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Disclaimer:  I did not want to write a blog post today.  The shooting at the premiere of the Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado is a tragedy beyond belief.  As I continue to watch coverage of the massacre, you start getting portraits & profiles of the victims of the shooting.  I can not even imagine how any family member of the deceased feel at this moment of time, so I can only give my full support and send condolences to all those affected by this heinous crime.  I don’t want to by any means, “politicize” this event but certain comments by a Congressman made me want to write something.  

In the immediate aftermath of the shootings at an Aurora, Colorado movie theatre; Republican congressman Louie Gohmert of Texas decided to bring up an issue that was barely even touched-upon when the news first broke.

Gohmert, appearing as a guest on a radio show produced by The Heritage Foundation was asked to try and make sense of the shooting.  Gohmert would state this:

Well it does make me wonder, you know with all those people in the theater, was there nobody that was carrying that could’ve stopped this guy more quickly?” Gohmert said. “I mean in Tyler, Texas, we had–my hometown–we had a shooter come in over a domestic matter, and just start shooting people. And it was a guy with a concealed carry–he got killed, but his shooting at this guy caused him to run and no doubt saved a lot of lives. He was a real hero.

Yes, Gohmert did not state a method to counteract violence such as this or even try to make sense of the matter.  Instead, he almost appeared to BLAME some of the victims for not bringing a gun to movie theatre and somehow they weren’t as heroic as the gentleman in Tyler, Texas.

This is where I find most of the qualms with guns and support with the theory on gun control.  I will never hunt, nor do I have any intentions on touching a gun; but I won’t ever call for an outright ban on them.  I don’t think that addresses the true problem with assault weapons and a “Prohibition” placed on anything never works.

One of the true problems of gun ownership though is this almost…vigilante in disguise thought method that several owners appear to have.  It’s almost something out of an action movie in which evil villains storm into your local supermarket and before they fire a shot, you kill all of them and save the town from imminent destruction.

No, I’m not making light of this tragedy at all.  But, Gohmert suggesting that if someone had a gun then lives could be saved actually offends me to a degree.

Let’s take a quick look at the facts that we have as of now when it concerns the actions of James Holmes, courtesy of ABC News.

Moviegoer Christopher Ramos today recalled the real-life horror of the midnight premiere of the latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” in Aurora, Colo., as a gunman decked in riot gear set off smoke bombs and opened fire on the unsuspecting audience.

“People were running everywhere, running on top of me, like kicking me, jumping over me. And there were bodies on the ground,” Ramos said. “I froze up. I was scared. I honestly thought I was going to die.”

“The image in our heads is stuck in there. I still have the ticket right here and, honestly, I’m never going to forget this night at all. Because it was the first time I saw something that was real. Like a real-life nightmare that was there, not dreaming of,” Ramos told ABC News today.

Witnesses in the movie theater said they saw smoke and heard gunshots that they thought were part of the movie until they saw Holmes standing in front of the screen, after entering from an emergency exit. Holmes methodically stalked the aisles of the theater, shooting people at random, as panicked movie-watchers in the packed auditorium tried to escape, witnesses said.

Not to re-create the tragic scene, but Holmes threw smoke bombs and opened fire to an unsuspecting audience.

So in a scene filled with terror, smoke & chaos of people trying to run for their lives; do you really expect another gun to have solved any of the problems?  I don’t feel the need to make any guarantees or create any more hypotheticals regarding this situation, but how would this have prevented other people from being shot?

If anything, another gun being thrown into the mix could’ve even made the scene more chaotic as you run the risk of blind shots being fired.

But according to Rep. Gohmert, that wouldn’t have happened because….?

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