A Tale of Two Mass Murders....

James Holmes (Aurora. Co Theater killer) ABOVE and Julio Gonzalez (Happyland Social Club killer) BELOW

On Saturday morning (at the Midnight Premier of The Dark Knight Rises) James Holmes entered an Aurora, Colorado movie theater through an emergency exit and began what’s turned out to be the largest mass-shooting in American history – killing 12 and wounding 58 others.

Holmes had previously booby-trapped his apartment with small softball sized globes of gasoline (there was over 10 gallons of gasoline inside that apartment) hooked up to a circuit board and set to go off when various trip wires were touched.

The carnage in Aurora, Colorado was designed to be and certainly could’ve been much, MUCH worse.

Immediately the simplistic and naïve started calling for stricter gun control laws.

Ironically enough, Holmes method of attack proved that guns were entirely ancillary to his plan. When he entered the theater he unleashed a couple of canisters of noxious gas and then tossed a few homemade grenades into the theater.

His primary weapon of choice was explosives, followed up with small arms support.

There’s absolutely NOTHING that even an all out gun ban would’ve done to stop this atrocity! People (many people) can make guns in their own homes, in fact rudimentary single-shot "zip guns" are extremely easy to make at home and kits are readily available for making much more sophisticated weaponry.

And what’s more, such information MUST be able to be freely exchanged, it’s a basic 1^st Amendment issue – the free flow of ideas and information. The 1^st Amendment DOES NOT take into account that “SOME people may misuse or abuse such information,” it CAN’T! People abuse virtually EVERY freedom there is, but that’s never been an acceptable excuse for limiting them.

Perhaps another mass murder can make this point even clearer by comparison. Back in March of 1990, Julio Gonzalez became engaged when the coat-check girl at a Bronx social club spurned his advances. The deranged Gonzalez went to the nearest gas station and filled a small jar with unleaded regular gas (cost UNDER $1) and used a handkerchief as a makeshift wick.

Julio Gonzalez then went back to the Happyland Social Club and sent the lit makeshift Molotoff cocktail into that club – killing 87 people inside.

It still stands as the largest mass murder in the U.S. by a single perpetrator. No guns were used and incredibly enough, the total cost was LESS than $1.

There are no laws, no bans that can stop the likes of James Holmes or Julio Gonzalez. We, as yet, have no way to interdict such people BEFORE they commit their actual crimes. Banning guns is akin to attempting to ban SUVs because drunk drivers tend to do more damage while driving them – such inanely naïve schemes focus on symptoms NOT the disease, they look to blame inanimate objects, NOT the deranged people involved.

If banning guns were the answer to the Aurora, Colorado Movie Theater massacre, then banning gasoline would've been the appropriate response to the Happyland massacre and banning illegal immigrants (BOTH Julio Gonzalez AND Colin Ferguson – the LIRR shooter were illegal immigrants) would’ve been the most appropriate solutions to BOTH the Happyland and the LIRR massacres.

Sadly such naïve approaches (blaming THINGS for the actions of PEOPLE) does nothing to prevent similar acts in the future, nor even make them less likely.

The ONLY way to deal with reducing such actions would be to look for ways to interdict such deranged people before they act, which in a free society, becomes a rather dicey proposition.

We don't seem ready to "go there," so naive, simplistic people continue to call for bans on THINGS instead of looking for ways to interdict the people intent on such carnage.