James Holmes, the alleged shooter in the
massacre in Aurora, Colo., reportedly amassed his huge arsenal with
relative ease. Some of these weapons were illegal as recently as eight
years ago. Legislation now before Congress would once again make
illegal, if not the guns themselves, at least the high-capacity
magazines that allow bullets to be fired rapidly without stopping to
reload. Holmes bought most of his weaponry within recent months, we are
told. Perhaps, if sane laws on gun control, including the ban on high-
capacity magazines, were in place, many in Aurora who are now dead or
seriously injured would be alive and well today.
(Michael Glasgow / CC-BY)
(Michael Glasgow / CC-BY)
The facts of the assault are generally
well-known. Holmes allegedly burst into the packed theater during the
12:30 am premier of the Batman sequel “The Dark Knight Rises,” threw one
or two canisters of some gas or irritant, which exploded, then began to
methodically shoot people, killing 12 and wounding 58.
“Everybody sort of started screaming, and
that’s when the gunman opened fire on the crowd, and pandemonium just
broke out,” Omar Esparza told me. He was in the third row, with five
friends out for a birthday celebration: “He started opening fire on the
audience pretty freely, just started shooting in every direction, that’s
when everybody started screaming, started panicking. A lot of people
had been hit at that point at those initial few rounds, and that’s when
everybody sort of hit the floor and started to exit.”
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