Today is Monday, November 21, 2022. As the country wrestles with its response to the horrific events in Colorado Springs, a snapshot of the five victims has emerged and a diverse picture of just who the victims were is now being released. Some of the victims had worked at the nightclub that was the scene of devastating gun violence Saturday night and others were there to enjoy the evening festivities. From what I could read of their biographies, not all of the victims were even members of the LGBTQ+ community. The sad profiles of the five victims appears in an online CNN article by Amir Vera, Eliott C. McLaughlin, and Carroll Alvarado entitled “A bartender who found a place to shine. A nonprofit worker with a ‘huge heart.’ These are the victims of the Colorado club shooting.”

One of those victims, Derrick Rump, was a bartender at Club Q who “found a community of people that he loved really much, and he felt that he could shine there – and he did,” so said his sister Julia Kissling. She continued, “He made a difference in so many people’s lives, and that’s where he wanted to be.”

Another victim, Daniel Aston, was a bar supervisor at Club Q; he was only 28 years old. Bartender Michael Anderson had known Aston for several years and considered him a friend. This is what he said of the deceased Aston when he learned that he hadn’t made it out of the bar when the gunman started his rampage: “He was the best supervisor anybody could’ve asked for. He made me want to come into work, and he made me want to be a part of the positive culture we were trying to create there.” He added that Aston was an “amazing person. He was a light in my life, and it’s surreal that we’re even talking about him in the past tense like this.”

Daniel Aston moved to Colorado Springs two years ago to be closer to his mother and father, parents Jeff and Sabrina Aston told The Denver Post. The club was just a few minutes from their home, and after one of Daniel’s friends told them he’d been shot, they rushed to the emergency room – only to find he’d never arrived.

Aston’s mother said he thought he was bashful, but that wasn’t the case, she stated. She said he wrote poetry and loved to dress up. She said her son got into drama in high school.

The third victim was Ashley Paugh, 35, who was a nonprofit worker and a mother, whose daughter Ryleigh “was her whole world,” her family said in a statement. They added that Paugh was big on family.

The family of this victim said, “She loved her dad, her sister, and her family; Ashley was a loving aunt, with many nieces and nephews who are devastated by her loss,” the statement read.

Paugh had “a huge heart,” which she was able to show through her work at Kids Crossing, a nonprofit that looks to help find homes for foster children, according to the statement.

“She would do anything for the kids – traveling all over southeastern Colorado, from Pueblo and Colorado Springs to Fremont County and the Colorado border, working to raise awareness and encourage individuals and families to become foster parents to children in our community.”

Paugh also loved the outdoors through activities like hunting, fishing, and riding four-wheelers, the statement read. So it appears that this victim wasn’t even a member of the LGBTQ+ community; she was at the club just to enjoy the activities there.

Another victim, Raymond Green Vance, 22, was visiting the club for the first time with his longtime girlfriend, her parents, and some of her parents’ friends, his family said in a statement provided to CNN.

In the statement released by his family on the news of his death, Vance was supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, but he himself “was not a member of it.”

The hapless victim had just gotten a new job at a Colorado Springs FedEx distribution center and “couldn’t wait to save enough money to get his own apartment, but in the meantime he lived with his mother and younger brother who adored him,” the statement read.

Vance spent most of his spare time with his girlfriend, who he had been with since middle school. He also played video games and hoped to turn that into an online career, the statement added.

The last victim, Kelly Loving, was eulogized by her sister Tiffany in a statement that read, in part, “My sister was a good person. She was loving and caring and sweet. Everyone loved her. Kelly was a wonderful person.” Loving was a transgender woman.

As more details emerge concerning what actually happened on that fateful night at Club Q, we now learn that two patrons burst into combat mode when the gunman started his heinous rampage, thus preventing more carnage to occur. One of those heroes is Richard M. Fierro, a 45-year-old man who served in the Army for nearly 15 years and had four combat deployments as an Army officer who “went into combat mode” when he tackled the gunman in the Club Q shooting. These details appear in an online CNN article by Raja Razek entitled “Army veteran says he went into combat mode when tackling gunman in Club Q shooting, NY Times reports.”

Fierro, who is not gay or transgender, was at a table in Club Q with his wife, daughter, and friends on Saturday night, watching a drag show when the gunfire erupted inside.

According to The New York Times, Fierro said that as bullets sprayed, he saw the gunman move toward a door leading to a patio. He then raced across the room and grabbed the gunman by a handle on the back of his body armor, pulled him to the floor, and jumped on him, the report said.

“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” Fierro added.

According to The Times, Fierro’s daughter and wife are at home and still recovering from injuries.

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said he had the opportunity to talk to Fierro. The mayor said the veteran had “saved a lot of lives” by tackling the suspect, who is now recovering in a hospital from the injuries sustained by Fierro and another man, Thomas James. Allegedly, a drag performer had her stiletto heels on the suspect’s body as authorities rushed into the bar to arrest him. Good for her!

Should we discuss the abominable cache of firearms found on this despicable suspect who is still a baby at 22: an AR-style weapon in the form of a long rifle and a handgun. He appeared heavily armed and wore a military-style flak jacket as he arrived at the club, the club’s owners told The Times.

The suspect was previously arrested in connection with a bomb threat which led to a standoff at his mother’s home in June 2021, according to a news release from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office at the time and his mother’s former landlord. Colorado Springs is in El Paso County.

So given the suspect’s prior run-in with the law, one must wonder how he was able to buy such weapons without incident? Records do indicate that he bought both weapons without any fuss. We don’t know when those purchases were made, though, according to CNN.

Another telling detail from the suspect’s background is this: he is the grandson of outgoing California Assemblyman Randy Voepel, who has served as a lawmaker since 2016 and who lost his reelection bid earlier this month. Voepel is the father of the suspect’s mother, but no one knows how much the elder assemblyman interacted with his grandson. The nation should know, though, that Voepel is a far-right nutcase who compared the January 6th attack on the Capitol to the Revolutionary War.

According to the San Diego Union Tribune, Voepel strangely said this about the assault: “This is Lexington and Concord. First shots fired against tyranny. Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear in on January 20th.”

Realizing how extreme and insane his comments truly sounded, Voepel did try to walk back his statements in a later tweet, but the cat was already out of the bag when he misspoke initially.

So it’s anyone’s guess how much influence Voepel might have had on his impressionable grandson. It would seem rational to think that this screwy former assemblyman could have influenced his very young grandson to act out his hatred of LGBTQ+ members without too much reflection. But who really knows. The suspect could easily have had his own demons to exorcise.

The revelation about the suspect’s run-in with law enforcement last year has raised questions about Colorado’s red flag law and whether it should have applied to the young suspect, or if it would have prevented the shooting at Club Q.

The state passed its red flag law in 2019. It’s intended to temporarily prevent an individual in crisis from accessing firearms through a court order, triggered by the person’s family, a member of their household, or a law enforcement officer. But it’s not clear if the gunman had purchased firearms before his June 2021 arrest.

Asked today if the red flag law should have been implemented in this case, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said it was “too early to make any decisions.” Weiser said, “It’s still a new tool that we are learning how to use. We know that each tragedy is a learning opportunity to ask, what did we miss? What can we do better in the future?”

With the ease of purchasing firearms anywhere in this country, we must ask ourselves the hard questions of how can we prevent such scenes of carnage from happening time after time after time. Will we ever learn from our mistakes? I have very little faith that anything good will develop from this incident. The haters will always be out there.

Stay safe and be well.