It would have been naive for Aurora, and the rest of the world, to think that within a few years of the horror of the Aurora theater shooting, such atrocities would dwindle and finally stop.
After all, the July 20, 2012 Aurora theater shooting came more than 13 years after the Columbine High School massacre, a catastrophe so ghastly that it, too, seemed certain to inspire real change to the nation’s bizarre gun laws and culture.
But it’s demoralizing that 14 years after mentally ill gunman James Holmes sneaked into the Century 16 movie theater, killing 12 people and injuring 70 more, using semi-automatic guns and more, that the struggle to pass and implement common-sense gun-control and safety laws is still seemingly insurmountable.
Since July 20, 2012, another 753 people have been murdered during another 105 mass shootings across the nation, according to a database created by Mother Jones magazine after years of investigation. Another 1,258 people were injured during those mass shootings.
Of course, this all 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.
Every day, an average of 327 Americans are shot and injured with a gun, and of those shootings, 117 of the victims die, according to Brady United research.
Americans are 26 times more likely to be shot than citizens of any other modern Western nation.
Rather than limit access to guns, 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.
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.
One of the most popular firearms in the nation right now is a faux-assault rifle, designed as military weapons. They’re among the most popular weapons, too, among gangs and other criminals across the United States, and a favorite in criminal shootings near and far from Aurora.
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.
But even here in Colorado, where lawmakers like state Sen. Tom Sullivan heroically keep pushing for common sense gun control legislation at the Capitol — his son, Alex, was among the 12 victims slain during the Aurora theater shooting — it’s taken nearly two years for a passed and signed bill outlawing guns using detachable ammo magazines to be enforced. Even almost a decade after a magazine ammo-limit measure was passed, magazines that hold more than 15 rounds are still readily available across the state.
But Colorado’s best laws do little to address the flood of illicit 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, as many as 60% of all Americans want stricter gun control laws, including meaningful universal background checks, according to a recent Gallup poll. A stunning 93% of all Americans believe all gun owners should be subject to universal background checks.
With so much overwhelming need and desire to control guns and gun deaths, it’s appalling that 14 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, according to a host of gun-control research organizations.
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.
Despite the consistent and growing desire for gun control, elected leaders won’t deliver it, and voters won’t make them.
It’s clear, mass shootings and rampant gun violence will continue for the next 14 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.
