Trigger Effect

On a clear blue day on Jan. 17, 1989, a man whose peripatetic life included years as a troubled Sacramento youth walked onto a playground in Stockton and shot 35 children, killing five. In the span of only a few minutes, the act marked the first mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history. Today, 25 years later—and one year after the massacre at Newtown—these once-unthinkable tragedies have become terrifyingly familiar as citizens and political leaders from Sacramento to Washington choose sides in the fight over the future of guns in America.