Shortly after moviegoers had settled in to watch a midnight premier of The Dark Night Rises on Friday morning, a heavily armed gunman entered the Aurora, Colo., theater through an emergency exit and opened fire . In just a few minutes the assailant shot more than 60 children and adults killing at least a dozen before police arrested him outside the theater .This massacre was the only latest in a string of eerily similar incidents in recent years involving the mass murder of civilians, spectators and bystanders by an individual with a firearm and a frightening lack of regard over its use. In April 2007 32 people were shot to death and 17 injured on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., by a former student. In January 2011, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by an assailant who killed six people during an attack outside a Tucson supermarket. Just a few months ago a gunman killed seven people at Oikos University in Oakland, Calif. [More]