“She never thought of herself as a victim. She identified as a survivor.”

For all you who worship guns, and think sending billions abroad to perpetually/allegedly "defend" other peoples in other countries not our own, read this story and weep.  This is what you worship:

Anne Marie Hochhalter, who spoke publicly about the long-lasting effects of gun violence after she was paralyzed in the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, was found dead on Sunday at her home in Westminster, Colo. She was 43.

The police said that officers had found Ms. Hochhalter after they were called for a welfare check. ... 

Ms. Hochhalter was eating lunch with friends when two students opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999, killing 12 other students and a teacher before fatally shooting themselves.Ms. Hochhalter, a junior who was 17, was shot twice — once in the chest and once in the back — and was paralyzed from the waist down. Her brother, Nathan, who was a freshman at Columbine, was trapped in the school for hours until a SWAT team arrived.

Six months after the shooting, their mother, Carla June Hochhalter, walked into a pawnshop, asked to see a gun, loaded it and killed herself. The elder Ms. Hochhalter, 48, had been struggling with depression and other mental health issues before the Columbine shooting, her daughter later said.

But her death was “very much harder than what happened at Columbine,” Ms. Hochhalter told U.S. News & World Report in 2009. “It shocked me because, you know, I was injured by a gun and the fact that, you know, she committed suicide with one was very hard to understand.”