More Than Meets the Eye in Aurora Shooting

It was 20 July, the opening night of the latest Batman installment, The Dark Knight Rises.  A large crowd of people sat to watch the film’s midnight showing at the Century 16 Cinema in Aurora, Colorado, when gunshots began to go off from behind a cloud of smoke.  An anticipated ordinary night out at the movies quickly turned into chaos, and then finally, into a bloody massacre at the hands of the 24-year-old gunman, James Eagan Holmes.  At least a dozen people were killed that night, including a 6-year-old girl, and approximately fifty others were wounded.

Many people are under the impression that the shootings were carried out by a crazed man who was convinced that he was a popular character from the Batman films known as the Joker.  However, a closer look at the situation may bring about another possible conclusion.

A number of media outlets, including ABC News, have stated that Holmes was equipped with paramilitary gear upon entering the theater.  A ballistics helmet, a bulletproof vest, bulletproof leggings, and a gas mask were among the items that Holmes was wearing.  He also set off smoke bombs in order to conceal himself before beginning to fire at members of the audience.  Holmes is said to have purchased four guns and over 6,000 rounds of ammunition during the two months before the tragedy.

Prior to being known as the Aurora gunman, however, Holmes was reportedly living a disturbed life as a neuroscience student at the University of Colorado.  During his time there, which ended about a month and a half before the shootings occurred, Holmes had been seeing a psychiatrist at the university.  The psychiatrist, Lynne Fenton, feared that other students may be in danger because of Holmes’ instability and took her concerns to a campus policeman as well as the university’s Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment team.  Due to Holmes dropping out of the school, the safety issue was never pursued despite the fact that many of the supplies he used in the shootings were ordered while he was still enrolled and were sent to the university.  Holmes also had other supplies, specifically explosives, sent to the school that he utilized in order to booby-trap his apartment.

Why would the university administration not look into this situation before he dropped out, knowing that such a large quantity of extremely dangerous items were being delivered to their campus in Holmes’ name?

Apart from the gunman’s troubling past life as a graduate student, the issue of gun control has resurfaced once again.  On the heels of the Aurora incident, New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, came out in support of creating a new gun control law.  He openly encouraged President Barack Obama and 2012 Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, to address the suddenly very obvious problem of gun-related crimes.  Although it may seem that Bloomberg has Americans’ safety as his main concern here, people should also note that this is the same man who allows his police department to act with brutal violence against nonviolent protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

On 26 July, just days after Bloomberg advocated for gun control, a number of Democratic senators proposed that a gun control amendment be added into a cybersecurity bill that was about to be voted on.  Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, one of the amendment’s sponsors, was quick to state that the purpose of the amendment was not to take away all guns, but to apply some “reasonable” gun control measures, such as running background checks on anyone purchasing a gun.  On 2 August, the Senate voted 52 to 46 in favor of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, but much to the joy of internet activists and gun owners, that was not enough to pass the bill.

Some may have also noticed that the Aurora shootings occurred just one week before the United Nations Small Arms Treaty was to be considered.  The stated goal of the treaty is to regulate small arms in order to prevent “terrorists and rogue regimes” from obtaining them.  On 27 July, a meeting was held in regard to several text revisions within the treaty, but negotiations came to a halt when the United States, Russia, and China requested more time to deliberate the revisions.

Despite the failure of bills like the Cybersecurity Act and postponed decisions on the United Nations Small Arms Treaty, many Americans believe that, after the presidential election is over, these documents will be resurrected and eventually passed.  By the same token, it seems quite ironic that these consecutive shooting sprees have transpired during a heated presidential campaign.  Proponents of gun control have been making themselves heard all summer, yet neither Obama nor Romney has made any moves to agree or disagree with them.

So the question remains: Are these shooting sprees solely the work of mentally unstable individuals, or are they being aided by the higher-ups of American society who want guns out of the hands of the average citizen?