STEPHANOPOULOS: It certainly is, but as you can imagine, Governor, the debate over whether this could have been prevented has already began. You probably heard the comments of Mayor Bloomberg of New York, who made headlines on Friday with his calls for tougher gun laws. Other people, several in your state, saying that perhaps if someone else in that theater had a gun, the killer could have been stopped. Does it make you think at this point that you need to take another look at Colorado’s gun laws?
HICKENLOOPER: You know, I’m sure that that is going to happen, but I look at this, this wasn’t a Colorado problem, this is a human problem, right? And how we can have such a warped individual and no one around him be aware? You know, I worry that if we got rid all of the guns -- and certainly we have so many guns in this country, we do have a lot more than gun violence than many other countries -- but even if you didn't have access to guns, this guy was diabolical. Right? He would have found explosives, he would have found something else, some sort of poisonous gas, he would have done something to create this horror.
He might as well have gotten this statement from the NRA.
"He would have found some other way to kill or injure 71 people in a few seconds" is one the stupidest, most irresponsible hypotheticals around. It absolves lawmakers of any preventive measures or policies at all. And the fact is, nothing creates horror quite so easily like a gas-powered semi-automatic assault rifle that holds 100 rounds.
Also, you don't just "find" explosives. You need to know how to make them, you need to test them, you need to gather the materials for making them -- and you need to figure out how to deploy them. All of this takes money, time and effort and expertise -- and it's very hard. And the materials used to make large bombs are monitored, which is why we haven't had a mass casualty bombing since the '90s.
Just criminally stupid.
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