What changes in the life of the state when residents are shot in it

Nightwing is a superhero. Once he was on the sidelines of Batman, but he “branched off” and began to spread good on his own. In his arsenal he has smoke bombs, blinding grenades and two wands for hand-to-hand combat. And it's also bulletproof.

Nightwing is the favorite hero of Alex Sullivan. Collecting comics Alex began in childhood. They have a family one: Alex Tom's father is a collector with great experience, though he likes Spiderman more. At home they have several boxes of comics. Father and son watched together all the films about superheroes. Movie trips are a longstanding Sullivan family tradition: Friday - what shall we do?

But on the night of Friday, July 20, 2012, Alex went to the premiere of the final part of the Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, without his father. At the cinema Century 16 in Aurora, he and his friends were going to celebrate their 27 birthday. After 40 minutes a supervillain and Knightwing's enemy, the Joker, entered the hall. So James Holmes will later introduce himself to the police. He threw a smoke bomb into the hall, raised his rifle and opened fire on the spectators.

Alex was killed with one shot. He did not even have time to move, did not even get up from the chair. The bullet went through the right kidney, passed the lung, the heart and went out through the neck. He died immediately.

Tom Sullivan is an incredibly calm person. Sprawling in an uncomfortable chair, he sips black sugar-free coffee from a large paper cup. With a checkered shirt and bald head, he resembles a quiet trucker or an avid fisherman. He does not need to ask questions: he already tells everything in the smallest details, as if a jagged text. As if he does not want to ponder what he is talking about.

“That day I had to go to work at four in the morning - I worked at the post office. I took a shower, had breakfast, made myself lunch and turned on the TV. What happened in the cinema was already talked about on all channels. The names of the dead were not given, there were only numbers: 10 died on the spot, 2 on the way to the hospital. Later, only the number of wounded changed. I knew that Alex was going to the cinema, but he usually went to another cinema where he worked. I called him but got on voicemail. I decided that he was sleeping, congratulated him on his birthday and asked him to call back. On my way to work I passed by this cinema. There were helicopters there, a lot of police, and I called again. Said, “I’ll call you every half hour until you pick up, just to reassure mom.” But at 6.30 my wife called me herself: “Alex was there.”

Tom rushed to look. Soon the news will show a man going hysterical. In the footage, Tom shakes a photo of his son in front of the cameras: “If anyone has seen Alex, tell me where he is!” In a couple of hours, a nurse I know will call all 9 hospitals where the wounded were admitted. Alex Sullivan is nowhere to be found. Tom will call his wife: “We lost our son...”. The next day, 97 American newspapers will publish a photograph on the front page: Tom hugging his wife and daughter with a terrible grimace. It is impossible to draw such a face.

After a year and a half, Tom has an absolutely impenetrable look and a slight smile. He never returned to work. Now he is engaged in helping victims in the cinema - fundraising for Aurora rise organized the only comic book store in the city. Besides Alex, there were many of his other regular clients at the Dark Knight premiere. Money for psychological support for Aurora victims is still coming in.

- People who were in the cinema, no longer smoking: Holmes threw a smoke bomb at the hall. On the fourth of July, on Independence Day, fireworks explode everywhere. But for them it is the sound of shooting. They get sick of the smell of popcorn. Have you seen photos of the cinema after the shooting? Sea of ​​bloody popcorn.

Cinema Century 16 opened six months after the tragedy. Despite its bad reputation and inconvenient location - it is located outside the city - it is again full of spectators. In addition to the powerful smell of popcorn and the announcement before the start of the session: “Look around. If you see something unusual, call security”—nothing reminds us of a mass shooting.

Sullivans in the movie did not stop going. As before, Tom and his wife and youngest daughter are watching films about superheroes. True, now the head of the family always buys a ticket for the same chair: 12-th row, 12-th place. Alex was here on his last birthday. Tom leaves the next chair free - for his son.

Revolution is canceled

Shooting in Aurora is not the first time in Colorado when an inconspicuous nerd takes up arms and opens fire on people. In 1993 there, in Aurora, an employee of a pizzeria dismissed the day before Chuck E. Cheese's returned to his former place of work and shot 5 ex-colleagues - only one survived. In 1999, in neighboring Jefferson County, two high school students carried out one of the deadliest American terrorist attacks - at Columbine High School. Two 2th graders suffering from mental disorders shot students and teachers for almost an hour and then committed suicide. They killed 11 people and wounded 13.

In 2006, an employee was killed while shooting at a grocery store in Denver. In December, an 2007 armed assailant staged a massacre at a youth hostel mission center in the Denver suburb. After 2 hours, he also opened fire in the parking lot of a new life church in Colorado Springs. During the day, 8 people (including the shooter himself) were killed in one state, 7 were injured. In 2010, an 32-year-old man injured 2 students in his former school in Littleton before his math teacher defused him. In 2012, a resident of Longmont, in the north of the state, shot the family of his ex-wife. Finally, in April, 2013 began to fire on the crowd at a festival of recently legalized marijuana in Colorado - it cost the wounded people 2. Over 20 years more than 10 cases of shooting in public places of a fairly peaceful state: in the 2012, the FBI counted here that 3 killed thousands of people in 100 - this is one and a half times lower than the national average.

Despite regular shooting, it was the events in Century 16 prompted a change in state law.

— On Sunday, the Rev. George Anastos invited parishioners to meet after the service in a small chapel next door to talk about what happened. — Jerry Arca, a fashionable retiree in a pink shirt and with the latest iPhone, has been attending the congregational church for 20 years. — About 30 people came. Everyone was so amazed that they decided to create a working group “Stop Armed Violence” and develop the position of our church on this matter.

After weeks of 6, the parishioners published a petition on the Internet: to tighten the rules for the circulation of weapons, to prohibit trade in arms exhibitions without documents, and to limit the sale of assault weapons. Similar claims sounded throughout the state. Over the other edge of the blanket, gun owners clung to. In Colorado, it is every third. They appealed to the second amendment of the Bill of Rights: the right to keep and bear arms cannot be restricted. Passions began to boil especially violently when politicians took over the matter.

Фото: Depositphotos

The law to tighten the rules for the sale of weapons was promoted by the Democrats. They insisted on limiting the amount of stores: no more than 10 cartridges. Despite the fact that the most popular assault rifles in the country are designed for 30 cartridges: last year the Americans had 140 million in their hands. This is almost half of civilian weapons. In addition, the Democrats offered to check the criminal history of buyers.

From the outside, the bill was supported by the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, who promised to invest $ 12 million in the anti-weapon campaign. It was opposed by the Republicans, the National Rifle Association of the United States and the arms manufacturers. To help themselves, they hired the best lobbyists.

Josh Hanfling has childish kind eyes. It seems that on Sundays a person with such a look is obliged to sing in the church choir, and on weekdays to teach schoolchildren to fly kites. Josh may be doing all this, but the rest of the time he lobbies for the company’s interests. Magpul Industriesmanufacturer of accessories for weapons. The company began 14 years ago in one of the garages of a small Colorado town, and now sells stores all over the world - a sort of Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), from weapons.

Win in favor Magpul Josh and his colleagues managed a little bit - except to increase the maximum amount of stores from 10 to 15 cartridges. And this is despite the strong support of strong young Yankees, hunting enthusiasts, and housewives, for whom the gun under the mattress has long been a necessary element of the bedroom interior.

“Before you send the bill to the state capitol, you need to hold a public hearing,” explains Josh. - When they started, people argued for hours. The city held rallies, planes flew with banners, and activists drove cars around the Capitol, buzzing in protest against tightening control.

The protests did not help, and in March the 2013 government of Colorado passed a law tightening control over the weapon. Now Magpul It sells stores all over the world, except for its home state, and is considering moving to a more loyal place.

From the side of the measures taken in Colorado remind a duty curtsy to the unarmed public - too gently, lawmakers tightened control. Even radical opponents of weapons did not demand either a ban on their wearing in public places, nor a total tightening of the rules of sale. Apparently, they understood that it was too tough for them, so why scare the electorate?

- If they at least try to ban weapons, people will make a revolution. And the trunks will not be less - the mother of 2 adult children Tia Glover gently places guns and rifles around the perimeter of a cozy living room. - There are a lot of countries in which to buy a gun is much more difficult than in America, but do not they shoot on the street?

Of course they shoot. In the poor countries of South America and Africa, victims of gunshot wounds are many times greater than in the United States. But in less weapon-loyal Europe, the figures are 3 – 5 times lower than those of the United States. At the same time, according to the statistics of the journal Mother Jones, of 62 street shooters, over the past 30 years, only 12 used illegal weapons. The rest of 50 honestly came to the store, bought the model they liked and went to kill.

Ten minutes

The owner of the gun shop in Lakewood G&G Guns Warren Marshall frankly hypnotizes me. So the hunter looks at the victim. It was not easy to persuade him to talk, and he allowed himself to take a picture of himself, only by clarifying my attitude to Putin. Now he stands in front of behind the counter of his shop, behind him the slender rows of rifles. He is clearly not joking, and even more so to me.

“It’s stupid to ask the weapon seller if he has any personal guns ...,” I begin.

Walter silently snatches a gun from the back pocket of his jeans. Thank God, he immediately cleans back.

- How many have you got?

- Miss, I'm not asking the size of your panties. More than one, but that's none of your business.

At the words “none of your business,” Warren sticks his index finger into the bridge of my nose. For a man with a pistol in his pocket and a display of rifles behind his back, he behaves too shockingly.

Фото: Depositphotos

- Did the law affect your work? - I pretend that a finger pointing to my head does not bother me at all.

- And how. We are faced with fear. People simply did not understand what was written in the law and were afraid to go to jail for the purchase of weapons. As a result, in May-June, our sales fell by 20%.

- Has the buying process itself changed? Politicians say he stretched out on the 3 of the day.

- Come in, fill out a questionnaire, I punch you through the base ... If you live in Colorado, it will take 10 minutes. Yes, at first it was longer, but now the base is fast.

Base is a portal Colorado Bureau of Investigations. Before selling a weapon, the shop is obliged to check whether the customer is blacklisted. According to Democrats, checks in CBI have already given results. For the first six months, thanks to the weapon base, 300 criminals were not able to buy, 65 people in search and 120 accused of domestic violence. However, this medicine helps only if the client has already blundered. CBI can not know what is happening in the mind of the buyer of the weapon. Except for two cases of speeding, James Holmes was crystal clear before the law when he ordered thousands of cartridges by mail 4.

- If you see that the client is inadequate, but there is not a single line in the database about him, can you deny him the purchase?

- I am not obliged to sell anything to anyone. If that guy over there comes to my shop drunk - although I know that he is a good person - I will send him to sleep over. I am not selling weapons to a person who has smoked marijuana. Selling weapons is only part of my job. The other part is to make sure that I sell it to the right person at the right time. Imagine that this bearded guy, - points to my friend Chris, who brought me to the store, - just served you a particularly serious crime and now beats you up regularly. He needs a gun, and he sends you to the store, because you have a clean biography. This is a purchase through a figurehead. I will not sell you a weapon.

- But how do you understand that I do not buy for myself?

- Very simple: such a buyer is intimidated, because he is often beaten, he shows no interest in the subject, but wants to buy it. We look at how he holds a gun, what he knows about him, whether he is asking the right questions. And if he fails the test, we will refuse him. We have to refuse several times a year.

With his cold-ironic look and arms crossed on his chest, Warren is quite similar to a man who can send to hell if he doesn’t like you. But even if the buyer is refused G&G Guns and all the nearest licensed stores, it can always stock up with illegal distributors or go to the arms exhibition, where neither documents nor exemplary behavior do not require.

“Tracing the path of illegal weapons is almost impossible,” complains Deputy Sheriff Chadd Crumbaker. “Will someone come to us and say: “This guy is selling illegal guns?” Until we have evidence that a person is selling weapons under the counter, we cannot verify it. But such evidence is difficult to obtain. You can stumble upon a message on the Internet, you can see an advertisement on the street. Ideally, of course, get photographs of the offender selling illegal weapons. But these people have been doing their job for decades. They know how to avoid getting caught.

Colorado against "them"

The population of Colorado, especially in the center of the state, flows smoothly between towns: you live in one, work in another, parents in 30 kilometers to the south. Everything is close, on exemplary roads very close. The harder it beats the locals every regular shot at a school or a supermarket. If your relative did not die in the shooting, then you definitely have a friend who has lost a loved one. Or do you know someone who was familiar with the shooter. Or the day before the tragedy, you were in this cinema. "Columbine" or Aurora surface in every conversation with residents of the state, no matter what you discuss.

I'm going to Colorado, expecting to meet people who are afraid to go to the store, cinema and school. It seems that in the state that survived so many tragedies, passersby should look at each other with caution: will this guy in a decent suit get a gun? I ask the questioner: are you not afraid?

“If we stop our life, then they will win.” “This is David Becken, one of the most heroic people I've ever met.” - Therefore, we can not stop. These are the same terrorists, only without a political program. Did children in Russia stop going to school after Beslan?

- Of course not…

- Here you go. If you stop going to the movies, school, shops, it means they won. And they should not win.

This is roughly how every single American answers me: from children to pensioners. It’s as if they have an encrypted message in their genetic code: “Everything will be fine.” It’s as if they have a filter in their subcortex that doesn’t allow them to replay horror movies in their heads while walking through the supermarket. Or they are all lying, so as not to concede victory even in words to the mythical “them,” terrorists without a program.

Alas, universal optimism plays a cruel joke with those for whom this genetic code works differently. With the amazing psychological endurance of the Colorado society, many here believe that the reason for the shooting on the streets is not in arms, but in the abundance of mentally ill people.

- I face a real threat from a weapon, maybe once or twice a year. But every day I go to a call to mentally ill people. Every day I meet them on the street. And if such a person begins an attack of aggression ... The point is not that it will come to his arm: a pistol, a knife or a hammer. The fact is that he is sick and no one helps him. And in prison, the more nobody will help him.

According to Congressman Diane De Goethe, mental health is the most under-funded item in the Colorado budget. Not so long ago, the state closed a mental hospital. After that, spending on local prisons increased dramatically. A year in an American prison costs 3 times as much as a year of college.

- In fact, psychos migrated to prison. Now two thirds of crimes are due to mental illness. - On the table of the Denver Democrat Morris Price, the rubber figures of Barak and Michel nod in agreement with their heads. “We are now keeping more people in prisons than we were in slavery at the end of the 19th century.”

Psychologist James Holmes, a month before the events in the cinema, told the university campus police that her client could be dangerous to society. But the case did not come to the statement, and the police did not take up Holmes. If they had listened to a psychologist, Alex Sullivan would call his father back. Although here the possibilities of the American police are limited. Holmes could be put in an 72 hospital for hours to check adequacy. Had he been sane, through 3 of the day he would have listened to an apology and went free. No - I would go to a psychiatric clinic. But those in America are few, so you can get there only with the most serious diagnosis. A graduate student at the University of Colorado Holmes School of Medicine certainly had a chance to disown a white shirt.

Another way to prevent a massacre is to monitor the Internet activity of a suspicious element.

- You need to go to court and ask for permission. The person himself, of course, will not know about this. Over the past year we have only had one such case. We followed an unbalanced guy from the mountains who got angry at one of the townspeople. We even managed to confiscate 15 weapons from him. But after some time he came to court: “Sorry, I had bad times, but now I’m fine.” And got the guns back.

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