The horrific Dark Knight massacre that took place at a Colorado movie theatre brings to memory the Colorado Columbine School shootout in 1999. Oddly enough, the Aurora movie theatre was only 30 minutes away from the school.
The killing perpetrated by James Egan Holmes on Friday brings back the issue of gun control to the national forefront. According to the Colorado State Law local governments are prohibited from making any regulations that would curb any gun-procuring laws.
Police report that James Holmes possessed a number of easily obtainable weapons such as a couple of .40 caliber Glock handguns. The New York Times reports that Holmes purchased four guns from local gun-shops in the past two months. In addition he was able to procure 6,000 rounds of ammunition more than 3,000 rounds for the assault rifle through the Internet.
The debate of gun-control laws has reached public discourse once again.
Heather Morton of the National Conference of State Legislatures tell the NY Times that Colorado has relatively lax gun-control rules, "if a person complies with all of the requirements, then the state must issue a concealed weapons permit."
While on side of the argument, the pro-gun laws party argues that it is lax regulations which make guns easy accessible to people like Holmes and the nation is in need of stringent laws that makes the procurement of weapons cumbersome in order to prevent such incidences.The side of Anti-gun control a group backed by the National Rifle Association persist that the right to bare arms is a constitutional right granted to every American by the constitution.
It is difficult for any amount of statistics or reason to guarantee the correctness of one argument. Never the less, once again a Colorado shooting has brought the dispute back to national discourse.
