We’ve all heard of déjà vu, “already seen” in French, or the sense that one has seen or experienced something before. This year we experienced aurions dû voir, the sense that we should have seen something before, but we didn’t, and it happened again.

I’m not just talking about the loss of education due to kids being out of school during COVID or how reduced legal penalties enabled rising crime, vagrancy, and urban camping. We should have known better. What I’m talking about is how we, as a state, respond to people who threaten to commit violence.

The man who murdered five people and injured 18 at the Club Q nightclub in November and the man who bombed a union office and murdered his wife, and killed himself on Christmas day have one thing in common: they both signaled their intentions a year before pulling the trigger.

In June 2021, police officers and a bomb squad confronted Anderson Lee Aldrich, who was holed up in his mother’s Colorado Springs home armed and threatening to detonate a bomb. During the standoff, 10 homes were evacuated. Aldrich was arrested and held on two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping of his grandparents. Police confiscated two firearms.

Because of his “homicidal statements, actions, possessions of firearms and bomb making materials” police requested a $1 million bond, according to an affidavit. He bragged about seeking to “go out in a blaze” and being “the next mass killer.”

After a couple months, however, Aldrich was released. The trial was postponed after attempts to subpoena the grandparents, who live Florida, failed. Ultimately the case was dismissed, and the records sealed. The next year Aldrich walked into a night club and opened fire.

The other killer, Enoch Apodaca, threatened to murder his wife and his union representative and to bomb the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall to which he once belonged. On September 13, 2021, someone called the Westminster police to warn them that Apodaca was using drugs, withdrawing from family, and threatening to commit acts of violence. The caller warned there would be “carnage.” On Christmas day 2022, Apodaca set off bombs at the IBEW Local Union 68 building and Jehovah’s Witness church in Thornton. The second bomb did not explode, and no one was harmed by the incendiary devices. He then shot his wife and himself.

In both cases, neither law enforcement nor family members sought to have firearms removed under the state’s extreme risk protection law from the homes of men who said they intended to kill people. The law enables authorities to seize firearms for 14 days and longer if extended by a judge.

It might not have stopped the murderers who could have conceivably obtained a firearm illegally, but it could have slowed them down. Courts in Colorado have approved 151 red flag surrenders over the past two years, according to Associated Press research which is less than the per capita rate of surrender for states with red flag laws.

How do we stop violent people before they commit violence? It is not an easy question to answer. We cannot jail people for crimes they have not yet committed. Even hateful, vicious human beings have rights protected by the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments. Moreover, police departments have limited manpower and cannot keep tabs on every person who says he wants to kill.

Still, one cannot look at these situations — and there are far too many wherein killers signal their intentions — without thinking that we should have seen what was right in front of our eyes and acted on it.

We have a red flag law; at the very least we need to use it.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.