On July 20, 2012, a gunman opened fire during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, killing twelve people and wounding dozens more. British presenter Amal Fashanu, who had attended the film's London premiere days earlier, travels to Colorado to piece together what happened, starting with survivor Jansen Young, who lived because her boyfriend threw himself in front of the bullets meant for her. Fashanu also finds that the shooter, James Holmes, had tried to join a local rifle club in the weeks before the attack, and that he identified himself to police as the Joker. The film sets Aurora alongside Columbine, Virginia Tech, and the Sikh temple shooting in Milwaukee as part of a widening pattern, and Fashanu talks to young Americans about gun ownership under the constitution and whether Colorado should seek the death penalty against Holmes. Interviews with survivors and victims' families carry most of the account, built around the days immediately after the shooting.