Today Jared Loughner was found sufficiently competent, although neither cured nor sane, to make a plea bargain deal in court for his life, agreeing to life in prison for the shooting of 19 people in Tucson, Arizona, including the attempted assassination of a serving U.S. Congresswoman, the injuring of 13, and killing 6.  Loughner had legally purchased the weapon, and ammunition, despite known dangerous mental illness issues well before he purchased a firearm.  Jared Loughner used a hand gun equipped with a large capacity magazine holding 31 rounds, consistent with the use of such magazines in many mass shootings.

Since that shooting in January 2011, in the United States there have been 60 OTHER mass shootings.  That’s 60 mass shootings in the intervening 83 weeks since the shooting that killed 6, including a child and a widely respected judge.  Not quite a mass shooting every week, but given how many shootings occurred just last month, and the start we have on mass shootings in the first week of this month, taken with the prevention of the multiple planned Aurora Colorado copycat mass shootings where the people arrested possessed arsenals of weapons and ammunition, including assault-style weapons, large capacity magazines, a 50 caliber machine gun, we might manage a mass shooting a week soon.

The weapons used in mass shootings are overwhelmingly legally purchased, an estimated 75% of the weapons are legally acquired.  In an overwhelming number of the mass shootings, assault style weapons are most often used, and large capacity magazines are a significant preference.  These shootings include shootings committed by criminals, the dangerously mentally ill, domestic violence perpetrators, stalkers and harassers, and drug users, who are still able to legally obtain these weapons and related equipment.
There were six mass shootings just in the month of July this year, and another one in the first week of August, by a right wing extremist attacking a minority religious group.

 July 20, 2012: 12 killed, 58 injured in Aurora Colorado;

                         legally purchased weapons and body armor including an 
                        assault style weapon and large capacity magazine; July 17, 2012: 17 injured in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, attempted murder of an 18th                          legally purchased military assault style weapon used;
July 11, 2012: 4 children were shot while they played in a Chicago, Illinois park                         

                         the weapon or weapons have not been identified;
July  9, 2012: 3 dead, including 1 child, 2 wounded in a Wilmington, Delaware park

                         weapons were not specified;
July  6, 2012:  3 people were wounded in a Chicago, Illinois shooting                        

                          weapon or weapons not specified;
July  2, 2012:  1 killed, 5 wounded at a party in Seattle, Washington                        

                           20 to 30 shell casings were found at the scene, weapon(s) were not specified;
July  1, 2012:  1 dead, 2 wounded in a Chicago, Illinois shooting in a public park                        

                          weapon(s) not specified;
Planned mass shootings imitating the Aurora Colorado shootings, (as distinct from any other planned mass shootings) which were thwarted (NOT an exhaustive list):
July 27, 2012: Neil Edwin Prescott, Maryland, made phone threats intending a mass shooting

                         to a former employer, describing himself as the ‘real Joker’; he had an arsenal of
                         2 dozen weapons, including assault style weapons, thousands of rounds                        

                         of ammunition and large capacity magazines; all appear to be legally purchased;
July 24, 2012: Timothy Courtois attended a Bat Man movie showing while armed, identifying himself

                         as ‘the Joker’, he intended to shoot a former boss, unknown others;                         

                         personal arsenal included an AK-47, a machine gun, assorted hand guns

                         and other long barrel weapons, and thousands of rounds of ammunition;
                        weapons appear to be a mix of legally and illegally acquired;

And just today, we have another possible copy cat incident, from MSNBC.com:
Man armed with gun, knives entered Ohio theater showing Batman movie, police say

By Vignesh Ramachandran

Police are trying to figure out why a man took a bag of weapons with him to an Ohio movie theater showing the latest Batman movie. Authorities confirmed that 37-year-old Scott A. Smith walked into the Regal Cinemas movie theater in Westlake, Ohio, on Saturday night with several weapons, according to Cleveland’s NBC-affiliate WKYC. An off-duty police officer and the theater manager became suspicious after noticing that Smith was carrying a beige satchel, WKYC reported. Smith had bought a ticket for the 10 p.m. showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” at a Regal Cinemas about 16 miles west of Cleveland. He was the first and only person inside the movie theater and he sat in the center seat of the back row — a position with “tactical advantage,” police said, according to WKYC. He was arrested by off-duty Westlake police officer Jeremiah Bullins, after it was discovered that Smith’s bag contained a fully-loaded 9 mm pistol, two full magazines and three knives, according to WKYC. Bullins also found a fourth knife under Smith’s clothing. Smith drove a Toyota truck to the theater, which police impounded, finding a tactical vest inside, WKYC reported. Except for traffic violations, Smith does not have a criminal record and police said he never made any threats. In Smith’s home in the nearby town of North Ridgeville, Westlake police found about eight rifles and handguns, as well as gas masks and bulletproof vests, according to The Plain Dealer. Smith is married with a young daughter. His wife told police she knew about this gun room but was not aware of his motives, WKYC reported. Smith faces a minimum of four counts of carrying concealed weapons and more charges could come. He is expected to be arraigned Wednesday. I find it odd that this guy went armed to a theater, alone; that he has accumulated an arsenal of weapons – a whole gun room? – and I’m waiting for the list available to the public to be expanded to include an assault-style weapon(s) and large capacity  magazine(s), and maybe some form of gas canisters.  No doubt he acquired all of these weapons and accessories legally, and it’s better than even odds that this guy will also turn out to be a little crazy, if not a lot crazy, a proponent of the NRA ideas if not an actual member, and strongly conservative, including probably an Obama hater. Because of course, you NEED that stuff for self defense, in case, despite the long term decline in crime, you have to shoot a lot of people.  Of course if the bad guys fail to accommodate your desire to shoot someone breaking in, you have to go looking for someone to shoot.  That appears to be the premise of the NRA sponsored and written Shoot First laws that ALEC and the NRA paid conservative legislators to pass for them.
Fanatics who distort the 2nd Amendment fear that if we restrict dangerous people from acquiring and carrying firearms, either open or concealed, that there will be a terrible, horrible, frightening assault on freedom and civil rights, as distinct from the terrible, horrible, frightening assaults on the lives and bodies of actual Americans and others in this country. 
These 2nd Amendment fanatics equate more guns with more freedom, regardless of the actual decrease in safety, and therefore freedom to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  A right to SAFETY, not lethal force or vigilanteism, is part of the more recent progress in our understanding of civil rights, as reflected in the 3rd right of the Universal Declaration of Rights.  The same 2nd Amendment fanatics also tend to have an inaccurate knowledge and distorted understanding of the origins of any right to self defense and castle doctrines in western European law and philosophy. In support of the maximum possible sales of firearms and ammunition, these 2nd Amendment, mostly extreme right wing fanatics also seek to restore the rights to firearms to convicted felons, even those who committed multiple crimes of violence with firearms, and who have known problems with violence.  These criminals have a poor track record with responsible firearms ownership, and frequently commit additional crimes of violence in the community.
There is in fact, NOT a demonstrable problem with voter fraud, but conservatives want to deny millions of LEGAL voters their right to peacefully engage in the most fundamental exercise of civil rights guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution, and by our respective state constitutions.  There is no factual basis to their fears, they can find no instance of voter fraud, or altered election outcomes from voter fraud.  Conservatives oppose felons voting, or having their voting rights restored, despite those people having concluded their sentences – a position held despite every indication that when former felons – felons who have completed their sentences – DO vote, they are far more likely to become productive citizens who do not re-offend. This is a fantasy fear of voter fraud on the part of conservatives.  What they REALLY fear are losing elections where legal voters don’t like their candidates.
It is quite common for the conservatives to point to the Coleman / Franken race; but the only instance of voter fraud in that election was a Republican who committed voter fraud for Coleman and McCain.  There IS no investigation whether conducted by conservatives, liberals, neutral academics, or bi-partisan organizations like the MN County Attorney’s association which has EVER found a problem with fraudulent voting in elections. Zero, zip, NONE.  But it is a terrible fear, and the further to the right the individual, the greater that unfounded fear.  They don’t need facts, they are not persuaded by facts; they hold tightly to that fear with both hands intransigently, no matter how overwhelming the evidence is to the contrary. 
They WANT to believe their fantasies, so facts are irrelevant – they’re conservatives! Ideology replaces critical and analytical thinking, and induces them to not only ignore facts, but to actively oppose them.  This is the basis for my regular assertions that the more to the right a conservative is, the more they tend to have broken with objective reality.
In contrast, these same conservatives push for former felons, who are likely to be dangerous, to have their firearms rights restored.  There is an entire legal specialty that has grown up around it, in spite of the clear pattern of harm and danger and violence that results from it.  These are often NOT good candidates for firearms rights to be restored.  NOT giving felons legal access to guns reduces subsequent crimes by 20 to 30 percent.

We have more than seven times the gun violence of other countries. We have mass shootings almost every week, most of them with assault rifles, expanded magazines, and with legally purchased weapons. Many of the people who engage in gun crimes should have been denied firearms – and would have been under ‘may issue’ laws instead of ‘shall issue’.  Gun advocates like to claim that we don’t have blood in the streets as a result of their changes, but the reality is that we have far higher incidence of gun violence – blood EVERYWHERE – than any other civilized, developed countries with stricter gun regulation, which is pretty much ALL OF THEM.
So long as we have conservatives, especially the Republican, Libertarian, and Tea Partiers who are veering further and further to the right, and increasingly abandoning any connection to thinking based on facts, in favor of beliefs and fantasies and just plain delusions, in wanting to push for more lax gun laws but more restrictive voting laws, we will continue to have more violence, but far less freedom.
We will have, courtesy of the right, an intentional abandonment of the fundamental premise of self-government, representative government, and one man/one vote, in favor for armed criminals with assault weapons.  God forbid we give civil rights to people who are same sex oriented, or allow minorities, the military, the elderly and students to vote without onerous obstacles, even though we have more than adequate safeguards in place.  But suggest that we return to ‘may issue’ where there was not a problem with 2nd Amendment reduction, and there WAS a huge reduction in gun violence, or suggest that we restrict criminals, dangerously crazy people, domestic violence perpetrators, stalkers, or drug users from obtaining firearms legally and easily, including assault style weapons and expanded capacity magazines — things which make ALL OF US LESS SAFE AND LESS FREE  — and you will have the 2nd Amendment conservatives dementedly foaming at the mouth.
They can’t demonstrate that anyone is improperly denied firearms under ‘may issue’. The statistics are clear – shoot first laws result in an increase in homicides, but no reduction of crime.  Lax gun law states have far more gun violence, both non-fatal and fatal shootings, as well as more suicides with firearms and far more accidental shootings, especially of children.  There is ample documentation that conservative gun law changes have produced serious injury and fatalities, but they don’t care. 
We need to hold conservatives to facts, we need to vehemently and legally oppose conservative delusions of ideology, and to force them through reason to return to objective reality.  Because they are increasingly becoming more extreme – and more dangerous to all of us, including themselves. Their fears are misplaces, their terrors of others are wrong, and they have lost the ability to reason.  Facts are their enemies more than any criminals who might harm them. 
Facts should be their friends, if we can stop their dementia.  But until the right returns to sanity and factual, objective reality, we have to stop their efforts to endanger us all.  We have to step up and confront them on their lies and factual inaccuracies about the Constitution, their failed gun culture, and their failed ideologies. Our ACTUAL freedom, and our very lives are at risk from conservatives, their politics and legislation. We need to deal with the real world, and we can begin by learning the lessons of facts, and making responsible changes, including emulating what has worked in the rest of the world.
The answer is fewer guns, less violence, less groundless fear, less right wing extremism, and more voters participating in representative government.  THAT would make us all more free, and be consistent with the U.S. Constitution.  We should renew the assault rifle ban, and ban expanded capacity magazines, and give felons the ballot, but not guns and bullets.
Ballots are not the risk; bullets are.