The dark side rises: Aurora and the new political conversation

ON FRIDAY morning about 12:39 a.m., when James Eagen Holmes walked into the Century Cinema 16 theater complex in Aurora, Colo., outside Denver, kicked open an emergency exit door leading into Theater 9, and opened fire on a crowd of people gathered for a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, resetting the national political debate may have been the last thing on his mind.

But when he carried most of an arsenal of two .40 caliber Glock handguns, a Remington model 870 shotgun and a Smith & Wesson AR-15 rifle with a 100-round drum magazine into that 12:05 a.m. showing of the latest Batman movie and ultimately killed 12 people, the former University of Colorado graduate student pumped fresh voltage into a third rail of American politics, and reawakened this nation to one of the real banes of its existence.

What happens next in this rancorous election year, and what comes next from its principal actors could change the course of the gun-rights debate — for awhile, anyway — and the arc of the presidential campaign that ends in less than four months. ...

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Image credits: Holmes: Arapahoe County (Colo.) Detention Center.