By: Mike Hosking | Wednesday, July 25, 2012 9:14 AM

It would appear that the gun debate won’t be happening post the Aurora shooting.

I have been waiting for it. Isn’t it reasonable to waiting for it when something that horrific happens? The obvious question - how is it someone can get their hands on that kind of weaponry and explosives? So far nothing. In fact so far there are solid indicators that if you are waiting for the debate, you’ll be waiting a long time.

I am still to work out whether it’s timing or time. Time means they’re done, they don't have the debate any more. It happens too often. They’ve had the debate over and over and it doesn’t change.

Remember of course this is the worst shooting in the US not in a lifetime or a generation or even a decade, but in three years. The last bad one was the military one where a soldier went nuts, which is where the timing comes in. It’s a bad time for a gun debate given it’s an election year. Congress is about to shut up shop for the year as half of them wander back to their home states and try and get re-elected, which presumably is why when the president went to Colorado earlier this week he went, as he said, as a father and a husband. This is probably the right thing to do because people need comfort from leaders and he does that sort of thing well and genuinely. But also if he’d gone as president, they might have started asking a few questions about access to weaponry, about gun laws, about violence and that would have started to get a bit uncomfortable.

He’s lucky of course. Under normal circumstances the opponent leaps in and looks for some political mileage out of the incumbent’s weakness. But no one is as weak as your average republican when it comes to gun control. So you’ll notice the silence from Mr Romney can be observed the length and breadth of America.

So it seems it’s being publicly acknowledged that in this circumstance there will be no debate on guns or gun control. In fact one headline called it a ‘no go area’. You then assume will mean that in another three years or two or five, but certainly in the not too distant future, certainly sooner than just about any other western nation on the planet would tolerate, someone else is going to commit basically the same crime all over again.

If you don’t learn from it, you repeat it. Which in a detached, observational sort of way, I suppose is fine. After all it’s another country. It’s their problem, not ours. But surely the irony can not be missed. How is it America proclaims so much on the global stage in terms of size, leadership, freedom and influence, and yet can humiliate and embarrass itself so spectacularly in an area like this.