A reader writes:
You said, "This is America. People get shot here all the time. And no one really wants to change that." Is there a more hopeless assessment you've ever made about America? Twenty years ago you could have made a similar statement about gay marriage in America, yet here we are.
Well if there were an Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing heterosexual-only marriage, you'd have a point. Mercifully, when proposed, it didn't pass muster. Another writes:
I'm so sick of arguments like Adam Ozimek's that basically say "you won't be able to keep everyone determined to get a gun from getting one, so therefore gun regulations are pointless." It's just absurd.
"Strong illegality wouldn't have stopped [Holmes]," Ozimek says, pointing to the home-made IEDs in his apartment. Let me ask you a question, Adam – why didn't Holmes use a fully automatic, military-issue M4 instead of the civilian AR-15? Hell, why not full-on light machine gun, like the M249, capable of rattling off around 1000 rounds per minute, complete with canister and a hundreds of rounds of ammunition? Why didn't he use military-issue hand grenades and booby trap his apartment with claymore mines? Does Ozimek believe that it was some kind of merciful choice that Holmes made, deliberately forgoing the additional lethality he could have brought with him to the theater if he were simply "determined" enough to get it? Or does it seem more likely that the strict regulations in place to prevent dissemination of fully automatic, military-grade assault weapons may have had some impact on his weapons of choice?
Even if you can never stop all wars, you still work for peace.
Even if you can't stop all insider trading, you put regulations in place to try to stop what you can. Even if you can't stop every switchblade making its way onto an airplane, you still do what you can to make it harder for anyone to try.
Would tighter gun regulations have stopped the murders in Colorado? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is that you currently have a situation where someone, more or less on a whim, can very easily, and legally, get access to the munitions necessary to ruthlessly cut down dozens of people without even stopping to reload.
On that note, a reader suggests a gun control slogan:
Guns don't kill people. They just make it very easy.
Another insists that Obama "call for an assault weapons ban":
Why? Because of the challenge to Romney. Does Mitt dare to feel people's pain and express willingness to compromise on assault weapons? Or is he so backed into a corner that he just doubles down and runs for cover behind the NRA? It's a chance for Obama to take a "courageous" and "risky" stand on what he clearly really believe – and on an issue that right now, a bunch of scared, middle class, suburban Colorado people probably agree with him on. Maybe swing voters have moved on this issue in the decade since it was considered so toxic for Al Gore. I say, force Romney to stand with the hack lobbyists of the NRA and the loners-with-weapons-stockpiles vote.
Dream on.
(Photo: Two daughters of victim Gordon Cowden embrace one another as another daughter leaves messages on a cross at the makeshift memorial built across the street from the Century 16 theater on July 23, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado. Two of Cowden's teenage daughters were with him in the theater when he was killed. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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