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Here we are, a day after the horrifying events that took place in Aurora, Colorado, and the thing that chills me to the bone is how ordinary it has come to seem. A deranged gunman coolly and methodically shoots up a college campus, a high school, a military base, a museum, a supermarket at a meet-and-greet with a local Congresswoman. Anywhere from one to several dozen people die, and many more than that are seriously injured. These outbursts of lethal violence occurring at such familiar American institutions and shattering the peaceful, quotidian activities of everyday life that were taking place there once seemed shocking. Now they seem almost banal — oh god, one of these nuts again? How many were killed this time? And does anyone have a clue why?
So the fact that yet another place we once thought was safe — a movie theater — has been shown to be anything but, is unsettling, but not, anymore, unimaginable. And so we go through the usual rituals. Liberals point to the need for stricter gun control laws, but sadly, that seems to be all but a lost cause. If the Columbine massacre, which seemed unimaginably shocking at the time, didn’t spur big changes in Colorado’s gun laws, it’s hard to see how any other event could. And certainly neither of the two major party candidates for president have breathed a word about how this tragedy illustrates the need for gun control.
Another familiar ritual: we read profiles of the killer, and look for clues — were the signs of trouble always there? Could he have been stopped? What’s especially scary about the case of James Holmes, the Aurora gunman, is that there do not appear to have been any signs that things were clearly out of whack. According to various media reports, Holmes had had no run-ins with the law other than a speeding ticket, and though he was in the process of dropping out of his Ph.D. program, it was for academic reasons, not because of mental health issues or behavioral problems. He came from an apparently stable, middle-class family, and is described by those who knew him as studious, smart, and even (I shudder to use the word here) “kind.” Acquaintances say he was quiet and slightly awkward socially, and he had some nerdy hobbies like online role-playing games. But nothing remotely suggests that he would even contemplate, let alone commit, such a monstrous act.
In this he resembles Greg Ousley, a man currently serving a life sentence for killing both his parents when he was 14 years old, who is the subject of a profile in this week’s New York Times Magazine. It’s an interesting piece on a number of levels, but what’s most striking to me is how seemingly inexplicable his crime was. His family life was certainly unhappy — dad had a drinking problem and mom had anger management issues — but there was no physical or sexual abuse, or any other kind of mistreatment that would make the murders, which were premeditated, seem understandable.
The additional issue with people like Holmes and Ousley, is even if you do have good reason to believe that they are a danger to themselves or others, in most cases there is very little you can do. Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings once wrote a very scary post about a friend of hers who went through a prolonged episode where he was threatening to kill people, and seemed quite serious about it. The most horrifying thing, to her, was that there was nothing she could do about it. He refused to get help, he had committed no crimes so involving law enforcement was not an option, and neither was involuntary commitment to a mental health facility. To her horror, there was not even anything she could do to prevent him from getting a gun license:
I called the gun licensing board in his jurisdiction. I didn’t expect them to deny him a gun license on my say-so, and would in fact have been pretty appalled if they had. But I had a fairly extensive collection of emails in which he discussed what he wanted to do at considerable length, so I offered to send them the emails, and also to allow them whatever access they needed in order to verify that these emails had in fact been sent to me. If they couldn’t spare the resources (this friend lived over a thousand miles away, so that seemed likely), I also offered to let them choose a forensic computer person to do it, and to pay the tab. I also offered to pay for a psychiatrist of their choosing to evaluate the emails and determine whether or not the person who wrote them was indeed a threat. Because I thought: while it would be awful if I could get them to deny someone a gun license just by making unsubstantiated claims about his sanity, surely there must be some provision for denying a gun license to someone who is demonstrably homicidal.
Guess what? There isn’t. Or so that particular gun licensing board told me. If someone has committed a felony, they said, he can be denied a license. But if they are merely insane and homicidal, there’s nothing anyone can do.
Fortunately, her friend eventually did get psychiatric help, but it’s a chilling story nonetheless, and one that heightens the sense of helplessness I feel whenever I read about one of these horrific killings.
Another big question I always have when I read about this kind of tragedy is, why? Why do they happen at all, and why do they happen so much in this country? Part of it is our lax gun laws, of course, but it seems much bigger than that. Crime may down overall, but it’s my impression that these kind of senseless mass murders are occurring more often. In his op ed in today’s New York Times, Roger Ebert argues that Holmes’ lust for fame is what drove him:
I’m not sure there is an easy link between movies and gun violence. I think the link is between the violence and the publicity. Those like James Holmes, who feel the need to arm themselves, may also feel a deep, inchoate insecurity and a need for validation. Whenever a tragedy like this takes place, it is assigned catchphrases and theme music, and the same fragmentary TV footage of the shooter is cycled again and again. Somewhere in the night, among those watching, will be another angry, aggrieved loner who is uncoiling toward action. The cinematic prototype is Travis Bickle of “Taxi Driver.” I don’t know if James Holmes cared deeply about Batman. I suspect he cared deeply about seeing himself on the news.
While I think that fantasies of being all-powerful definitely had something to do with Holmes’ acts, I’m sure if I buy the theory that he did it for fame. After all, do we even remember the name of Virginia Tech murderer, or Gabrielle Giffords’ attempted assassin?
Then again, we live in a world where, according to People magazine, Casey Anthony finds inspiration in Kim Kardashian and is seeking to reinvent herself as a reality star. According to People, Anthony reportedly told an acquaintance, “I need to work on my brand.” Let your mind linger on that for a second, if you can stand it.
In a completely dysfunctional economy that has totally stopped working for so many, and in an era of skyrocketing inequality where the structural barriers to any kind of meritocratic achievement are so formidable, crime is one way to break away from the pack, I suppose. Among the 1 percenters, the most profoundly antisocial behaviors and acts, from tax evasion to illegal hacking the phones of private citizens to aiding and abetting the sexual assault of children to all manner of financial chicanery, have been not only tolerated but enabled. In some cases, the offending parties (see: Wall Street, the Catholic Church) have emerged not only with their reputations largely intact, but with their political power seemingly greater than ever.
Given that state of affairs, it’s perhaps not so great a stretch to imagine that, to some unhinged minds at least, even a crime as heinous as a mass murder could be their ticket to tabloid immortality and a shot at joining the elite club of the 1%.
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stormskies on July 21, 2012 10:13 AM:
And thanks to the NRA we know have all these 'stand your ground' laws that have, and will, add to the ongoing carnage and cataclysm's that shock our nation. Add to this the insane rantings of the guy who heads the NRA, LaPierre, about Obama's 'secret plan' to take away the guns of Americans once he is reelected that is reinforced by the insane rantings of stooges like Darrel Issa.
Of course the actual motives of corporate pigs like this is to sell even more guns to create even more profits for the gun manufacturing industry.
Yet again another symptom of what happens when corporations own our government within a capitalistic structure that allows absolute greed to prevail to the detriment of the good of the whole.
Nice going NRA.
Ron Byers on July 21, 2012 10:27 AM:
Kathleen, it is way too early for any kind of meaningful analysis of what motivated James Holmes. That, of course, is sad because when someone really does come up with something meaningful to say about Holmes the public will have moved on to the next big thing. If the analysis is really good the author might win an award of some kind from a few academics or maybe an unviewed documentary will be made but after the award ceremony the paper or movie will rot quietly in some dusty academic library.
As it is we have to endure every person with a media platform promoting his or her favorite cause, repeating his or her pet theory of how the tragity could have been prevented or diving deep into his off the cuff analysis. I guess that is part of the grieving process in this new electronic world. The world will have learned nothing. No minds will have been changed. Of course, that is what makes these kinds acts of personal terror doubly tragic.
Now back to our regularly scheduled instant analysis.
Danp on July 21, 2012 10:28 AM:
I suspect this is little more than a "suicide by police" attempt. The twist seems to be a pattern of going out as a martyr. It's not unique to Muslim culture. And it's subtly encouraged by right wingers with their hyperbole, conspiracy theories, and never-ending campaign against civility. I don't know if Holmes had a purpose, but it may be time to stop calling these isolated incidents.
hells littlest angel on July 21, 2012 10:51 AM:
How could this happen in America? How could this happen in a country that churns out well-made, well-acted, literately-scripted movies in which righteousness and superior firepower always prevail? How could this happen in a country that squanders its wealth on outspending the entire rest of the world on military armaments? How could this happen in a country in which a hateful, gibbering moron like Wayne LaPierre jerks the strings of a major political party? How could this happen in a country with the highest rate of violent crime in the world?
Gimme a fucking break. I'm surprised it doesn't happen twice a day in this infantile nation.
Califlander on July 21, 2012 10:57 AM:
Danp, if this was a "suicide by cop" attempt, the shooter would probably not have worn protective gear, and probably would have taken a shot at a police officer in order to provoke return fire.
jjm on July 21, 2012 10:57 AM:
Well, I'm just checking off my list for travel the states where these massacres take place: Arizona was one, now Colorado is gone. Who wants to be in a place where so many demented people have every opportunity to stage and act on their fantasies?
In most big cities, sites where violent crimes are likely to occur are well known to everyone. But in these semi-rural, unsophisticated areas that live off the idea of being in 'the frontier' violent acts seem random because there is very little in the way of a social order or social matrix in which the madman's conduct would have been known, monitored, perhaps moved into preventive care.
Ten Bears on July 21, 2012 10:59 AM:
Dr. Asimov wrote a short scifi back in the forties about these inexplicable behaviors (OK, not exactly these inexplicable behaviors but for the time inexplicable behavior) that rounded out on a sub-conscience or perhaps even genetic knowledge that the human race is coming to an end, in the story the world itself ends.
While we know that while through the crisis we've created Earth will abide, there is the very real likelihood we have made this planet uninhabitable for humans, or for that matter ninety percent of our "cousin" species. Perhaps we humans are experiencing a sub-conscience or genetic prescient knowledge that in destroying the world that nurtured us we have destroyed "us". Or more accurately, our grandchildren.
Of course as a typical middle-class white kid growing up glued to the TV and various violent on-line role playing games there is the very real possibility Holmes thought he'd just walk in there, pull a Dark Knight Joker and in the confusion slip out the back.
Mudge on July 21, 2012 10:59 AM:
Early on you say, "Now they seem almost banal — oh god, one of these nuts again?", then discuss Ebert's thesis, then ask "..do we even remember the name of Virginia Tech murderer, or Gabrielle Giffords’ attempted assassin?" The two are connected. I remember Charles Whitman at Texas and Charles Unruh (way back when) and Richard Speck in Chicago. They committed mass murder when mass murder was unusual and more horrific. If today's killers have a desire for publicity, they are only getting their 15 minutes of fame, not much more. But crazy people do not depend on rational reasons for their actions.
Captcha has .30-30 as one of its words. Rather gruesome.
Califlander on July 21, 2012 11:00 AM:
HLA, I don't know if I'd expect it twice a day, but we all know -- every last one of us -- that it will happen again, don't we? And again. And again after that. And ...
T-Rex on July 21, 2012 11:02 AM:
In 356 B.C.E., a man burned down the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the world. When he was asked why he'd done it, he said that a great crime would make his name live forever. The joke was on him, though, because he committed his arson the day Alexander the Great was born. Now everyone remembers that the temple burned on Alexander's birthday, and no one remembers who set it.
c u n d gulag on July 21, 2012 11:22 AM:
In a movie about a Superhero vs. a Supervillain, a 24 yaar-old neuroscience student proved to be more evil than what any movie writers and producers can come up with. Who would pay to see a movie about a guy who shows-up and shoots-up a movie theater?
And the poor people there for a vicarious thrill, ended up meeting a live, 3-D, no glasses necessary, villain.
Not some Supervillain - just a run of the mill evil person in our present society.
As Hannah described it: "The banality of evil."
And THAT is more frightening than any movie.
DJ on July 21, 2012 11:24 AM:
According to People, Anthony reportedly told an acquaintance, “I need to work on my brand.” Let your mind linger on that for a second, if you can stand it.
Here's an attempt: Instead of thinking about herself as a person, through concepts of integrity and character, she thinks of herself as a commodity. She's succeeded in dehumanizing herself, well apart you getting to the issue of whether she was responsible for the death of her own daughter.
c u n d gulag on July 21, 2012 11:25 AM:
I would also like to add, rather than evil - he may have been sick. The result was evil, the cause?
Diane Rodriguez on July 21, 2012 11:27 AM:
Its natural to wonder about this guy's motivation because his acts are incomprehensible. I think it is a waste of time. We woll never stop that single determined person who wants to committ a horrific act. Frankly it distracts from the actual issue of gun control that is the obvious and rational answer to these public murders.
The guy had an assault rifle, bought 6,000 rounds of ammo over the internet and 4 guns in the last 60 days. There is no rational argument for needing that much weaponry. The NRA and their maasive donations to Congress should be the target.
Anonymous on July 21, 2012 11:38 AM:
HMM, As a graduate School survivor I'm thinking selling guns to Graduate School dropouts is a bad idea. but we will never get any gun control through DC, no matter what.
DF on July 21, 2012 12:01 PM:
My initial reaction to this tragedy was to wonder what it is about the modern world that has created conditions where this kind of killing and slaughter has become almost commonplace.
But then I recalled a scene at the end of the book/movie (same scene in both, essentially) where Tommy Lee Jones's character is reminded by his elderly uncle that it's just "vanity" to think that this violence is anything new.
It seems that is the truth of it. Human beings are frightfully violent and have always been so. If anything, the modern era is less violent than any other in our history. That is a truly terrifying and sobering though.
DF on July 21, 2012 12:02 PM:
That would be the book/movie "No Country For Old Men" of course. I blame Captcha.
Dredd on July 21, 2012 12:06 PM:
"It takes a village to raise a child" also means that if the village has institutionalized dysfunctional behaviors then the children will absorb them.
Skip on July 21, 2012 12:07 PM:
Please may I make a case for Amendment 2 without being booed off the stage?
There is a very good reason that we are allowed to bear arms in this nation, and that reason should not be overlooked as we search for a way to stop these examples of societal illness.
I am a liberal. I am a gun-owning liberal. A responsible female gun-owning liberal. Let me just say that. There isn’t a woman in the US who should la-de-da their way through life without having some means of protecting herself. But while rapes and murders aren’t our topic today, it’s important to note who will be disarmed under gun laws and who won’t be.
I am a veteran, our chain of command is headed by a civilian president, our Commander in Chief. The military will do what the CiC tells them to do, period. Far be it from me to believe all CiC’s have American citizenry’s best interests at heart (ie: Japanese citizens in WWII). Enough said? The military will not be disarmed.
I am also a supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement, may it rest in peace. Our local authorities, the police, were instructed to watch the protesters, then to move the protesters, and finally told to disband them. Then we were treated to the image of that nice uniformed authority figure spraying protesters with a caustic substance. He didn’t look too conflicted as he sprayed the citizens (aka: the human beings) sitting at his feet. He was just ‘doing his job”….this nice officer sworn to serve and protect…but who was he serving and who was he protecting? We have to understand that our local police too will do as it is instructed by those who command it. Police, Nation Guard, those in authority will not be asked to hand over their guns.
And yes, criminals too will still have guns, but that is an old argument. What is a new argument is will that not be the source where these mentally unstable individuals will continue find their weapons? The rational answer is yes.
So who will have to turn in their guns? The main citizenry. And we’ll have lost another right under the guise of security, which in the end, can we say with any measure of surety that gun-related crime will stop? The rational answer is no.
The 2nd Amendment should stand, citizens should be able to bear arms. We cannot leave decent law abiding people unprotected in our search for solutions to the crimes and deaths being foisted upon us by sick individuals. We cannot leave citizens unprotected in an age where select factions are working this very day to forcibly push the entire nation under one particular religious/political heading. We cannot unbalance our nation into the armed and the unarmed, because those armed as listed above have proven they don’t exist to protect us, they exist to keep us under control.
Yes, the NRA is an arrogant, in your face organization and houses some pretty concrete mind sets, but it does fight to protect citizen’s rights to bear arms and, if you look at the big picture, has deep integral roots in the overall silent security of the citizenry, security against those who will never be asked to give up their guns.
DAY on July 21, 2012 12:10 PM:
At midnight LOUD music began to come from his (booby trapped ) apartment, lasting for an hour.
If police had responded to complaints, and entered the apartment, every EMC and police unit in Aurora would have responded to the carnage.
Leaving Holmes to rampage at leisure in the theater.
This was a well planned event, and has been compared to the one that Anders Behring Breivik executed in Norway.
In his 1,500-page manifesto, Breivik details his preparations for the attacks and calls himself “a real European hero,” “the savior of Christianity” and “the greatest defender of cultural conservatism in Europe since 1950.
It will be interesting as to what they find on Holmes' computer. . .
esaud on July 21, 2012 12:12 PM:
Stormskies - Agreed here. the NRA jumped the shark years ago, but of course, since they are a Republican outfit, the media double standard kicks in and no politicians have to pay a political price for hobnobbing at their conventions or seeking endorsements (like Ted Nugents endorsement of Romney).
I just wish some outfit like moveon.org would cobble together an ad of the outrageous things Nugent said, with a voice over of how thrilled Tagg and Mitt Romney were to get his endorsement.
Bob M on July 21, 2012 12:15 PM:
I can see a normal guy going berserk with rage and make a horrible mistake, but I don't get the planner type at all.
g on July 21, 2012 12:17 PM:
The guy had an assault rifle, bought 6,000 rounds of ammo over the internet and 4 guns in the last 60 days.
I keep wondering how a graduate student managed to purchase these - what financial resources did he have? How much does an AK47 and 6000 rounds of ammo cost?
Where would he get the money or credit?
sparrow on July 21, 2012 12:20 PM:
I don't know if we will ever really have a staisfactory understanding of what the mental progression was in the killer's mind leading to the shooting in the theater. After each one of these seemingly random appaling events, we look for patterns to try pin down the exact reason in hope of doing something to ward off future tragedies. So often, we are left with settling on the killer just being "nuts", as if that solves the mystery, and then get on with our routines after a proper period compassion set aside for the victims until the cycle repeats. In the interim, there is among us a large contingent of people in this country who seem willing accept this as just part of the cost of keeping access to guns and ammo easy for all the "good citizens". It's all about our Freedom, don't ya know. There are times when I see us acting no differently than I see a herd of wildabeast alarmed and in a panic when one of the herd is picked off by a lion but then quickly returns to grazing as if nothing had occurred.
Hedda Peraz on July 21, 2012 12:21 PM:
Skip, I too own a bunch of firearms, long, short, and in between. But there need to be some parameters on the "right to bear".
A pocket pistol is a far cry from a full tilt boogie assault rifle.
You can't hunt deer with one- state laws preclude that.
You can't drive a car without passing a test,(again, state laws) yet you can buy just about any sort of weapon without pause.
Nobody with a rational mind wants to disarm America. But we also don't want our toddlers playing catch with hand grenades. Or our mental patients playing God.
The Real Sporer on July 21, 2012 12:49 PM:
No place is safe from the random acts of madmen. That's why the ridiculous proposition that more restrictive gun laws create safety fail. If they couldn't use guns they'd use fertilizer or box cutters, or gasoline.
The places with the most restrictive gun laws are the most violent in the country (e.g. Chicago, DC, NYC). The gun control racket never acknowledges the statistical reality that more legally armed citizens (those who get CCPs) reduce violent crime because places like schools and movie theatres cannot become shooting galleries for psychos and the average street criminal cannot readily identify the potential victim that will fight back.
That's what differentiates the Omaha mall shooting, or that recent internet cafe invasion, from the horror in Aurora or VaTech. Someone was there to stop the killer.
Of course, we all know that gun control folks really want all private ownership of firearms eliminated so the unseemly rush by ABC, Time Magazine and the archtype of government overreach, Mike Bloomberg, to climb over the victims' bodies to politicize Aurora.
Ckelly on July 21, 2012 12:59 PM:
Long tiresome strawman there, Skip. Jesus H Fucking Christ no one I repeat no one is saying take away all your guns. Most are saying Sensible Restictions are needed. No one needs ARs 100 clip mags and military grade armor, explosives. You wanna shoot ARs go back to the fucking army
Informant on July 21, 2012 12:59 PM:
Well, I'm just checking off my list for travel the states where these massacres take place: Arizona was one, now Colorado is gone. Who wants to be in a place where so many demented people have every opportunity to stage and act on their fantasies?
jjm, may I ask what state you live in? I'm just checking off my list for travel the states where narrow-minded assholes who make judgments about entire states' populations based on freak criminal acts live.
[Resident of Denver, Colorado]
sparrow on July 21, 2012 1:10 PM:
The Real Soprer,
I wonder how many people he would have killed with a box cutter. Any idea? Would it put a crimp in your freedom if you weren't allowed to purchase 6000 rounds of ammunition? Ah yes, there is nothing that would me feel more safe than attending a darked, crowded movie theater knowing that there is a plethora are armed citizens seated in the theater on standy-by just waiting to have a shootout with some deranged wacko.
T2 on July 21, 2012 1:11 PM:
For perspective.....senseless killings like this one happen weekly in Iraq,Afghanistan and several other similar locations worldwide.....innocent lives lost at the hand of crazies.
c u n d gulag on July 21, 2012 1:18 PM:
If I had a gun in the movie theater, I wouldn't wait for some maniac.
I'd shoot the first person to talk to their neighbor out loud, or answer their cell phone and tell the other person out loud, that they're in a movie theater, or the person who'd seen the movie and started doing the dialogue along with the actors.
That's why it's a good think I don't own guns.
And the above, are the reasons I haven't been to a movie theater in 6 years - or more than 3 times in the last decade.
TCinLA on July 21, 2012 1:19 PM:
Actually, there does indeed seem to have been at least one sighn of what this whackjob was, which was noted when his mother's first comment on being informed of the events said "You have the right one." The family knew what he was.
Sadly, knowing you have a crazy person in your family and actually being able to do something about it nowadays are two things with little in common. My brother was a paranoid-schizophrenic who heard voices and had multiple personalities. People who knew him had seen all of these displayed multiple times. The local police knew he was crazy from their multiple run-ins with him. When he attempted to shoot me (twice - it was a double-barreled shotgun and he pulled the first trigger and when nothing happened pulled the second; fortunately he forgot I had unloaded the gun the last time he'd had an "event"), and the police (who as I say, knew him) had him taken to the local hospital and admitted to the mental health ward, the next day I had to argue with the "psychiatrist" (the most useless people on earth are found in that profession) that he needed to be kept - with the idiot arguing that he was drunk and under the influence of drugs, not crazy, not wanting to hear me say he was self-medicating for this, and only reluctantly taking him in under "danger to others" because he so obviously wasn't a danger to himself (despite the cops saying that there had been more than once they had come close to killing him during these "incidents"). No, my brother had the RIGHT to be crazy and refuse medication and act out as he did without being put somewhere where he might receive treatment. He had the RIGHT to have those 23 rifles, shotguns and pistols in his bedroom, and to petition successfully to get them back after being released from the mental ward and not taking the medication they had prescribed for him (after actually diagnosing him paranoid-schizophrenic and letting him go with a 15 year history of violent acting out).
I am sure this family also tried to get help for their son as I did my brother - help the fools, morons, nitwits and idiots of the "helping" professions wouldn't provide since it was their job to see that his RIGHTS weren't violated. I wonder if the otherwise-unemployable who turned him down the last time the parents asked for help wonders now about his culpability in the shooting of 71 people and the deaths of 14 of them.
Old Uncle Dave on July 21, 2012 3:12 PM:
There are some seriously fishy aspects to this event. How does a poor graduate student get the thousands of dollars needed to buy all the weapons, ammo, and body armor, plus the equipment for all the booby traps?
If he wanted to "kill everybody" why did he drop all his weapons and calmly surrender to police, and then *tell them* about the booby traps at his apartment?
He did not enter the theater via the front door, so somebody had to let him in via an emergency exit. Yet the police are certain he acted alone and are not looking for any accomplices.
Mighty fishy....
Thymezone on July 21, 2012 4:49 PM:
Apparently the author of this post has never heard of serious mental illness nor encountered its tragic and horrific effects on its victims, their families, and society.
tcinaz on July 21, 2012 7:20 PM:
It's time for the left to mount the same kind of program here the right has taken on abortion. The lines of attack are clear. Constitutional originalists will have a hard time, despite 200 years of case law, fighting the Second Amendment's "A well regulated Militia..." introductory clause. The first chink in gun right's armor becomes that and the obvious judicial over-reach of law ever since. Beyond that some responsible gun owners may, in order to keep truly sporting guns, become, under pressure, more inclined to accept limits on assault weapons that up to now they have defended as Constitutionally protected. Pushing the notion that any of these high velocity, light caliber weapons, designed only for killing people, have any sporting use becomes indefensible in light of the use of one with a 50 round drum magazine in Aurora. The ready availability on the net of sources that blatantly flaunt the legal restriction of their conversion to fully automatic killing weapons, is evidence enough of their real purpose. In .03 seconds one can access hundreds of sites with references as to where to get parts and how to convert these weapons to fully automatic military-style killing machines. After all, one of these is what the US Army issued to me. It's time for the left to mount a right-modeled attack on assault weapons. This may become the first step toward sane gun laws in America.
enn bee on July 21, 2012 7:31 PM:
I note that some cranky types are saying this was a setup to attack the Second Ammendment. See e.g. False Flag. Well first of all, if they want to indulge in how "staged" this shooting was (and there are plenty of odd features!), then surely they would just as easily indulge the oddities of 9/11, this time however making GW Bush look conspiratorial ...
Second: maybe this was rather a bit too "staged" to be just come guy going bonkers on his own. But really - if Holder etc really wanted to cause outrage against guns, they want something that *did not* even seem staged or too weird. No, it would make more sense for this to be a "double cross" - a second-order false-flag operation by some far rightwing group, to make it look "staged" by the FBI etc. and stir up teaparty etc. suspicions.
TCinLA on July 21, 2012 8:25 PM:
He did not enter the theater via the front door, so somebody had to let him in via an emergency exit. Yet the police are certain he acted alone and are not looking for any accomplices.
always nice to see a wingnut moron be a wingnut moron and create your own "facts."
The fact is that the shooter bought a ticket, went inside, then exited through the emergency exit and propped the door open so he could return with his weapons, which were in his car that was conveniently parked right outside said exit.
Steverino on July 21, 2012 10:12 PM:
All these mass shooting events reminds me of the mucker phenomenon from Stand On Zanzibar where people, driven by (among other things) population pressure, would just run amok (hence the term "muckers") and kill at random until brought down themselves.
Skip on July 22, 2012 1:01 AM:
TCinLA, could you at least keep some civility? Just because YOU haven't advocated disarming Americans, doesn't mean the issue hasn't been raised by others who are just as adamant in their opinions as you.
Sigh...
As far as types of weapons worth banning, there's already several different weapons bans in place in the US, a simple Google search pulled that up. Assault weapons are already banned. And there is in place some serious paperwork to get weapons, but unless there is some warning flag of some type, deepening the layer of paperwork isn't going to catch a future threat.
What is the rational answer to these sporadic and horrific violent acts? Maybe the answer lies somewhere in the individual human aspect of these crimes, rather than in the method of acting out they've chosen to use.
Skip on July 22, 2012 1:11 AM:
Sorry TCinLa, I meant Ckelly and the two f-bombs in a five sentence post... :(