doctor there for columbine and colorado, tells us his heart sank. >> from toure. ordinary merges, stories suggesting some of russ programmed to be heros. >> i'm krystal ball. back to politics as usual but is the president's team shifting strategy? >> i'm steve kornacki. time for straight talk about guns. a conversation you won't hear anywhere else. >> my thoughts on this moment in history. it's tuesday july 24th and you're in "the cycle." families of the 12 aurora victims are starting the solemn task of planning final farewells. the first funerals expected this weekend. over the past 24 hours four survivors released from local hospitals, 21 of the 58 shot are still hospitalized, 10 in

critical condition. also learning more about the suspect's bizarre behavior. we saw him in a days in court yesterday and now reports that when police put evidence bags on his hands to preserve any gunshot residue, james holmes pretended the bags were puppets. police are searching for a motive and getting help from the fbi behavioral analysis unit. formal charges are coming monday but it will be months before he's arraigned and enters a plea of guilty, not guilty or as most expect not guilty by reason of insanity. we start with nbc's jay gray outside the century theater in aurora. jay, we are learning more about the suspect's bizarre behavior and his booby trapped apartment. what's the latest on both of those? >> reporter: s.e., let's break this down in a couple of ways. first the reaction from people here after that appearance. a lot of them are saying that this is all an ability, that this is building up to, as you have talked about, some insanity

plea and it's frustrating for those survivors, those who have lived through this and this community that's been shattered here. a lot of people point to what investigators are finding inside the apartmenting like you talk about about. how can a man plan this out for so many months and have an intricate cache of explosives in his home and still be insane. what they found so far, 30 home made explosives inside this apartment, wired to a central control box. in fact, that's how these explosives were disarmed, a robot went in, dumped water on the control box, allowing bomb squads to remove explosives. a lot of the bombs inside resemble ieds used in iraq or afghanistan. highly developed. also ten gallons of gasoline inside of his apartment. not only did he want an explosion but wanted a fire. and a lot of the investigator whose have seen the scene there say that it would have been both and it would have been tragic again. >> to shift gears briefly flshg

colorado, background checks for people wanting to buy guns is spiking in three days since the shooting. what's going on there? >> reporter: there's no question about that. "the denver post" revealing data that shows a 40% spike in those who applied for gun permits in two days following the shooting on friday and saturday, up 40% from the last weekend. 3,000 people looking to buy a gun. also a dramatic increase in the number of people who applied for a concealed carry license. now that's driven obviously out of fear of the attacks. but we've seen it in other tragedies. a big concern that there will be stricter gun laws. a lot of people rush to buy what they can, fearing laws will change. it's something that this community's forced to deal with. >> sure. nbc's jay gray, thanks for joining us. i want to bring in dr. chris caldwell. doctor, the hospital originally received seven aurora victims, four still being treated but all

of your patients survived. you credit a big part of your response to how you handled columbine victims 13 years ago and what you've learned since then. explain that. >> well, i think we have learned certainly from major events that have happened columbine being one of them, we've learned to better prepare for a major event where you get multiple victims and get out of the mode where we will typically have when we have a gunshot wound victim that comes in, say, most evenings, and focus all of our resources on that. when you have the potential for a lot of victims coming in and many very ill you want to start to mobilize resources early, you want to start to identify what resources need to be applied to which patient at that moment. realizing you may need more later. it's a different mind-set and it's important to not only think about that, unfortunately in some cases experience it, and also practice and drill it so you're ready for something like this. >> doctor, i was wondering if you could talk a little bit you

as a human being and a doctor responding to a mass tragedy like this. what is going through your mine as you're treating victims? is it just your training and experience kicking? what kind of longer lasting emotional toll does it take on you as a person? >> so it does take certainly a longer lasting toll down the road, i think, all of us are human and it impacts all of us in so many ways. some wayis i feel lucky becausei have a task i can do and i can focus on that. i don't have to think about the bigger ramifications of what's happening, why it happened, how that can be prevented, and why some of the things that came together that resulted in this event happened. i don't have to think about that. certainly not right away. and many of us, as providers, responders, can focus on the job at hand, the task at hand. so many times it is, it's going into that realm. we do, we unfortunately certainly at denver health and

many places across the country treat gunshot wound victims on a regular basis. so we can go into that mode and certainly my role in the hospital is very different from a situation, say, at columbine where i was a physician at the scene. then you need to step back and look more at a scene, triage, those type of things. particularly in this case, talking about victims at the hospital we as providers can focus on that, can go into that mode, and we -- it does take its toll but it's later, it's after we've had a chance to focus on taking care of patients. >> talk about that moment when you come out of that mode, finished dealing with a specific patient and now you have to debrief and maybe not just you but your staff and especially as a group of people who also dealt with columbine so you have bad memories coming back as well as the trauma that you're dealing with in front of you. >> so it is, it's so important to recognize how this will impact providers. certainly the responders. but even the people in the hospital and seeing that come in

and then taking it all in after and trying to come to grips with what has happened and how this impacts all of us. so it's important to have those types of discussions. you have what we call debriefings where you get the group together, both the folks involved but also even people that weren't necessarily involved but you interact with every day so you can talk through some of the things, sort through some of the things, identify what might have hance answers and what might help some people and what some things we may never know the answer for. but that debriefing is so important. and it sometimes gets lost in all of this while we focus on that health care. so it is so important to do that. and then we're all, i think, faced with going home and sitting down and realizing that we have families and what happens there. do we change because of what happened here? with columbine you bring up, i didn't have children at the time, i've since had children, so do you let them go to school? with this episode, do you go to movies?

my wife and i took our three kids to a movie on sunday. almost specifically to say, we're going to make a decision not to be governed by fear, as tempting as it is to do this. >> that's powerful. >> thinking back to thursday, when this happened it happened overnight, i guess. just kind of curious, how did you find out about it? where were you? what's your reaction when you get that initial report something like this has happened? >> so at the moment it happened i was home in bed and the phone call i got was before 1:00 in the morning. very official reaction is trying to wake up. i had spend a long day at work before so i was fairly in deep sleep and it was an initial wake-up and initial seconds of trying to register what the message really was. but they don't call me at home for the fairly typical episodes where we run into potential multiple victims from a shooting or something like that. this united statwas beyond that. it quickly went into okay we

have obviously identified a situation in all likelihood something unusual even for us. so now we need to go very quickly into the mode of what needs to happen, how do we mobilize resources, what needs to happen now, what do i need to be thinking about for six hours and eight hours from now? one of the initial thoughts, sense we were well-resourced at this time when this came in, we had both evening shift and the night shift both there. so we were -- we had good resources at the time. but you have to think, is this really an event that's going to last maybe 8, 12 hours or more? what resources are we going to need to replace ones that are dealing with the incident right now? you need to think of those type of things. i can focus on the task at hand, not so much how is this happening, is it really happening, not again. >> dr. colwell, thank you so much for joining us. the first responder is just one part of the heroic story playing out in colorado.

later, stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. next, presidential politics. are voters getting the message on bain or is the president's campaign? no mention of bain in the new obama ad. we're putting it through the spin cycle as we roll on for tuesday july 24th. eat good fats. avoid bad. don't go over 2000... 1200 calories a day. carbs are bad. carbs are good. the story keeps changing. so i'm not listening... to anyone but myself. i know better nutrition when i see it: great grains. great grains cereal starts whole and stays whole. see the seam? more processed flakes look nothing like natural grains. you can't argue with nutrition you can see. great grains. search great grains and see for yourself. for multi grain flakes that are an excellent source of fiber try great grains banana nut crunch and cranberry almond crunch.

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. . up in the cycle's offices we have been arguing for weeks months whether or not the president's attacks on romney's

experience at bain is working. two new polls give us an answer, totally unclear. new "usa today" gallup poll, 63% say romney's business background would make him a good leader to make good decisions about the economy, says the attacks aren't working, a new reuters ipso policy romney less favorably because of bain suggesting attacks are working. romney addressed the vfw last hour trying to sell the war vets not on bain but his foreign policy experience. >> the president's policies made it harder to recover from the deepest recession in 70 years. exposed the military to cuts that no one can justify. compromised our national security secrets. and in dealings with other nations, he has given trust where it is not earned, insult where it was not deserved, and

apology where it is not due. >> meanwhile the obama campaign is out with a new tone with this new ad. >> over the next four months you have a choice to make. not just between two political parties or even two people. it's a choice between two very different plans for our country. governor romney's plan would cut taxes for the folks at the very top. roll back regulations on big banks, and he says that if we do, our economy will grow and everyone will benefit. but you know what? we tried that top-down approach. it's what caused the mess in the first place. i believe the only way to create an economy built to last is to strengthen the middle class, asking the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way, so we can afford to invest in education, manufacturing, and homegrown american energy for good middle class jobs. sometimes politics can seem very small. but the choice you face, it

couldn't be bigger. i'm barack obama, and i approve this message. >> steve, i found that ad presidential. he's taking the high ground. he's playing on his likability and he's changing the tone which is what a leader does. he's setting the direction. we've had a lot of negative ads and a lot of complaining about the negative ads. this is entirely different than that tone we've been seeing. >> it is. what's most striking to me is the calendar. sitting here in july and watching an incumbent president appearing in his own ad mentioning his opponent by name, is opponent who hasn't formally been nominated by his own party. it's extraordinary. it speaks to the saturation of campaign advertising and a lot of the states. people are watching "jeopardy" or -- the show -- >> some other show. >> the point is -- >> some other network. >> watching, seeing ad after ad after ad and it creates this noise, if you look up and

there's obama in front of your camera talking to you it talks to you a little bit more. that bain stuff is so interesting to me. i'm quickly coming around to the idea i have been saying we will know on election day whether bain works or not. i'm coming around to the idea we may never know if bain works or not. >> if we find the black box we'll know. >> if it works, it works. it's a mike scopic level, moves 1 or 2% away. but there's a lot of things out there that could do that. >> you read a campaign if you were running or if you were advising obama, wouldn't you be attacking romney by name even though he's not the official nominee yet? >> he does in that add. one of the things that triking to me about the new ad is that he does draw contrast with governor romney. but he does it in such a like smiley way that you don't get that nasty negative ad feel from it. >> the music. >> no music. >> the music's sweet and nice. >> photos of romney. >> exactly. but you know, it's been sort of

characterized as a change in direction and change in tone it can be seen as part of a broader strategy. that ad is framing the election as a choice. this isn't just a referendum on me. you have another alternative, compare us and see who you prefer. and romney, obviously, wants to run as the sort of generic, inoffensive alternative to obama. the bain attacks do the same thing. they seem to seek to frame the election as a choice. romney's not just some guy. he's a guy who has a record and here's his record and let's talk about it. what i would say is the new ad is great for a broad audience. i think the bain attacks work very well in certain parts of the country that are more familiar with the private equity story, with factory closures and in particular, in ohio there was a purple poll that was done a while back that showed there was a larger am of distrust of private equity in bain capital in ohio versus the rest of the country and other swing states.

>> i think this was a great ad by the president, as you said, it's uplifting, it's got stirring music. and we talked about this earlier, steve. it didn't even feel to me like an attack ad because it was so positive and upbeat and no nasty photos of romney. i thought it was a great ad. that said if you just look at the last two months, june and july, and real clear politics points this out today, obama heavily outspent romney. the ads focused primarily on bain, as did we in the media. and over those two months, president obama's approval rating plummeted. so i'm not sure that that's a long-term indication of how bain's going to sell. if that's going to matter in november or if there's even a correlation. but those are the hard reality of june and july for the president. it's not particularly good months. >> i wouldn't say he plummeted. i would say if you look at the poll of all of the poll, average them together, i think -- >> i'm quoting "real clear

politics" plummeted. >> he's down a point and a half two points in his horse race standing with romney and approval ratings. and i wonder if there's something there with what the jobs report earlier this month did and the basic deadening effect of that on the electorate. the other thing, the poll earlier about the other sort of idea here with the bain attacks is to undermine the assumption that most swing voters have, somebody with a business background has competence on economic policy. what jumps out at me you had the poll earlier, i've gone back and forth whether bain is going to work or isn't, 63/29, business background will help him make good economic decisions that's that assumption at work. for now, very early, middle of summer, but at least for now they're having a hard time making that assumption. >> we didn't know what the number was before the bain attacks. >> a poll about mitt romney and you're going to get a third anytime saying the bad answer, because they're democrats. >> one other thing i notice,

obama wants to make it a three-man race, mentions president bush, that's what got us in this mess. he wants to keep the elephant in the room. >> nothing subtle about him bringing bush into this election. >> going to bring it in quite a bit. >> yeah. >> and romney's going to not to have him at rnc. interesting. coming up, president obama quoted scripture when he consoled the aurora community sunday. making me wonder if we could ever have a nonreligious president. our next guest says maybe, because secular americans are rising up author of "nonbeliever nation "is is next. i am going to become facebook friends

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they're going through such an emotional time right now. but my congregation yesterday in church i discussed the reality

of evil and you know the big question, we always get back to you, is there evil in the world? i delivered a message yesterday based on a verse in the bible in romans, 12:21, that says, don't let evil overcome you. >> that was the pastor on our show yesterday offering spiritual guidance to many in the aurora community after the shooting. what about nonbelievers? well, the exact number of secular americans like myself is open to debate. evidence that americans are increasingly less tied to for formal religion. when asked to identify the religious identity 16% said none, that's up from near zero in 1940s and 50s based on gallup tracking. the next guest says number of nonbelievers is as many as 1 in 5. david niose, president of the american human association.

david, author of nonbeliever nation the rise of secular americans. first, clear up terminology, briefly. you throw a lot of words out there, secular, nonbelievers, atheists, who are you really talking about here? >> well, we're talking about nonreligious americans, s.e., people who probably don't go to church and are at least apathetic about their religious belief, not on board with all of the religious -- >> wait, are they believers? do they believe in god? >> most are not, although it's really worth noting that a lot of americans are rather apathetic about the question. they might be inclined to say, yes, i believe, but they live their lives in a naturalistic way without relying on supernatural answers. so in that way, we should understand with any categorization there's always some gray area. and i think we could say some secular americans might be inclined to say that they

believe but you know the core of the secular movement is certainly nonbelievers. >> well, so, david, i mean, ever since ka perscapernics. someone has been declaring death o. god. inexplicably he persists, there's something to this thousands-year-old thing. do you think nonbelievers will be a majority in the country or anywhere in the world? mr. i think it's certainly possible. in western europe there large percentages and the trend's in that direction. religion can be understood as a natural phenomenon. in fact, there have been books recently writ been that and i refer to it in my own book. it's understandable why humans as very intelligent answers would invent supernatural explanations for things.

but what we're finding, as we move forward as human beings that we can fill in most of those gaps without supernaturalism. >> david i appreciated a lot of what i read in your book, especially the idea the religious right, which tried to shape the discussion to say that they are the true americans and the others, the rest of us, are not i appreciated that idea of reclaiming it's not un-american to be a nonbeliever, to be nonreligious but i wondered, would it be possible for a nonreligious person to become president of the united states? i would suggest perhaps no because the religious people would punish him or her and the nonreligious would not flock to that person as evangelical christians or jews would rally around someone of their faith. >> we think the trend is in that direction. in fact the polling seems to show that. last month, for the first time ever a poll came out showing that a majority of americans would vote for a qualified

atheist president. it was only 54%, which is not an acceptable number. we want that number to be higher. but it's much higher than it was the first time the poll was conducted back in the 1950s, only 18% said yes. so, clearly the trend is in that direction. it's also worth pointing out, among young people, the number was 70%. so certainly the generations coming up are more tal rant of secularity than the older generation. >> i'm an atheist. something i never understood. why would nonbelievers want to rebel against organized religion by organizing themselves around a system of nonbelief? i mean, what's the goal here? why is it important for you as a nonbeliever to get recognition somehow and to be recognized and acknowledged as a majority or growing minority? >> that's a great question. and really the answer is that the opposition to the religious

right thus far for the first 25 years, let's state the religious right to 1980 when the moral majority came on the scene, for the first 25 years, the opposition to the religious right was a dismal failure. why was that? mainly the opposition came from two sectors. it came from liberal and moderate politicians claiming to be religious themselves and advocacy groups which were also quick to associate themselves with religion. now we need that opposition, that's great. but something was missing. what was missing was something, anybody's standing up for the dignity of secular americans, of nonbelievers. that's what the movement is all. we're not trying to organize around disbelief as if disbelief is a way of life that everyone should flock to. what we're organizing around is the idea that we are part of the american tapestry. >> well, david niose, i appreciate it. thanks for joining us. power from within. today we've learned new details about the girl who risked her

life for her friend in the aurora movie theater. are some of us just born heroes or would any of us do that for someone we love? we'll find out just ahead. ovidet but centurylink is committed to being a different kind of communications company by continuing to help you do more and focus on the things that matter to you.

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inside saying no, we have to come back inside bus baus he's going to shoot people trying to escape and he did. >> i remember thinking made go and i grabbed him and i remember thinking, i'm not going to die in here, me and my kids, we are not going to die in here we need to get out. and all i could think was if i stand up he's going to shoot, because that's what he was doing and i was just trying to think, how i was going to get my kids out of there. >> our cops went through a lot. as i told you this morning, they rushed people out of that theater into police cars. i -- i have heard some compelling stories. >> wow. hard to watch. but uplifting as well. so the question is, are we humans intrinsically heroic or or some of us programmed to be heroes? joining us now, psychologist dr. michelle callahan. >> thanks for having me.

>> is heroism the sort of natural human response? would any of us behave the same way when under fire like that or are these people really special? >> everybody has potential to enact her reism. we often think of it being police officers or firemen, only superheroes our true heroes when most heros are everyday people, there isn't anything uniquely different about them than anything else. we done see consistency against age or gender. across social lines we're seeing people take on heroic acts. >> i want to talk about the nature of men in these situations and we know lots of stories of women doing amazing, heroic things, lifting cars to save their children. i was struck by so many of the men we heard about shielding their wives or fiancees or girlfriends and dying so they could live. i mean i think about sort of being a bar fight where my wife was or my girlfriend, i

naturally shielded her. >>er to ray gets in lots of bar fights. >> and my own risk to myself. is there a way we socialize men to think of themselves as protectors and sort of want to protect the women that they care about? >> absolutely. i mean, we've been saying, you know, women and children first for as long as any of us can remember. so men are absolutely socialized to put women and children first but also in a situation like this, of course people are going to immediately want to save and rescue and support and help their friends, families, even strangers because of that familiarity you have of being from the same neighborhood, being from the same town, liking the same thing. it doesn't have to be that you know the person to want to help them out but having some similarity to them is enough to everyo everyone pa thiz and step forward. >> we just sort of snap into a mode and just go and just protect that person and you don't even really think about

yourself in that moment, do you? >> absolutely. most people are doing this completely second nature. this is psychological process, sort of kicks in, and they go with it. if they had time to think about it they'd worry about everything else. one of the key sort of principles of being able to take that heroic move is not think of yourself first but actually putting other people first and people who tend to do that more are the ones more likely without a second thought are going to immediately jump to action. >> doctor, following up on that point i wonder, are there certain traits or characteristics that separate the people who would jump into action right a what from those who think of themselves first. i can remember hear in new york a few years ago the guy who jumped on to the subway tracks and shielded the guy who was having a seizure. we always have stories like that. i've seen stories of people confronted with similar choices who look the other way, run for the exits themselves who have the save themselves mentality. how common is that? what characteristics are there that separate people like that?

>> it it can go both way. people will fall into a sort of group mentality if everyone's doing nothing, they follow the group, there are other people who see themselves more as individuals and decide they want to take a stand and do something unique. there isn't one set of characteristics that would describe all heroes. everybody sort of almost has that seed of promise to do something great within them. certainly people more empathetic, able to take another's perspective and you know thinking about the greater good of other people and what's better for others and saving other people. a lot of what makes people feel motivated to step up and do that. but you never know because they've never been put in that situation before that moment. other than being nice, there aren't clear indications this is the person to bring to the -- to bring out with me because they're going to jump in front of a bus to save my life. >> we've been talking about the -- what intrinsically makes you a hero. one of the victims had taken

that day, her test to become a firefighter and the article i read spoke of how that training and that testing that she just had gone through kicked in at that moment. can you be trained to be a hero. >> definitely. people are trying to train other folks to be heroes. and one of the two you know major things is to be able to take the perspective of someone else and think about what their needs are first. and the other thing is to be more proactive and just taking action. people are so complacent and passive and standers-bias opposed to having a mentality there's always something you can potentially jump in and do, be willing to take action. >> thanks so much for that insight. michelle callahan. up next, the conversation that we have sort of intentionally stayed away from on "the cycle," gun control. find out our different take. that's coming up.

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urgently. >> that was president clinton in 1993 one day after the long island railroad massacre calling for stronger action on guns. 20 years later, it's incredible how much has changed. back in 1993, 70% of americans believed our gun laws needed to be more strict, only 28% said they needed to be maintained or lessened. now it's almost the complete reverse. majority, 55% feel gun laws should be less strict for kept the same. those who want stronger laws, 43%. two decades ago democrats running on gun control. today they're hiding from it. so, we don't really want to have a conversation about gun control here but we want to have a conversation about the conversation about gun control, how dramatically it's changed in the last two decades. there are a lot of different directs we go here. one place to start is this, we can acknowledge 12 years ago after 2000 election, gore defe dee feeted by bush. there was a change, a guy like bill clinton who we saw arguing

for gun control to democrats saying we think emphasizing gun control hurt us with blue collar, white voters, places like missouri, west virginia. >> virginia. >> you know, virginia. cost al gore the election. they really have from a policy standpoint, from a rhetorical standpoint laid off of gun control for last decade. in the same time the intensity of the opposition of opposition to gun control especially among those voters has really kind of gone through the roof. and it's reached a point where barack obama is so afraid of alienating voter his won't say anything in the wake of the tragedy in colorado. i want to start maybe with you s.e. and can you explain that to me? as a conservative, somebody who opposes gun control, nothing's happened from the democratic stan point in 12 years but yes it's ferocious as ever in the opposition. >> for the past 10, 15 years as conservatives and gun advocates, started to see some pushback they dug in their heels and this culture around the second

amendment was created and the second amendment went from one issue issue to an issue that was imbued with all of this meaning. it suddenly had class implications, cultural meaning, almost religious significance. we all look back at obama's quote in 2008 about middle america clinging to guns and religion that was a condescending thing to say but the intink to marry the two issues was right on. i mean, there is an almost manifest destiny since around second amendment issues for conservatives. and conservatives and republicans, i think, now use it as he litmus test, sort of a representation, do you get me? my dad's a perfect example. he's a staunch republican, does not own a gun, doesn't care about guns but cares if you support the second amendment because it's a reflection of whether or not you get him. >> yeah. >> that has changed. that is the result of the past ten years.

>> interesting, it's a cultural signifier. i want to give you a rorschach test here. a picture from 2004 campaign, when democrats decided we're going to try to get the blue collar voters, we're going to try to show them we understand them, john kerry going hunting in the swing state of ohio a week before the election and there he was with a dead goose and this was supposed to tell you maybe not you, but sort of the blue collar, white voter i'm not going after your guns, i am part of your lifestyle but what do you see culturally when you see a picture like that? >> a lipstick on the pig. that's not going to convince me, john kerry, new england elitist liberal put any signifier on him you want, he's not someone who gets me. right or wrong, that is i think what most conservatives saw when they saw him. >> that raises the question, too, of if conservatives are going to see what s.e. described when they look at a democrat,

even when a democrat is making efforts to appeal to gun owners and those who oppose gun control, krystal it raises the question for democrats you spent the last 12 years you're not a gun control party but still thinking you're the gun control party, why not be the gun control part. >> though you may have in the democratic coalition certainly if you polled democrats they would say they're in support of gun control broadly. it's not the animating issue on left as it is on the rooeft right. it's not for most democrats it's not their number one issue. a lot of democrats will tell you confidentially it's not something they're really concerned about it's not noumbe one for them. as someone who ran for congress in virginia i can tell you the political calculus in virginia is still very much in a rural area, you need to be right on gun rights because i think s.e.'s absolutely right, it's a signaling issue. it's not just about guns. it's a do you get us?

are you from here? do you get us? are you standing up for us or are you a john kerry, al gore, nancy pelosi, stereotypical sort of liberal elite who doesn't get where we're coming from? i think we're coming from. that's one interesting thing with the bill clinton clip you showed. bill clinton is a southern arkansas democrat with a southern accent. and in some ways that gives him more room to maneuver on gun control because he already passes the threshold of, okay, here is a guy more or less like us. has he more room to maneuver than, say, a barack obama. >> the other thing you make me think about my dad, longtime democrat, gun owner but doesn't become a litmus test with him like do you get me. we don't have a litmus test, we can't have a substantive debate

when everybody is sensitive. it's fallen over the last years. the average voters feels less of the fear that would motivate lawmakers to do something. these spectacular mass killing are way up from when our dads were kids. i think there was something like 11 in the '50s and '60s and over 550 in the last century, a decade ago. those things sort of make us think about these things. we understand those are outlier crimes, somebody going to shoot up the mall or the school. i would hope it would be a trayvon martin situation that would make people think, wow, wrongful death, illegal gun owner, how do we move forward from this situation. so much of this issue is let's make sure law abiding white people have access to guns and black criminals do not. we don't want to talk about that sort of racial, black bottom of it all but that's definitely part of it. >> it's interesting to me how

certain events make this debate evolve over crime and guns. can you go back decades, gangland stuff, al capone would get people scared about crime, then street crime. maybe this stuff reaches a critical mass, one doesn't. up next, final thoughts on all of this. more on the penn state scandal, more to come on the cycle.

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man goes on a rampage, dozens of victims. lives lost. it applies to james holmes who will undoubtedly face charges for shoot up a theater but also jerry sandusky who had a different assault, different kind of violence. both times asking how can it be prevented. it's difficult to manifest, more horrifying than fiction can present. every time evil men do evil things. it's why we try in vein so many times to prevent it from happening again. institutions respond, well, institutionally by handing down broad and in discriminate promises and oversight. ncaa brought down.

no one thinks sandusky's co-workers weren't trained to report him. the problem is jerry sandusky is a monster and his buddies allowed him to be. for james holmes there will be institutional responses as well, broad and in discriminating. the call for gun control that inevitably stirs after a tragedy is just as defective with dealing with unmitigated evil because evil will find as way as john hickenlooper pointed out sunday. >> you look at this person, again, almost a creature. if he couldn't have gotten access to the guns, what kind of bomb would he manufacture. >> this is not to say we should throw up our hands and wait for the next tragedy. child predators like jerry sandusky and would be murderers like holmes should prompt serious debate about cultures of corruption, mental health, and yes, yes guns. we should make it harder for predators like sandusky to operate unchecked and make it

harder for mentally disturbed psychopaths to get their hands on dangerous weapons, not broad and indiscriminating but targeted responses. institutional responses don't solve men like sandusky and holmes because evil can't be prevented by committees and weapons bans. in these moments we demonstrate an incredibly inspiring optimism in human nature in asking what can we do. the cynical truth is evil finds a way. sometimes there are tragedies too senseless to make sense of. more on this in my daily news column tomorrow. >> you make a good point that we can't legislate against evil, that it will find a way. it seems sandusky could have been stopped a lot more easily than the aurora shooter. >> right. >> the laws we have on the table talk about gun control perhaps would not have stopped him. he could have found another easier way. but if joe paterno, as we said, had said something, had allowed everybody to report this as they should have, sandusky would have

been stopped years ago. >> that was that culture that allowed sandusky to operate with such, you know, abandon. >> i think about this in terms of our legislators as well. we talk about different reforms we could institute in congress, but the bottom line is there's no substitute for electing good people and trusting them. it's the same deal here. there's no substitute for having a community that supports one another for having high ethical standards. >> we'll be off tomorrow and thursday, back on friday. then we'll be back after the olympics as the networks of nbc take you to london for the next two weeks plus. okay. that does it for "the cycle." richard lui in the chair for martin. >> hey, big thanks to you, my colleagues on "the cycle." i'm richard lui in for martin bashir. it's tuesday july 24th, and here is what's happening.