This week, I am so sickened and saddened by the cinema shooting in Aurora that it’s difficult to navigate my thoughts on the matter in a coherent fashion. Senseless acts like this boil down to something that not all psychologists and sociologists will admit exists: genuine evil.
I believe very strongly in the existence of evil. I don’t buy into the narrative that every maleficent act is based upon a privation of goods or a disenfranchisement of some social currency. If this reasoning were true, evil would have long ago ceased to exist, particularly in places of power and privilege. Evil exists in this world, and it is rarely found where we expect it to be.
Shooting suspect James Holmes was a promising graduate student. The venue was not a gang-infested slum. The targets were random and innocent. Sociology cannot explain this atrocity and neither can psychology.
The best that either may do is to assemble a list of ingredients from the shooter’s background and attempt to stuff the facts into some sort of framework that will fit each discipline’s parameters.
I personally do not accept this.
I don’t want to politicize the deaths and injuries of the victims of the shooter. Those people and their families have suffered enough. I am going to say, however, that at the end of each newscast covering the story, there seems to be one of two possible conclusions drawn from this tragedy.
I would like to suggest a third possibility.
Conclusion No. 1: Stricter gun control laws are needed to prevent such tragedies.
Colorado is ranked third in the nation by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence as having the strictest gun control laws. Furthermore, every mass shooting that has occurred over the last few years has taken place in “gun-free zones,” which are areas where even lawful firearm owners are prohibited from carrying weapons.
The Virginia Tech massacre comes immediately to mind as the most similar incident of recent years. And while Colorado does grant concealed weapons permits to qualified applicants, a placard on the theater entrance effectively prohibits even licensed carriers from possessing firearms on the premises. Apparently this did not deter the shooter.
Conclusion No. 2: Because the shooter was not legally barred from owning or possessing the firearms he used to perpetrate the crimes, there was no way to prevent the shooting. Within the legal framework of the state of Colorado, this is effectively true. Nobody could have predicted that Holmes was planning a massacre.
Finally, I come to conclusion No. 3: A concealed weapons permit holder within the theater may have been able to disarm, deter or eliminate the threat presented by James Holmes’ rampage, had they been permitted to defend themselves.
Concealed carry permits are granted after training and background check requirements are met. Not all permit holders are zealots like George Zimmerman, as the press would like you to believe. They are usually thoughtful people who have put in the extra effort to advocate for themselves and others when the police may be absent.
That is all.
By requiring law-abiding citizens to disarm in certain venues, the only people whose safety is assured are cowards and monsters like James Holmes, who certainly chose his target very deliberately.
My thoughts and sympathies go out to the victims of this tragedy. I know that evil will never be fully preventable. It can, however, be contained, neutralized or even eliminated. For the sake of all of the innocent victims in Aurora, I wish it had been.
Joshua Fonzi is a microbiology and cell science and entomology and nematology senior at UF. His column appears on Thursdays. You can contact him at opinions@alligator.org.
