Harris and Klebold had purchased their weapons from private dealers at a firearms show. Following Columbine, President Bill Clinton called for more gun control legislation, and in May 1999 the Senate narrowly passed an amendment requiring background checks on all private dealer sales at gun shows. In a burst of optimism, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared victory over the gun lobby.
“It will never be the same again,” he said. “The vise lock that the NRA [National Rifle Association] has had on the Senate and the House is broken.”
He seemed to have a point. After the horror at Columbine, the NRA itself said their organization was open to more regulation, admitting in an ad campaign: “It’s reasonable to provide for instant background checks at gun shows, just like gun stores and pawnshops.”
Then the NRA launched a major lobbying effort to kill such checks. In the two months leading up to the final 1999 Congressional vote, the group spent $1.5 million toward this end and threatened dangerous consequences for the nation if the background checks were approved. The bill failed.
In the coming years, the gun lobby would spend nearly $660,000 in Colorado to derail numerous state gun control laws. A few minor bills were passed, one of them allowing for the arrest of people who buy guns for criminals and children, and another reauthorizing a state background-check program. But legislation requiring background checks at gun shows, safe storage of guns inside of homes, and an increase from age eighteen to twenty-one for buying a handgun were all defeated.
Thirteen years and thirty-one mass shootings later—counting Holmes’s rampage in Aurora—80 percent of crime guns were still purchased via private dealers and without a background check. By the close of 2012, following both the Aurora and Newtown massacres, some U.S. politicians were again poised to address gun control legislation. A bill limiting the sale of online ammunition, filed by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), was introduced in the House in January 2013, a few weeks after the Sandy Hook tragedy and during the period when people were saying that the events at Newtown had finally caused America to reach its tipping point when it came to legislating tighter gun controls.
The proposed 2013 bill would dramatically curb one’s ability to buy unlimited rounds of ammunition through mail orders or the Internet, as Holmes had done, by requiring a photo ID at the time of purchase. It also required ammo dealers to report bulk sales to law enforcement. The bill failed to muster the filibuster-proof sixty votes even to get through the Senate—after polls repeatedly stated that 90 percent of the American people supported it.
Following this latest defeat for gun control advocates, the NRA held its annual convention in Houston, featuring a company that sold shooting targets “designed to help YOU prepare for the upcoming Zombie outbreak.” It also offered consumers an “Ex-Girlfriend” target that bled when you shot it. The more bullets you put into the target, the more mangled the once-attractive body became (among the copious statistics surrounding women and violence is that a woman’s chances of being killed by her male abuser go up more than seven times if he has access to a firearm).
In Colorado in 2013, state Senate President John Morse and state Senator Angela Giron were ousted in recall votes for supporting stricter gun control laws. The successful campaign against them was named “Ready, Aim, Fired.” The man elected to replace John Morse, Republican State Senator Bernie Herpin, gained notoriety at a Colorado legislative hearing on overturning a ban on gun magazines of fifteen rounds or more. The Republican supported getting rid of this ban so shooters could have larger magazines.
“My understanding,” Senator Irene Aguilar said to Herpin during the hearing, “is that James Holmes bought his 100-round capacity magazine legally. So in fact, this law would have stopped James Holmes from purchasing a 100-round magazine. I was wondering if you agree with me.”
“Perhaps,” Herpin responded, “James Holmes would not have been able to purchase a 100-round magazine. As it turned out, that was maybe a good thing that he had a 100-round magazine, because it jammed. If he had four, five, six, fifteen-round magazines, there’s no telling how much damage he could have done until a good guy with a gun showed up.”
Attending this hearing was Tom Sullivan, whose son, Alex, had been killed at Century 16. When called upon to testify, Sullivan said, “I’ve had a lot of thoughts since July 20, 2012, but never once did I think anyone was better off because the shooter brought a hundred round drum into that theater. Alex never had a chance. He was watching a movie one second and the next he was dead. The fact is, if the shooter had to change his magazine that would have been a chance for Alex to survive.”
Later, when interviewed by Denver’s Fox-31 TV station, Sullivan added, “The lack of empathy and compassion is shocking. Not just to me and my family, but to all of the families who have lost loved ones to gun violence and to all the people of Colorado. But this is what he [Herpin] truly believes. And to think this is the person who they brought in to replace John Morse.”
Rather than acting as a tipping point for more gun control, Sandy Hook seemed to bolster those arguing the opposite view.
From a twenty-nine-year-old male medical student in Philadelphia:
People who are now in their fifties and sixties used to believe in social and political change, but they’ve completely given this up. I don’t understand that, but I see and feel the effects of it all around me. The mass support that once existed for this kind of change is gone and a lot of the cynicism in our culture flows from this. There’s a sense that nothing good can happen now, that nothing will get better, and that you’re confronting all this without any social support. Our elections are a sham and our leaders are basically powerless in terms of getting anything done. President Obama is a good man, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.
People talk about feeling pride in your country, but I’ve never felt that and neither has anyone I know. In some ways, my feelings are hypocritical because I benefit from this society economically, compared to so many others in the world, but I’m not proud of that. Our whole society is about getting lots of things for yourself—period. TV ads tell you to take the path of least resistance, and to get all you can now, and many people do exactly that. It’s why the culture feels so incredibly hollow.