Gun Laws

After Aurora: If gun laws are off the table, where is the plan B? - Opinion - The Boston Globe

...Each incident provokes a now-predictable reaction: a round of hand-wringing — followed by nothing. The most obvious preventive measure, tighter gun control laws, has been taken off the table. Both political parties — the Republicans by inclination, the Democrats by calculation — refuse to consider stricter rules. And federal courts have been increasingly unfriendly to existing gun control laws.

But if political leaders can’t enact common-sense gun limits, they have an obligation to come up with an alternative strategy to prevent such horrifying acts. An answer may lie in more monitoring of ammunition and military equipment purchases, more aggressive mental health intervention, or more sophisticated policing methods. The portrait of the suspect in Friday’s shooting, James Holmes, 24, is still coming into focus. But he was apparently able to acquire a weapon, ammunition, a smoke device, a bulletproof vest, and a gas mask. Law enforcement needs a way to detect these clues, recognize that they add up to a warning sign, and act on them early. The tools authorities have now failed in Connecticut in 2010, when a disgruntled worker opened fire at a beer warehouse, killing nine; failed in Arizona last year, when a deranged man wounded a congresswoman and killed six others; and failed again in Colorado on Friday...