As we’ve noted, reporters and anchors covering the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have frequently mentioned the disturbing similarity between images from the latest tragic event, during which seventeen people died, and those from the April 20, 1999, attack on Columbine High School in Littleton. But there’s another tie between these tragedies beyond bloodshed and heartache. Politicians and stakeholders desperate to deflect calls for tougher gun laws are once again suggesting that violence in popular culture is more responsible for what happened in Parkland than are easily procured automatic weapons. And as was the case after Columbine, one of the main whipping boys is actor Keanu Reeves.

The February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida has sparked numerous threats in Colorado, where student arrests and increased security at various facilities have occurred statewide during recent days, as well as plenty of conversation about whether new gun-control laws are needed. Against this backdrop, Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario has stirred controversy aplenty by way of a Facebook video on view here in which he suggests that blaming weapons for such incidents is flat-out nonsensical.

The number of Colorado students arrested for making threats in the wake of the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida continues to grow. By our count, there have been at least five busts of this type in the state over the past week, including one involving a fifth grader, with three additional incidents leading to increased security measures at other schools. Four of the threats took place in metro Denver, which is known worldwide for the 1999 attack at Columbine High School, whose April 20 anniversary is scheduled to be marked by a national student walk-out.

The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida last week has inspired plans for marches and student walkouts to call for tougher gun laws, including one scheduled to take place on April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. But it also appears to have motivated a number of threats at Colorado schools, with three arrests taking place in recent days. Those taken into custody include a Jefferson County High School student whose social-media joke went terribly wrong.

This October, former CU Buffaloes and Carolina Panthers star Rae Carruth is scheduled to be freed from the prison where he was sent after being convicted of conspiring to murder Cherica Adams in 1999, when she was eight-months pregnant. Cherica’s child, Chancellor Adams, survived the ordeal but suffers from cerebral palsy linked to his traumatic birth, and Carruth wants to have a relationship with the now-eighteen year old upon his release, as he makes clear in an open letter. But while Carruth praises Saundra Adams, Chancellor’s grandmother, for how she’s raised him under incredible circumstances, he also lambastes her for supposedly lying about his motivation for taking part in the crime and his relationship with Cherica. Read the remarkable and disturbing text in its entirety below.

Our recent list of school shootings from Columbine to Parkland noted how frequently connections have been made between the killings at the former in 1999 and last week’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. This link is now being made even more explicit by way of plans to stage a “National High School Walk-Out for Anti-Gun Violence” on April 20, Columbine’s anniversary, in the wake of a March 24 rally in Washington being organized in association with organizers of the hugely successful Women’s March.