EDITORIAL: 13 years after the Aurora theater shooting, gun violence prevails

James Holmes changed everything in Aurora, yet his unfathomable act of mass murder 13 years ago has changed little else outside of the city.

Since July 20, 2012, when Holmes sneaked into a packed Aurora movie theater just after midnight and started shooting, a staggering 1,694 Americans have been murdered during another 493 mass shootings, and another 2,358 have been wounded during mass shooting gunfire, according to a recent catalogue of shootings compiled by the Rockefeller Institute of Government Reports.

That pales in comparison to the far more than 1 million Americans dead or injured from gun violence outside of mass shootings since the Aurora theater massacre.

Gun rights extremists point to a need to lock down schools, or lock up mentally ill people, or just deal with it as the price we must pay to live in a “free” society.

Mental health treatment is a complicated and pervasive problem in the United States, as it is in other modern democracies, which don’t have epidemic gun violence. Only the United States has an undeniable crisis with shooting deaths.

The nation’s unwillingness to even slow, let alone end, epidemic gun violence is among America’s most shameful failures.

It isn’t that the United States is incapable of ending not just rampant mass murders. The nation also is unwilling to stem the leading cause of childhood death among Americans: gun violence.

We have refused to limit the power and abundance of American firearms.

We permit virtually anyone older than 18, not yet old enough to drink beer, to obtain weapons designed for use in war or policing, engineered to efficiently and rapidly kill other human beings.

Right now, Republicans in Congress are working to undermine laws that seek to make so-called “ghost guns” accountable to the same laws every other gun is subject to. Police agencies across the nation pleaded for anti-ghost-gun laws for years, saying they are little more than an end-run around gun regulations for people who otherwise would be unable to legally buy a gun.

One of the most popular firearms in the nation right now are faux-assault rifles, designed as military weapons. They’re among the most popular weapons, too, among gangs and other criminals across the United States.

“For generations, Americans have hunted and defended their homes with regular firearms,” Aurora Congressperson Jason Crow said about Washington’s refusal to pass meaningful gun control laws, including an assault-weapon ban. “Gun manufacturers want us to think we need weapons of war. Don’t be fooled. It’s time to get assault weapons off our streets.”

In what can only be described as dark, cruel comedy, gun aficionados say these assault weapons make great hunting rifles. In the shadow of the horror of the repeated school massacre, former Colorado Congressperson Ken Buck before his political retirement said assault rifles are needed because they are regularly used by farmers across the state to kill raccoons. 

Congress and state governments have refused to require gun owners to prove their ability to safely wield and store a weapon that is so deadly it can kill dozens or even hundreds of people in minutes, yet we require extensive licenses to drive a car and even cut hair.

We refuse to limit how many semi-automatic firearms a gunman can own, yet we limit cats to five per household.

Few states are like Colorado, which at least limits firearm magazines to 15 rounds, more than enough to create a massacre without ever changing a clip. Most other states allow highly efficient semi-automatic weapons loaded with massive magazines to operate as virtual machine guns, allowing gunmen to take out dozens of people in a store, a school or even at a parade, all within seconds. And they do.

Because of inaction by Congress, Colorado continues to try and bridge the gap between common-sense gun legislation and the virtual free-for-all peddled by the U.S. gun industry and its toady members of Congress.

This year, Colorado passed laws ensuring that ghost guns come into compliance with firearm serial number laws, ensuring gun purchases are made by adults, not juveniles, and ensuring that some detachable magazine guns require a permit to carry.

But these laws do little to address the flood of weapons brought to Colorado from other states.

Across the nation, we allow virtually anyone a loophole to bypass background checks to buy a gun, even several of them, without regard for their criminal pasts or their current mental illness.

As of July 1,  as many as 58% of all Americans want stricter gun control laws, including meaningful universal background checks, according to the Pew Research Center. A stunning 93% of all Americans believe all gun owners should be subject to universal background checks.

And almost 60% of Americans say the need for reducing gun violence by implementing gun controls outweighs the need to ensure gun rights, the same polls show.

With so much overwhelming need and desire to control guns and gun deaths, it’s appalling that 13 years have passed since the Aurora theater shooting and so little meaningful progress has been made.

Guns are an approximate $20 billion-a-year industry, several sources estimate. Gun-rights groups outspend gun-control groups 6 to 1 in lobbying members of Congress and state lawmakers.

It’s not just money. Gun rights play heavily into partisan primary races. For Republicans, that means that the most extreme voters often call the shots in primary races, ensuring gun-rights interests are backed by acquiescent winning candidates.

In efforts to stay elected in swing congressional and legislative districts, many Democrats shy away from gun-control issues to keep their positions.

Democratic state Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex Sullivan was killed in the Aurora theater shooting, has long been a champion for common-sense gun control in the state. He has on more than one occasion lamented Democrats’ cold feet for meaningful gun control bills.

Despite the consistent and growing desire for gun control, elected leaders won’t deliver it, and voters won’t make them.

More than a quarter-century has passed since the Columbine massacre, 13 years beyond the Aurora theater shooting and the Sandy Hook elementary school cataclysm. 

That epoch has been long enough to prove, without a doubt, mass shootings and rampant gun violence will continue for the next 25 years, unless voters choose legislative and congressional candidates who will make gun control happen instead of rationalizing why it won’t.

No other democratic, Western nation lives like this. We don’t have to either.