Can We Talk about Gun Control?

In 1929, American newspapers carried sensational pictures of crumpled, dead bodies — victims of Al Capone's St. Valentine's Day Massacre. President Franklin Roosevelt then persuaded Congress to restrict access to machineguns favored by gangsters. Since then, there've been many more multiple shootings, but the result has more often been sympathy, rather than action. In the aftermath of last week's mass shooting, even gun control advocates concede that new legislation is already dead on arrival. But Second Amendment purists aren't getting far either by insisting that the Aurora theater would have been safer if every moviegoer had carried a gun. Is there some way to safeguard the Second Amendment at the same time protecting against gun violence? Is a presidential election year the best time or the worst time to come to terms with a deadly menace and a divided electorate?