Aurora, New York
This just in: nine of the people wounded in the shooting outside the Empire State Building were hit by police bullets in the exchange of gunfire with the man who opened fire on his former workmate. The gun nuts who insist that arming everyone is the only solution to this country’s outrageous level of gun violence will, of course, choose to ignore the clear implication of the story. In their fantasy world, the shooter in Aurora would have been stopped in his tracks had the members of the movie audience been armed to the gills. We saw the reality in New York, where police officers, trained and experienced in the use of firearms, still managed to wound a bunch of bystanders. Imagine the carnage had a dozen of the moviegoers, unused to actual gun battles, opened fire in a darkened theater against a man armed with automatic weapons and wearing body armor. Only in the delusional universe of the gun lobby would the body count have been less.
