In four paragraphs, my prediction as to what happens next in reaction to the horrifying Aurora, Colorado shootings. And it's worse than, "Nothing."
1. Conservatives ranging on over to even some liberals will reactivate the tired ploy of decrying violence in modern popular culture and media, and there will be bills introduced in local, state and federal legislative chambers to put limits on violence in media. Few if any of these will pass, but there will be much gnashing of teeth as legitimate concerns are redirected into this misdirected cause. Because, hey, in Shakespearean England and ancient Greece and Rome, among other historical places, no one told fictional or even nonfictional stories about murder, and thus murder was unknown. Right?
2. A handful of socially conscious, thoughtful and concerned legislators, educators, law enforcement agents, sociologists and others will continue to call for re-instituting the federal ban on assault weapons while looking at other ways to limit the availability of guns in general to mentally at-risk individuals and people who have been identified as potential threats, based on their past activity. This handful of opinion leaders will continue to be attacked and marginalized for making the Aurora shootings a "political" issue, and their ability to gain media exposure will decline exponentially each passing day since the nation's last gun massacre.
3. The NRA and its conservative enablers will dump huge sums of money into campaigns against any legislator or executive who proposes to once again, as this country used to do, ban assault weapons like the AR-15, one of the fast-firing weapons that the suspect in the Aurora shootings easily obtained and used to kill a dozen and maim dozens more. After all, there's "nothing we can do" to prevent gun violence in this country. Right? And even if we could, the Second Amendment is utterly absolute and everyone in this country has a right to bear arms. Of virtually any kind. Period. Also right. Right?
4. A handful of right-wing legislators will propose new laws requiring all adult citizens, and perhaps even some juveniles, to carry arms in public, as a way of staving off potential armed criminals. These measures will actually be enacted in one or two places. No one will be arrested for ignoring the laws and they will slowly disappear from the collective consciousness, until the next massacre occurs.