John Rosenthal, co-founder of Stop Handgun Violence, and Alex Seitz-Wald, political reporter at Salon.com, join “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer to react to the mass shooting at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
“These kind of tragedies happen far too often — from Columbine to Virginia Tech to the Gabby Giffords shooting — and every time, we get a little bit of debate about it, but really nothing happens in terms of actual policy change,” Seitz-Wald says. He points out that after Columbine, “lawmakers in Colorado tried to pass a whole slew of gun regulations, including closing the gun show loophole.”
“Unfortunately, … the NRA … came in, and within a month they spent $16,000, which is a huge amount of money for the Colorado legislature, and they effectively killed all of this legislation except for a few token pieces that the NRA had approved of,” Seitz-Wald concludes.
“Since Columbine and Virginia Tech, gun laws have been weakened, law enforcement has been restricted from telling the media where crime guns have come from and the gun industry has been given absolute immunity from lawsuits,” Rosenthal says. “That is Congress’ response — shame on Congress.”
