Great piece by Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker about the Aurora shooting and American gun culture:

The truth is made worse by the reality that no one—really no one—anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to speak out about the madness of unleashed guns and what they do to American life. That includes the President, whose consoling message managed to avoid the issue of why these killings take place. Of course, we don’t know, and perhaps never will, what exactly “made him” do what he did; but we know how he did it. Those who fight for the right of every madman and every criminal to have as many people-killing weapons as they want share moral responsibility for what happened last night—as they will when it happens again. And it will happen again.

Gopnik cites another important essay by his colleague Jill Lepore, an American history professor and New Yorker staff writer. Therein, Lepore debunks many of the myths surrounding the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.