Aurora gunman reignites debate on devil's bargain

No matter how often this sort of thing happens —Columbine High School, Virginia Tech, a Tucson parking lot and many more — it never seems to make any more sense. It's difficult even to look at photos of stricken parents or hear the desperate words that an anxious mother who couldn't find her 17-year-old son whispered to a New York Times reporter: "I haven't heard from him, and none of his friends are picking up their phones."

There is much we don't know, but many of the usual questions. Presuming this was not a deliberate act of terrorism — and authorities say they have no indication it was — who but an insane person would think it right to gun down dozens of people watching a movie? What was someone so unhinged doing with firearms? Where were the authorities who might have seen his insanity and moved to stop him? What happened to the requirements, modest as they are, that are meant to separate the insane from firearms? If past is prologue, the answers are likely to be complex and deeply unsatisfactory.

Virginia College student Seung Hui Cho was so obviously unhinged that a judge ordered him into mental treatment, which should have disqualified him from legally buying a weapon. But the state of Virginia was lax about passing such information on to authorities who run the national background check data base, so Cho was able to legally buy the two handguns he used to slaughter 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007.

Tucson community college student Jared Loughner's behavior was so bizarre and frightening that some of his fellow students sat near the door when he was in class so they could run if he ever erupted into the violence they were sure was coming. But no one acted to get him into treatment. His college simply expelled him, avoiding the problem. In January 2011, he opened fire with a handgun in a supermarket parking lot, killing six, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl, and gravely wounding Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

We don't know much about the alleged movie theater shooter, 24-year-old James Holmes, who was captured alive. Maybe it will turn out that he gave signs of dangerous instability before the shootings, maybe not. We don't know yet all the details of how he got the firearms — a rifle, a shotgun and two handguns — he carried into the theater. We don't know whether the system should have stopped him from acquiring the guns, or whether people around him should have reported him for treatment. We don't know whether there was any real chance to have stopped this horrific act.

What we do know from so many past experiences is that there will be calls for gun laws strict enough to stop incidents like these — but that those arguments will fade in coming weeks. The nation has had a long and contentious debate on guns and decided to allow individuals to own them, with modest limits. It's a devil's bargain that allows millions of law-abiding Americans to own and use guns responsibly, while accepting thousands of deliberate and accidental shootings a year, including the sort of perverse tragedy that occurred in Colorado on Friday.

Gun control strict enough to stop every shooting is a fantasy. For better or worse, Americans are fiercely devoted to their right to keep and bear arms, and the Supreme Court has upheld that right, with reasonable limitations. The notion that the authorities could somehow confiscate the millions of guns in private hands in the U.S. is a delusion. So is the idea that Americans would support prohibiting private ownership of handguns — the latest Gallup poll shows that just 26% of Americans favor such a ban.

That doesn't mean there's nothing to be done. Americans do support bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, which have figured in mass shootings and might have been a part of this one. There's no legitimate reason for the loophole that lets some people evade background checks when they buy guns at gun shows, and no excuse for ignoring rogue gun dealers who "lose" weapons that are sold illegally to buyers who could never acquire them legally.

And there is no excuse for ignoring those among us who exhibit delusional, threatening or violent behavior. The laws in most states allow authorities and even friends and family to ask a judge to have someone like that treated. Such intervention can save lives.

There is deep national grief and anger after the shootings in Aurora. The best way to honor the victims is to work on the imperfect but useful ways to try to make it less likely that this will ever happen again.