have been affected in different ways. They know that mass shootings in schools remain rare. They hope their children will be spared an experience like the one that affected their lives.

Some find comfort in school security changes, while others worry about the effect of active-shooter drills on their kids’ generation. Others found that a child beginning school was a trigger for their own pain, linked to the trauma of April 20, 1999.