LARGEST MASS SHOOTING IN AMERICA EVER OCCURS OVERNIGHT IN COLORADO............

The Midnight showing of the premiere of the summer blockbuster movie, "The Dark Knight Rises", the new Batman film of a trilogy, in the Century 16 multiplex in Aurora, Colorado; less than a half hour into the film  turned into a fiery bloodbath - as a gas masked man, wearing body armo r and a bullet proof vest, entered through a back down of the theater to the right of the movie screen, threw a tear gas canister up, fired shots into the ceiling,  and began  shooting scores of ammunition from guns and rifles into the audience members, going on a four to eight minute rampage that killed 12 persons and wounded 59 others, many of them critically.  The suspected shooter, is identified as James Egan Holmes, age 24, a highest honors graduate of the University of California Riverside, who completed a Bachelor of Science degree in NeuroScience in 2010; and has been enrolled in graduate work supposedly in pursuit of a Ph.D, at the University of Colorado Denver, during the past year.  Taken into custody after exiting the building without resistance, while pandemonium ensued; Holmes is said to have indicated to police that his car and apartment were booby trapped.  His apartment was indeed found to possess much more ammunition, chemicals, and trip wires, in what is apparently a sophisticated, coordinated, planned carrying out of henious catastrophy.  His mother spoken to by ABC News, on the telephone in San Diego, California where his parents live, and the son moved from a year or so ago; said, the authorities had the right man.  This exceedingly shocking and senselessly violent crime, is at least the eighth occurrence of such a mass shooting of innocent victims in the United States in the past two decades, and today's tragedy the worst of them in its magnitude.  Ironically, it occurred just twelve miles from where the Columbine High School mass shooting of twelve students and a teacher in 1999.  As our hearts and prayers go out to and for the victims, family members, and citizens of Colorado, I believe it should cause us to question and address how and why our undeniable right to freedom and liberty as Americans, and our constitutional right to bear arms in a well ordered militia for the legitimate defense of our country, can justify the legal right of any individual to buy assault weapons or high powered handguns that can be modified and used to perpetrate even such more powerful death and destruction on victims like it did once again today.  President Obama and Governor Romney struck the right notes in their statements about our Unity as One American Family, and the necessity each of us bears to Love and to uproot hate, violence, and ignominious acts, such as this one; inflicted so senselessly on the seventy plus persons seated in that Aurora Colorado movie theater overnight.  God Bless them by bringing healing to their woundedness and consolation in their grief and personal loss .............Fr.  Troy