Meyer: What About the Guns?

Throughout the intensely interesting and harrowing trial of James Holmes, there is one issue that has seemingly disappeared.

How did a man fantasizing of killing people have such easy access to guns and ammunition?

The issue was front and center after the July 20, 2012, massacre in an Aurora movie theater that killed 12 and injured 70.

Politicians, anti-gun advocates and opinion-shapers pounded the topic, outraged once again at the absurdity of American's lax gun laws.

That discussion quickly went away, only to be resurrected five months later when a lunatic burst into an elementary school and slaughtered 20 first-graders and six of their teachers. But that conversation soon died, too.

It goes on and on, and seemingly we cannot or don't want to do anything about it.

Gun violence is an epidemic in this country. Several big U.S. cities recently reported a huge increases in homicides, according to USA Today.

Denver police in January installed a device that reports gunshots in the northeast part of the city. So far, the ShotSpotter has recorded nearly 1,000 gunshots in six months of operation.

Clearly, gun use isn't what this trial is about. But testimony has revealed such disturbing facts that you would think it would be fodder for a public conversation about access to weapons.

While Holmes was telling his psychiatrist he thought about killing people three to four times a day, he was beginning to amass his stockpile of guns and ammo.

His escalating talk of violence provoked Dr. Lynne Fenton to alert the university's threat team. She assumed university police would look into whether Holmes had obtained gun permits.

But Colorado law doesn't require gun purchasers to obtain permits and doesn't require guns to be registered. There is really no way to check if someone has a gun. Stores must run background checks, but Holmes hadn't committed any offenses that would have raised flags.

Holmes was able to order 90 packages of ammunition with more than 6,000 rounds for delivery to his apartment. He also ordered 160 pounds of ammo for pick-up at a local FedEx store.

Yet, no one questioned why a guy in an Aurora apartment needed so many bullets.

In what is likely going to be a fruitless effort, Democrats are pushing a bill in the U.S. House t0 require ammunition dealers to verify the identity of a buyer through photo ID in person.

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., is co-sponsoring the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act of 2015, which would require the feds to issue licenses to dealers and mandate they report bulk ammo purchases of over 1,000 rounds by "unlicensed persons."

"This is one of those common-sense amendments where you can support the right of people to buy ammunition for target shooting, but if someone is buying this massive amount it would raise the red flags to authorities," DeGette said.

DeGette says similar legislation has failed three consecutive years.

"It is a situation that tragically we have seen over and over, where there is a mass shooting and people talk about common- sense controls like this, then it fades away until the next one."

And even when there is a trial about a mass shooting, no one seems to want to raise the issue.