Dressed in a tight outfit, in all black, Madonna sang her heart out as she pointed a fake gun at the audience in Denver, on the Colorado leg of her US tour. The voguing star has been toting guns around at all her shows so far, but what she neglected to remember is it's almost exactly the 3 month anniversary of a horrific and fatal mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, which rocked the nation back in the summer. On July 20th of this year, a gunman walked into a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises and killed 12 people, injuring a further 71.

Madonna has opened every show with a touch of gunplay, but didn't both to take into consideration Denver's residual emotion from the summer shooting. The audience was outraged. Peter Burns, a radio presenter, was in the audience. "You could see people kinda looking at each other" he said, quoted in the Huffington Post. "I heard the word `Colorado,' you know, `Aurora,' `shooting.' You could hear people talking about it and it was little bit unsettling. I saw two or three people get up and grab their stuff and actually leave their seats." Another fan, in reponse to her singing the song 'Gang Bang' which includes the lyrics 'shot my lover in the head', said "We're dancing and all of a sudden people started realizing what the song was... We all just stood there. Everybody who was around me all had shock on their face."

Defending the show, Madonna said "I do not condone violence or the use of guns," she wrote. "Rather they are symbols of wanting to appear strong and wanting to find a way to stop feelings that I find hurtful or damaging." Plus, Liz Rosenburg, Madonna's Publicist argued that the show couldn't be changed "It's like taking out the third act of Hamlet," she said. "Madonna does not make things pretty and tie them up with a bow." Controversy had already arisen in the use of a swastika in her tour video, which she eventually agreed to alter. She added "In my case I want to stop the lies and hypocrisy of the church, [and] the intolerance of many narrow minded cultures and societies..." Madonna may just need to take a dose of her own medicine, and learn to broaden her own mind to the feelings of her audience.