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In a city of 332,000 people, the Colorado shooting suspect bummed cigarettes, drove around in his Hyundai, went to bars, and kept to himself. Christine Pelisek and Eliza Shapiro report.

Shooting suspect James Eagan Holmes spent the majority of the last 13 months in Aurora, Colo., a city of 332,000 people whose claim to fame is 17-year-old Olympic swimming hopeful Missy “the Missile” Franklin. Holmes, the son of a schoolteacher and software-company manager, kept largely to himself, barely straying outside a four-mile radius except for a few trips to gun shops—including a pawnshop in San Diego—where he bought a military-style semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun, and two Glock .

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Colo. Gov. leads town in prayer vigil.

President Obama arrived in Aurora, Colo., on Sunday afternoon and he is expected to make a public address there, although he will not attend a prayer vigil in the town on Sunday night. "I come to them not so much as president but as a father and a husband," Obama said. "I confessed to them that while words are always inadequate in these kinds of situations, my main task is to be a representative of the entire country and to let them know that we think about them each and every day." Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper read aloud the names of each victim, and after each name, the crowd chanted "we will remember."

Read it at Denver Post

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Batman mask reportedly found at Holmes's apartment.

James Holmes’s semiautomatic assault rifle jammed during the attack that killed 12 people and left 58 wounded at an Aurora, Colorado, screening of The Dark Knight Rises, a source told the Associated Press on Sunday. The source, a federal law enforcement official, said a weapon with a 100-round drum magazine—which can fire 50 to 60 rounds per minute—was recovered at the scene; Holmes reportedly had to switch to a weapon with less firepower after the first one jammed. Holmes, 24, opened fire at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie on Friday. A law enforcment official told the Associated Press that a Batman mask had been found inside Holmes's apartment. Aurora police chief Dan Oates also said that Holmes had "lawyered up" and would not cooperate with police.

Read it at Associated Press

Asks “will you visit me in prison?”

AdultFriendFinder.com allegedly hosts a profile of a man that is possibly Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes that was created just two weeks before the massacre, TMZ reported on Sunday. The top of his alleged page poses a disturbingly telling question: "Will you visit me in prison?" And the introduction is similarly eerie, as he describes himself as "a nice guy. Well, as nice enough of a guy who does these sort of shenanigans." In his picture he sports dyed red hair, like authorities say he looked when arrested.

Read it at TMZ

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James Holmes’ apartment was such a powder keg, it could have unleashed even more horror that awful night, an investigator tells The Daily Beast. Christine Pelisek and Eliza Shapiro report.

If alleged mass shooter James Holmes had succeeded in his apparent plan to blow up his apartment, the results would have been “catastrophic,” a law enforcement source tells The Daily Beast. According to the source, who did not want to be identified, Holmes’ apartment was packed not only with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) filled with black gunpowder, but also 10 gallons of gasoline that, if ignited, would have created a destructive “domino effect.

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Obama and Romney won’t even mention the ‘g’ word after the tragedy in Aurora. That’s pathetic, writes Judith Miller. What if four ex-presidents got together to do the right thing?

I have a dream to counter the nightmare of Aurora. I see three or four ex-presidents standing together, speaking truth to the American people. Here is what they would say:“Our fellow Americans, we have come together not as Democrats or Republicans, but as men who have been privileged to lead this great country. We all treasure the constitution and the Second Amendment. We believe that Americans have the right to own guns. But that amendment does not entitle citizens to own combat weapons like the assault weapon that the Aurora shooter used to kill 12 and wound 58 more in a Colorado theater.

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As Obama plans to meet families.

Despite intense scrutiny over the last three days, Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes remains strangely anonymous. On Sunday, as President Obama prepares to meet with families of the shooting’s victims, a six-year-old video of Holmes, now 24, was uncovered by ABC News. The recording of a speech Holmes made at a science camp at Miramar College in San Diego shows the teen discussing a research project. He is introduced as a young man whose “goals are to become a researcher and to make scientific discoveries.” He is said to enjoy “playing soccer and strategy games, and his dream is to own a Slurpee machine.”

Read it at ABC

Ranging in age from 6 to 51, the victims of Friday’s massacre were students, veterans, and parents. As tales of heroism and tragedy emerge from witnesses, The Daily Beast looks at what we know of the dozen lives that were cut short.

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The death of at least 12 people at a screening of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ on Friday was, in the worst possible sense, meaningless and all the more horrible for that.

After the grisly massacre in Colorado no one will attend weekend showings of The Dark Knight Rises with expectations of a rollicking, uplifting, feel-good night at the movies. But even before its association with horrifying images of real-life mass murder, this final installment in the current Batman series suffered from serious deficiencies in terms of its fun factor. It’s wrong to suggest that the movie provoked the killings in its midnight Aurora premiere, but those crimes do, in a sense, expose the nihilistic darkness at the heart of the film that’s become dominant in far too much of today’s pop culture.

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James Holmes allegedly used a load of weapons to kill 12 people in Colorado. But his relatives, who descended from the Pilgrims and America’s first militia, had a very different relationship to arms.

As she presided over the regular luncheon meetings of the Monterey Bay Colony of Mayflower Descendants, Mary Jane Crawford Holmes represented a lineage stretching proudly back to the original Pilgrims.She never could have imagined that her family’s landing on Plymouth Rock would extend almost four centuries later to a grandson accused of mass murder at a Batman movie.That sort of violence couldn’t be more foreign to the genteel gatherings in the Beach House at the Monterey Peninsula Country Cub on idyllic Pebble Beach in California.

Judi Bottoni / AP (FILE)

Alleged movie-theater shooter James Holmes used several weapons, one of which was outlawed under an expired federal law—and is a favorite of Michele Bachmann.

The AR-15 assault rifle is a fearsome weapon, forged from aircraft-grade aluminum and as powerful as a Kandahar-bound M16. When Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes fired off as many as 50 shots a minute during his Friday-morning rampage, at least one bullet blasted all the way through the movie theater’s wall, hitting a victim on the other side. The AR-15 is also easy to shoot—“any idiot can do it,” a former border-patrol agent told CNN.Among gun-rights advocates, the AR-15 appears to be popular.

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Like previous tragedies, the movie-theater shooting in Colorado has led to all sorts of fevered calls to action. Jesse Singal on why psychologists think we should resist that impulse.

Friday’s movie-theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., which left at least 12 people dead, has ignited the same conversation as those that have followed other gun-related tragedies: what can be done to prevent this from happening again? And the debates that have ensued, on issues ranging from gun control to midnight-movie screenings, will only ramp up as more time passes.It’s probably a good thing that these discussions are taking place. Yet psychologists and other researchers who study human decision making see some potential pitfalls in making new laws—or taking any major action—in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy.

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The gun-rights group’s Friday night webcast barely touched on the Colorado shooting; most of the show was devoted to bashing the U.N. for trying to curb global arms sales. James Warren reports.

The National Rifle Association’s nightly online newscast, “The Daily News,” opened Friday with the unavoidably prime news of the day: the movie-theater horror in Colorado.Its report on what anchor Ginny Simone termed “the unthinkable tragic shooting that shocked the country today” lasted 35 seconds. It concluded with word that, “at this hour the NRA is telling all media, including the NRA Daily News, that its policy is that it will have no comment until all the facts are known in this case.

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Few in Hollywood think ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ caused the tragedy in Colorado. But some do wonder if popular culture has desensitized people to the very real consequences of violence.

As the nation tries to process the shooting tragedy in Aurora, Colo., some in Hollywood are saying it is time to take a look within—and better understand their role in creating the images of violence that permeate popular culture.Director Christopher Nolan issued a statement after the shooting saying that the movie theater was his “home” and that it was “devastating” someone would “violate that innocent and hopeful place.”But it seems like more and more, the movie theater has lost its luster of an “innocent” place.

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For a presidential candidate, it’s not enough to offer sympathy to Colorado’s victims. Why Romney should show some backbone and push a federal ban on assault weapons.

Mitt Romney should pull a Nixon to China on guns and call for reinstatement of the federal ban on assault weapons.If Obama did it, he would look weak and appear to be capitulating to constituencies of the left. And nothing would happen. (Obama did support the ban during his 2008 campaign, but has done nothing since to push it.) If Romney did it, he would look strong by standing up to constituencies on the right and the NRA. And by providing leadership on the issue, he could bring important Republicans on board and actually get it passed.