Slideshow: Shooting at Batman screening in Aurora, Colo.

Jonathan Castner / AFP - Getty Images file

Police cars are seen in in this July 20, 2012 photo in front of the Century 16 theater in Aurora, Colorado.

The Aurora, Colo., theater where a gunman opened fire at movie-goers in a midnight premiere of a Batman movie, killing 12 and injuring 58, is open to victims and their families.

The theater was reopened on Tuesday and Wednesday for private visits, and on Thursday a grand opening ceremony and formal reopening is planned, local media reported.

Gov. John Hickenlooper, Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan, and Cinemark CEO Tim Warner were expected to speak at the event, billed as a remembrance, the Denver Post reported.

Initially, some victims’ families were outraged by the invitation from Cinemark to attend the event, but others have said that visiting the theater is important to healing from the tragedy.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed by saying the theater owner didn’t provide enough security the night of July 20, 2012.

Widow sues university over Aurora shooting

James Holmes, who authorities said dressed as the Joker as he sprayed gunfire at people attending “The Dark Knight Rising,” is accused in the crimes. He has not entered a plea.

The movie house gets a new name, “Century Aurora,” and was expected to be completely remodeled into an XD theater with a wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor screen.

Pierce O’Farrill, who survived the shooting but was shot three times, told the CBS station in Denver he plans to attend.

“It’s important for me, for my healing to go back to that place. I was very close to death,” O’Farrill told CBS4. “For me I think it’s therapeutic.”

Tom Sullivan’s son Alex was killed in the shooting. He will be attending as a tribute to his son, who loved going to the movies, he told local media.

"Sometimes people in the community might look to some of us who have lost a loved one, to see if it's OK to laugh again or go to the movies," Sullivan told the Denver Post. "And for me, it is OK. Going to the movies is what I like to do." 

A defense attorney says Colorado movie theater shooting suspect James Holmes tried unsuccessfully to call a University of Colorado, Denver, psychiatrist nine minutes before the attack.

Defense attorney Tamara Brady said Thursday that James Holmes placed the call to an after-hours number at a hospital at the University of Colorado, Anschutz campus.

Brady says Holmes thought he could reach Dr. Lynne Fenton, a psychiatrist, at that number.

Holmes is accused in the July 20 shooting that left 12 people dead and 58 wounded in Aurora.

Barry Gutierrez / AP

Defense attorney Daniel King leads other public defenders into court Thursday for a motions hearing for suspected theater shooter James Holmes in district court in Centennial, Colo.

The detail came out during a hearing about Holmes' relationship with Fenton, to whom he mailed a package containing a notebook that reportedly contained violent descriptions of an attack.

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Fenton, who took the stand Thursday, testified she was sent the package on July 19.

The package was seized by police on July 23 -- just three days after the shooting. According to court documents, she never had the package in her possession.

More coverage of the Aurora theater shootings on NBCNews.com

District Court Judge William Sylvester made no decision Thursday on whether the package should be released to prosecutors, NBC station KUSA reported. The hearing was continued to Dec. 20.

Rj Sangosti / Pool via Reuters file

Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes is shown at his first court appearance in Aurora, Colo., in July.

The court discussed whether the notebook was sent during the time Holmes and Fenton had a doctor-patient relationship. The defense argued the notebook sent to Fenton is privileged information due to her relationship to Holmes as his psychotherapist. The prosecution says Fenton's relationship had already ended.

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Fenton testified on Thursday that she felt her professional relationship ended on June 11. Fenton claimed she did not see or talk to Holmes in between June 11 and July 19 - when the prosecution says the package was sent to her.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The families of victims of the Colorado movie theater massacre said Tuesday at an emotionally charged news conference that although a fund intended to help them had raised more than $5 million, they had been shut out of the decision-making process.

Family members in Aurora, Colo., tearfully decried what they called state officials' and the Colorado Organization for Victim Assistance's lack of leadership and organization. They accused fundraisers of failing to give them a voice in determining what to do with the money already donated to the fund, despite using photographs of the victims in their fundraising efforts.

Group spokesman Tom Teves, whose aspiring psychiatrist son Alex Teves, 24, was killed in the attack, pleaded on behalf of the group for urgent financial help and for more of a role in the process.

“We come to speak as one voice,” Teves said. “We are here because we want the public to know what has happened within days of the shooting.”

Other victims' relatives said that COVA's disorganization had left them all in the dark about the fund and deprived them of a much-needed sense of community.

"Every desire that we have has to come under a microscope," said the mother of one victim, responding to a question about the particular financial needs of victims' families. Deidra Brooks, whose 19-year-old son Jarell was recovering from his wounds from the July 20 shooting rampage, said that scrutiny had added insult to injury.

"It's more than a slap in the face. It's going through the 20th over and over and over," she said.

Teves said money had been solicited for The Aurora Victim Relief Fund using the names and pictures of those slain. "I am certain that the public intended 100 percent of those donations to go to the families of victims, and to use that money to help the healing process," Teves said. "Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case."

Teves said the families believed the funds would help all the victims, who Teves said included people in the theater or in the shooter’s apartment complex who suffered physically or emotionally.

The 12 who were killed included 18-year-old recent high school graduate AJ Boik, Air Force cyber-systems operator Jesse Childress, aspiring sportscaster Jessica Ghawi, community college student Micayla Medek and mother of two Rebecca Wingo.

Alexander Teves, Matt McQuinn, U.S. Navy veteran Jonathan Blunk and Navy sailor John Larimer all died shielding their friends or girlfriends.

NBC News

Tom Teves speaks at a press conference as other family members of the theater shooting victims look on Tuesday in Aurora, Colo.

The massacre's oldest victim was 51-year-old Gordon Cowden, whose teen children survived it, and its youngest was 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who had just learned to swim. Alex Sullivan, no relation to Veronica Moser-Sullivan, was celebrating his 27th birthday and his first wedding anniversary on the night he was killed.

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The conference came as lawyers in the murder case against accused gunman James Holmes wrangled over what should be made public.

Holmes is accused of unleashing the July 20 shooting rampage at an Aurora movie theater. Police say the 24-year-old, wearing body armor and a gas mask and heavily armed, opened fire on an audience of the opening night of "The Dark Knight Rises," killing 12 and injuring 58.

Police apprehended Holmes, who had recently withdrawn as a neuroscience Ph.D student from the University of Colorado, outside the theater and said they later removed explosives from his booby-trapped apartment.

Thanks to a court-imposed gag order, little has been publicly said about the case — despite the intensity of prosecutors' legal battle with defense lawyers, who maintain Holmes is mentally ill, over access to his university and medical records.

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Prosecutors want access to Holmes' school records as well as to the contents of a package he sent to his psychiatrist, Dr. Lynne Fenton. News reports citing anonymous sources indicated that package contained a notebook with writings that reportedly described a violent attack.

Defense lawyers argue the contents of the package are privileged, as Holmes' confidential communication with his doctor, and say Holmes is mentally ill.

In the weeks following the shooting, details of Holmes' past have slowly trickled out but have left victims' families few clues as to a motive.

The New York Times reported Sunday that weeks before the massacre, Holmes had text messaged a classmate about a psychiatric condition common in patients with bipolar disorder and had warned her to stay away from him, saying, "I am bad news."

Prosecutors said in court filings that in May he had shown another classmate a semiautomatic pistol he had bought "for protection" and that in March he had told another that he wanted to kill people "when his life was over."

A hearing on the question of access to the contents of the package Holmes mailed to Dr. Fenton is scheduled for Thursday, and Fenton is expected to testify.

Sevil Omer of NBC News contributed to this report.

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AURORA, Colo. -- Petra Anderson, one of 58 people injured in the Aurora movie theater attack, is lucky to be alive.

Anderson, a 22-year-old aspiring music professor, was hit by a shotgun blast during the assault that killed 12 people. Three pellets struck her arm and one rocketed through her head, but it missed the brain's many blood vessels and key sections controlling vital functions, according to her doctor.

“If the pellet had wavered a millimeter, really in any direction from what it actually took, then she would have likely either died or been severely injured,” said Dr. Michael Rauzzino, a neurosurgeon at The Medical Center of Aurora who operated on Anderson to remove the pellet. “I would say this is definitely a miracle,” he said, while showing an MRI of Anderson’s brain.

The MRI reveals a faint trace of the pellet’s path after it entered the left side of Petra's nose, broke through the front of her skull, and passed through her brain, before lodging in the back of her head.

“It would be hard to create a path similar to this where it goes all the way from the front to the back and misses every single blood vessel, doesn't bother any of the major structures, and leaves her able to talk and move everything and not be paralyzed or dead,” he added. “Never in my entire career have I seen a case where a bullet has traversed the entire brain like this and not caused severe damage or death.”

Among the dozens hurt in the attack on a midnight premiere of the latest Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” injuries vary widely. Some were treated for their wounds and could walk out of the hospital. Others are still fighting for their lives. And yet others, like Anderson, who plays violin and piano, are dealing with a range of injuries that could require long-term treatment, and perhaps, totally alter their futures.

Doctors performed two procedures on Anderson: one to remove the pellet from her brain and the other to close the hole in her skull where the pellet entered her head. A large hole was left behind that had to be fixed or it could have led to complications in the future, such as leakage of brain tissue or liquid, Rauzzino said.

Miranda Leitsinger / NBC News

Dr. Michael Rauzzino, a neurosurgeon at The Medical Center of Aurora, talks about the path of the shotgun pellet through Petra Anderson's brain, noting how it missed many blood vessels and centers that control key functions.

The pellet crossed the left hemisphere – the dominant one -- of her brain, which generally controls speech, language and memory. Though Anderson now has deficits in those areas, Rauzzino said, they “could be much more severe than what they are.”

“Her life is definitely going to be different. She's been shot in the head and nothing's going to change that,” he said.  “The hope is that with time and therapy and patience that she'll get a lot of things back. And, you know, who knows, maybe she'll get it all back.”

Rauzzino denied news reports stemming from a pastor’s blog that Anderson had a congenital defect in her brain creating a void, or hole, the pellet shuttled along to save her life.

“Her brain was no different than anyone else's,” he said. “What made her so fortunate was the trajectory of the bullet as it passed through.”

Escaping death a ‘source of hope’
Since last Friday, Anderson’s family experienced the ups and downs of dealing with major trauma to a loved one.

“Everything changed, and I could not get past this idea that she had gotten shot in the head. I know that the first big fear I had wasn’t actually her dying, but her losing things in her life that have been really important,” such as her music, said her boyfriend, Austin Hogan, 23, as he broke down into tears.

(For more on the treatment of the injured in Aurora, watch Kate Snow’s interview with Dr. Rauzzino on tonight’s Rock Center at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. Central.)

But the fact she escaped death “was such a source of hope for moving forward, I think, for all of us, and we really rallied around that,” he said.

Anderson was planning to enter the University of Maryland this fall for graduate studies along with Hogan. The middle child of three siblings, she had come home to Aurora to spend time with her mother, Kim, who was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer in May and is to begin experimental treatments in a few days.

“This has been hard on her,” Anderson’s sister, Chloe, 25, said of her mom. “She's already not got the best energy levels, and I think the first couple of days just really tanked her energy. But she is a fighter, just like my sister, and so she is there all the time.”

Miranda Leitsinger / NBC News

An MRI shows the faint upward track of the shotgun pellet through the middle of Petra Anderson's brain.

Adding to the family’s worries are the medical bills: Petra’s insurance won’t likely cover all of her expenses and her mom’s insurance won’t pay for her alternative cancer treatments, Chloe Anderson said. So, working with friends, she and Hogan set up a fundraising campaign to raise money for them.

“My mother’s recovery is going to be integral to my sister’s recovery and vice versa,” she said. “I know that both of their recoveries are … intertwined.”

But the campaign won’t just raise funds for mother and daughter: part of it will also go to other victims. The money will be funneled to the Colorado Organization for Victims Assistance. Also, three of the hospitals in the area that treated victims announced Wednesday they will forgive some or all of the medical costs associated with the attack.

“If you have a blessing, it’s great to have it, but it’s even better to be able to share,” Chloe Anderson said.

“We're not the only ones suffering and going through this,” Hogan said. “A lot of other people in this tragedy have a story like this, too, and are suffering … nobody walked in that theater with a perfect life, with no other worries, no baggage.”

In the days since Anderson was shot, she has been eating, smiling, and telling the cerebral jokes she is known for, her sister said. She also took a stroll around the intensive care unit but has been in pain, a bit groggy from the medicine, and her loved one have noticed some deficiencies, such as it taking her “a little while to come to whatever it is that she is saying,” Chloe Anderson said.

Marc Piscotty for NBC News

Chloe Anderson, left, of Aurora, Colo., and Petra Anderson's boyfriend, Austin Hogan of Marin County, Ca., talked about some of her injuries as she recovered in a nearby hospital.

She hasn’t asked about what happened at the theater, where she had gone with two friends (one survived being shot several times; the other was uninjured), and her family didn’t want to cause her any additional stress by bringing it up.

Her long-term prognosis is good, seeing that she has survived the injuries so far, Rauzzino said, noting that “given the fact that there's not more permanent damage on this study (MRI), we're very hopeful that she's going to make a very good recovery from this.”

Shooter not going to have ‘last say’
As Anderson’s family spends their days immersed in her recovery, which they update on an increasingly popular Facebook page that has in turn provided them emotional support, Chloe Anderson said she doesn’t think much about the alleged gunman.

“I’ve been so consumed with focusing on how to make this a better situation,” she said. “It doesn’t serve anybody for me to be really angry at him … I need to focus on helping who I can help, and right now, I can help my sister and my family, and maybe help some of the other families, as well.”

The shooter also was not going to have the “last say,” Hogan said. “From the moment this happened, that hasn’t been the story … the story has been about the victims and the survivors and the families and the incredible communities of support.”

There was a lot of gratitude “for all of these people that have held up these families in this incredible time of suffering,” he added. “Knowing that we can make an impact … that we have an ability to get a voice out there of hope, a message of hope to everybody, to as large an audience as we can, to show that, you know, there is something incredible that can come from something so terrible.”

NBC News' JoNel Aleccia contributed to this report.

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Rick Wilking / Reuters

Two women embrace as the leave the funeral for Gordon Cowden on Wednesday at Pathways Church in Denver.

About 150 mourners on Wednesday attended the first funeral service of a victim of last week's Aurora, Colo., theater shootings.

Gordon Cowden, 51, a father who was the oldest person killed, was memorialized at Pathways Church in Denver.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan and Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates were among the mourners who walked by a large portrait of Cowden at the entrance to the private service.

Cowden, a Texas native who lives in Aurora, had taken his two teenage children to the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises," early Friday midnight showing. The businessman's children escaped unharmed.

Related: Funerals, memorials for Aurora shooting victims planned across nation

A separate memorial is planned at the Riverbend Centre in Austin, Texas.

Later this week, families of other victims planned to say their final goodbyes.

PhotoBlog: Memorial service for theater victim Gordon Cowden

Cowden was one of 12 killed and 58 injured when a gunman wearing body armor, a gas mask and toting three firearms, opened fire at the crowded screening. James Eagan Holmes, 24, was arrested behind the theater shortly after the massacre.

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Authorities recovered a package that apparently was mailed by James Eagan Holmes after the shooting suspect told investigators to look for the item on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News on Wednesday.

The source told NBC that the package contained writings about killing people, but could not go into more detail.

Holmes, a 24-year-old who was in the process of withdrawing from a graduate program in neuroscience at the university, has been arrested in connection with the killing of 12 and the injuring of 58 in a shooting spree at the midnight premier of the Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, Colo. on Friday.

Police recovered the package on Monday after getting a search warrant for the medical center mail room and then getting a second warrant to actually open the package, the law enforcement source said. (Prosecutors later said in court documents that there was only a single search warrant.)

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Police found the package as Holmes described it, including his name in the return address, and it's now being analyzed, the source said.

It was unclear how long the package had been in the mail room before its discovery. 

In response to reporters' queries about the package, the Anschutz Medical Campus issued a statement saying it could not comment on anything regarding the ongoing criminal investigation into the theater shooting, under order of Arapahoe County District Judge William Sylvester.

The statement did provide general information about how mail is handled on campus.

"The University centrally receives mail from the United States Postal Service. The University then delivers the mail to the address on the Anschutz Medical Campus the same day it is received," the statement said. "The University's mail service is not open on Saturday. Saturday mail is sorted and delivered Monday morning. The University does not log or track mail/packages unless it requires a signature from the United States Postal Service."

Holmes made his first court appearance before the court in Arapahoe on Monday, amid grieving for the victims.

Wearing a red prison jumpsuit, Holmes appeared with public defender Tamara Brady for the hearing. Holmes, who said nothing during the proceedings, had several days' beard growth and bright red dyed hair. He looked down or off into the distance, at times raising his eyebrows in a quizzical expression or frowning as if concentrating.

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A hearing of formal charges, expected to be multiple counts of first-degree murder, is set for next Monday. Then the state must decide whether to seek the death penalty.

Holmes had been stockpiling ammunition, weapons, body armor and explosives for months, said authorities who tracked his purchases. After his arrest, teams of experts worked for two days to disarm Holmes' apartment, which contained an elaborate web of explosive and incendiary devices set to be triggered by tripwires.

NBC News' Kate Snow and Kari Huus contributed to this report. 

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ANALYSIS

While relatives of the victims of last week’s movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo. – and the public at large – are understandably fixated on why the crime was committed, the criminal justice system to a large extent will ignore that question in determining guilt and punishment. 

It appears that the alleged shooter, 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes, acted alone, so there apparently is no conspiracy or anyone else directly to blame. Nor is there any indication that this was the act of a terrorist organization or individual attempting to advance a political agenda of some sort. The crime allegedly was committed by a single human being who explained himself to police as being a character from the Batman comics – the Joker.  

Theater massacre suspect appears in court

But in deciding whether a person should be punished – and how much – the law will inquire into a very limited set of questions. 

The first is guilt. With a multitude of witnesses inside the theater able to testify about the black body armor worn by the gunman and Holmes arrested just outside the theater moments afterward wearing an identical ensemble, defense attorneys appear to have little chance of persuading a jury that their client did not pull the triggers of the weapons – all of which he had legally purchased – used in the crime. And the fact that he apparently booby-trapped his apartment immediately before the slaughter, with the apparent intent of creating a diversion, only adds to the evidence against him. 

Wes Oliver is a professor at Widener University who teaches criminal law and procedure. This fall he will join the faculty of the Duquesne University School of Law as a professor and director of the school's criminal justice program.

If Holmes is convicted in connection with the crime, an insanity defense will almost certainly be contemplated. But the legal question raised by an insanity defense is relatively straightforward: Did the defendant understand the difference between right and wrong? 

Past aids Aurora response, but were warnings unheeded?

John Hinckley, Jr., escaped criminal punishment when he attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan to impress the actress Jodie Foster, but in the wake of his successful insanity defense, legislatures made it considerably more difficult for defendants to prevail on the grounds of mental incapacity. Under the law that existed at the time, defendants were not legally responsible even if they knew an action was wrong if they could show they were unable to resist the impulse to commit the act. After Hinckley's case, a number of states, including Colorado, amended their laws to permit a successful insanity defense only if the defendant did not know the difference between right and wrong. The upshot of this more stringent requirement is that defendants rarely prevail when they claim insanity.  

So, if Holmes’ attorneys pursue an insanity defense, the jury will be asked only one question: Did he know it was wrong to try to take the lives of scores of people?  If the answer to that question is ‘yes,’ then the question becomes: What degree of homicide did he commit. To determine this, the jurors must decide whether he intentionally and deliberately killed his victims – first-degree murder – or whether he merely knowingly or recklessly killed them – second-degree murder. The degree of planning involved in this case, however, leaves no doubt that the perpetrator intended the results. 

Photos: Shooting at Batman screening in Colo.

There will then be a final question about punishment. Colorado has the death penalty, though death sentences are quite rare in the state and there has only been one execution in 30 years. Nevertheless, there is the possibility of a death sentence in this case.  Under Colorado law a jury may return a death sentence if the defendant killed more than one human being in a single episode.  Almost certainly he did. 

In a capital case – and it seems likely this will be a capital case – the defense is permitted to present anything in mitigation. That means that the defense may attempt to explain why the defendant attempted to take the lives of scores of innocent persons, but it is certainly not required to do so. It can focus on any aspect of his life in an effort to save it. And the prosecution only has to demonstrate that the mass killing occurred to obtain a death sentence. Nothing requires either side to present evidence of what motivated this man before incarcerating him or even executing him. 

Read more legal analysis by Wes Oliver

We often think of natural disasters as tragedies that defy explanation. Tragedies caused by humans can most often be explained, though, and the criminal justice process often provides that explanation. Motives are often offered to demonstrate a defendant's intent to kill.  

In the case of James Holmes, it seems likely that circumstantial evidence alone will demonstrate his desire to take an extraordinary number of innocent lives, and that his motives will defy any traditional explanation, such as personal animosity or greed. But the law does not require prosecutors to show motive, merely the intent to kill.  And that may be all that anyone will be able to show for this senseless act.   

As a result, any trial is likely to leave victims, and their families, with nearly as many unanswered questions as they have now.   

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ANALYSIS

While lessons learned from previous mass shootings may have helped limit the carnage in the Aurora, Colo., theater shooting, it remains unclear whether there were warning signs that might have been missed.  

Although it is too soon after the tragedy to draw any hard conclusions (unlike the shooting that took but a few minutes, investigations of such events are meticulous, time consuming affairs), it seems likely that lessons learned from similar events might well have reduced the human toll, which currently stands at 12 dead and 58 injured. 

It appears that first responders in Aurora arrived on the scene no more than a minute or two after calls began flooding 911.  That rapid response meant that the suspect was quickly detained, possibly preventing additional casualties. In addition, emergency medical care arrived shortly after, undoubtedly comforting and likely saving many of the wounded.  And in the coming days, counselors and other medical professionals will surely provide support to both the countless physical and emotional victims of the early morning shooting.

Each of these efficient and effective responses is born of past tragedies.  Through similar events close by (Columbine) and far away (the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India), first responders learned of the need for rapid intervention, securing a perimeter and waiting for specialized units.  Whether it is an active shooter scenario or a Mumbai-style terrorist attack, state, local and federal authorities have modified their tactics and training to fit what has regrettably become a semi-regular occurrence. 

Hard questions remain
But early indications are that some other lessons of the past may be more elusive.  Much focus has of course been on the shooter, and indeed it is critical that his past behavior be closely examined for warning signs that might have been missed.  In some cases, terrorist or non-politically motivated shooters display outward signs of future violence —either through antisocial behavior or obtaining weapons or their precursors — potentially putting officials in a position to disrupt the attack before it happens. As last week’s report on the Fort Hood shooting noted, however, even when such warning signs are present, our ability to identify them properly and take action is mixed. 

Such is surely the case as well for non-terrorism-related violence, as criminologists have long struggled with accurately identifying future criminals. 

That can be a slippery slope. If concerns about “false positives” are discounted, then we are more likely to intervene in the lives of those who show warning signs, but are merely eccentric, not dangerous.

In short, although we might be able to improve our ability to spot the next mass shooter or serial killer before the crime is committed, attempting to do so raises numerous legal and ethical questions and likely won’t be easy or particularly effective.  It hasn’t worked in the past and it is unlikely to work in the near future.

One need not be a terrorism expert or criminologist to know that every society has faced criminals and mad men before.  Are there more terrorists or mass murderers today than in the past?  Perhaps.  But what is unquestionably true is that it has become increasingly easy for murderers of any stripe to kill more and more people in one fell swoop.

In some parts of the world, terrorists have had to be innovative to do so.  The 2005 al-Qaida-inspired terrorist attacks in London, for example, used improvised explosive devices composed in large part of concentrated hydrogen peroxide.  Creating these weapons wasn’t excessively difficult, but doing so required some care. More than a few trained terrorists have tried and failed in the past, both in the U.S. (Faizal Shahzad in Times Square in 2009) and the U.K. (the bombers of July 21, 2005).  Early reports also allege that Holmes engaged in such explosives plotting. 

In the U.S., however, counterterrorism officials and police have long since accepted that neither creativity nor immense skill is required for an individual to be an effective mass murderer. The ready availability (either legally or illegally) of semi-automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines makes such killing remarkably easy.  Moreover, given the endless supply of “soft targets” in our open society, it is simply impossible to harden every theater, school and workplace. 

When I served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, whenever I was asked, “What keeps you up at night?” I without fail focused on a lone wolf who would be difficult if not impossible to detect and armed to the teeth with deadly firearms.  And while some of my foreign police and security counterparts had similar fears, all were sympathetic to the vastly greater challenges we faced in the U.S., where such weapons are so easily accessible. 

Looking ahead
None of this provides an easy answer.  Would stricter control of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines in the U.S. reduce mass murders?  Perhaps, but the current inventory is so vast that we might only be closing the proverbial barn door. Would an armed moviegoer have been able to stop the Aurora shooter in his tracks?  Again, perhaps, although given his preparations and the mayhem it would surely have been difficult for even a highly trained individual to do much good.  Needless to say, addressing any of these issues is made even more difficult by the political swirl around gun control -- not to mention the very real limitations of our Constitution’s Second Amendment. 

That being said, we must be honest about the challenges we face. We will never identify and stop all of the crazed killers before they strike, whether they are motivated by al-Qaida or something even more mysterious within their heads.  We can detect some through community-focused efforts, but there is no panacea or even anything close.  In addition, while we can reduce the carnage, no system of first responders will make us perfectly safe. 

While the truly committed killers will always find ways to kill, we regrettably live in a society where even the near-spontaneous, untrained individual can bring tragedy to the doorstep of entire communities.  Our freedom -- to live in a non-police state, to have a degree of privacy and most especially to bear arms -- has very real costs.  The destructiveness of certain firearms in the hands of some individuals increases those costs. We must all pay the price -- but none moreso than the victims in Aurora and elsewhere. 

Michael Leiter is a former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and NBC News consultant.

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