Aurora

Seems as though we can't go for any length of time in this country without a massacre of some sort. Here's a summary of the shooting from HuffPo.

The weapons were all purchased legally.

There's a lot of "analysis" going on about this, but I think E. J. Dionne has hit the nail on the head:

For all the dysfunction in our political system, a healthy pattern usually takes hold when a terrible tragedy seizes the nation’s attention.

Normally, we engage in a searching conversation over what rational steps can be taken by individuals, communities and various levels of government to make the recurrence of a comparable tragedy less likely. Sometimes we act, sometimes we don’t, but at least we explore sensible solutions.

Unless the tragedy involves guns. Then our whole public reasoning process goes haywire. Anyone who dares to say that an event such as the massacre at a Colorado movie theater early Friday morning demands that we rethink our approach to the regulation of firearms is accused of “exploiting” the deaths of innocent people.

OK -- you want to see exploitation? I'll show you exploitation -- and it's all coming from the right. Here's Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas and arguably one of the two or three stupidest members of Congress:

"People say ... where was God in all of this?" Gohmert said. "We've threatened high school graduation participations, if they use God's name, they're going to be jailed ... I mean that kind of stuff. Where was God? What have we done with God? We don't want him around. I kind of like his protective hand being present."

Gohmert also said the tragedy could have been lessened if someone else in the movie theater had been carrying a gun and took down the lone shooter. Istook noted that Colorado laws allow people to carry concealed guns.

"It does make me wonder, with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying a gun that could have stopped this guy more quickly?" he asked.

The thought of people in a crowded theater full of smoke and gunfire hauling out their own guns to shoot back at -- well, at what? How are they supposed to know what to aim at?

The AFA is not far behind, and they've even managed to tie The Gays into it:

I think the sources of this is [sic] multifaceted but you can put it all I think under the heading of rebellion to God, a rejection of the God of the Bible. I think along with an education system that has produced our lawyers, our politicians, more teachers, more professors, all of that sort of thing, is our churches, mainline churches. We’ve been dealing Teddy and I know the AFA Journal has been dealing with denominations that no longer believe in the God of the Bible, they no longer believe that Jesus is the only way of salvation, they teach that God is OK with homosexuality, this is just increasing more and more. It is mankind shaking its fist at the authority of God.

And Bryan Fischer, also of the AFA, is not far behind. (It's all the fault of the ACLU and the Supreme Court, for some reason, but don't try to figure it out -- this is Bryan Fischer, after all.)

There's a lot more where that came from, and I'm not going to waste space on it. Bottom line is that the exploitation is actually coming from those who are ideologically aligned with the NRA -- the crowd that wants the Second Amendment to be the only part of the Bill of Rights that we have left. And there's a heavy preponderance of recognized hate groups in that mix. You figure it out.

Back to Dionne's comment, however. Here's a summary of the reactions from state and a few national politicians on the shooting. And here's a statement from the President. Note that no one of them says anything about guns and how easy they are to obtain, or how wide-open this country is to violence. The NRA has got them all thoroughly cowed. The only one who seems prepared to do anything substantive is Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who is re-introducing legislation to ban high-capacity magazines. And Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York is at least making the attempt to hold people's feet to the fire:

You know, soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country. . . .

And everybody always says, ‘Isn’t it tragic,’ and you know, we look for was the guy, as you said, maybe trying to recreate Batman. I mean, there are so many murders with guns every day, it’s just got to stop. And instead of the two people – President Obama and Governor Romney – talking in broad things about they want to make the world a better place, okay, tell us how. And this is a real problem. No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them concretely, not just in generalities – specifically what are they going to do about guns?

Or, to put it in more realistic terms, what will the NRA allow them to do about guns?

If you want a good take on the scale of this problem, read this post by Darcy Burner. No other so-called "civilized" country can even come close to this. I can only echo Burner's final comment: "The NRA can go to hell."

Footnote: I just ran across this editorial from the New York Daily News that echoes Darcy Burner's sentiments, and my own:

The police chief in Aurora, Colo., said he is confident that massacre gunman James Holmes acted alone. The police chief was dead wrong.

Standing at Holmes’ side as he unleashed an AR-15 assault rifle and a shotgun and a handgun was Wayne LaPierre, political enforcer of the National Rifle Association.

Standing at Holmes’ side as he sprayed bullets and buckshot into a crowded movie theater were Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, a President and a would-be President, who have bowed to the NRA’s dictates and who responded to the slaughter Friday with revolting, useless treacle.

And this, somewhat more restrained, from NYT:

Politicians are far too fearful of the gun lobby to address gun violence, and, as a society, we keep getting stuck on a theoretical debate about the Second Amendment, which keeps us from taking practical measures that just might help avoid the all-too-frequent tragedies like the one in Aurora.

Whether you believe, as many perfectly reasonable people do, that the amendment gives each individual the right to bear arms, or whether you believe, as this editorial page has often argued, that it is society’s right to raising a militia, there is no excuse to ignore the out-of-control gun market.

I think everyone sees the problem, but those in a position to do something about it would prefer to sweep it under the rug.