Mass murder in Colorado
When I first read about the massacre in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, my thoughts went to the victims of the horror, and my initial impression (before the shooter had been identified) was that the perp would turn out to be an isolated crazy person rather than a terrorist connected with Islam or al Qaeda. Don’t know why I thought so, but perhaps it had something to do with the venue and method of the killings.
If previous experience was a guide, the case would also feature accusations of a right-wing affiliation for the shooter that would in all likelihood turn out to be false, and calls for more gun control as well as calls for more opportunities for concealed carry. The former occurred right on schedule, when the 24-year-old shooter with the all-too-common name of James Holmes was misidentified (ignorantly, sloppily, unforgivably, callously, incompetently, recklessly, purposely—take your pick) by ABC news as 53-year-old Tea Party member James Holmes of Aurora.
The Tea Party has been falsely demonized from the start by reporters, pundits, and political operatives eager to pin various offenses—racist or violent—on a movement that in actuality has been remarkably free of them.
As for the real perp, we learn that he had withdrawn from a graduate program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Denver, that he told police his apartment was booby-trapped and they found that to be so, and that he was apparently dressed as the Joker when he committed the crime.
Would someone else in the crowd with a weapon have mattered? I have my doubts in this case. The scene must have been very chaotic: a darkened movie theater is not a good place to get the visibility and clarity necessary to do something about felling a perp in the act.
“Would someone else in the crowd with a weapon have mattered?”
not necessarily but knowing beforehand that your fellow citizens can be armed is its own deterrent
Reports say he was wearing a bullet proof vest. That would stop most hand gun ammo, but it would have stunned him pretty good.
Mr. Frank: yes, I’d read that and meant to put it in the post. It seems he was prepared, with the idea that someone in the crowd (or the police) might try to fire at him.
daxypoo: it did not seem to deter this particular shooter at all, although there’s some (hotly contested) research indicating that it can.
“ignorantly, sloppily, unforgivably, callously, incompetently, recklessly, purposely – take your pick”
The choices ‘ignorantly, sloppily, unforgivably, callously, incompetently, recklessly’ are of the classification excuses/explanations after the fact. For motive, the default answer is always ‘purposely’.
The polemics are already heated, and will no doubt become more so. I do not know the answers to most of the questions. I do believe in the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns; I have a revolver in my bedside table, and a shotgun not too far away. I had a concealed carry permit, which I seldom used, in Virginia. I lost that privilege (right?) when I moved to California. I liked having it, mainly because I could have my weapon in the car when I was venturing into unknown environs.
The above does not pertain to this case. To me there are a couple of key questions.
1) Why was his mother not surprised when she first learned that her son was the shooter? It sound as though he had a history that worried her. Who knew? What was the nature? Were there interventions? (Obviously several questions embedded there.)
2) How did he come by those weapons and explosives? Did he obtain them legally? Were there loopholes in the laws exploited, or was there illegal activity? (There I go again.)
With regard to 2, despite my support of gun ownership, I do believe that there needs to be effective screening of who possesses them; e.g., law abiding citizens with no documented mental issues. I am very leery of the notion of private ownership of very high capacity automatic weapons.
“Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent.”
“We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.”
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see.”
all ayn rand…
for some reason the past post will not go up.
and i wont bother going through it to see what is preventing discussion now that something happened.
ever notice that when certain news things happen, its harder to talk about things as suddenly the censorship software wakes up?
I think that would very much depend upon specifics. Perhaps you would have a clear shot, perhaps not. Can’t really say without being there, then it depends upon the specifics of where you were and where the shooter was, etc.
One thing that’s sure: without a firearm it doesn’t matter if you have a clear shot or not.
What is “effective screening”? Currently we don’t have “effective screening” now, but then again neither does Mexico and they have strict controls on firearms. I don’t see any way to put in place “effective screening” even if we violate the RTKBA.
With respect to mental issues, at least here in CA it is up to the mental patient to document their own mental issues unless the mental patient is determined to be a threat to themselves or others. Effective sceening based upon mental issues is essentially impossible with our current system.
If you’ve ever seen a rifle fired at night, you’ve seen “muzzle flash.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDzKyJZFUmM&feature=related
And it seems the fleeing people knew which way to flee, as well as those who were vis a vis to the shooter.
The arguments in favor of concealed carry in this type of thing is the shooter usually picks a gun free area (Columbine, Va Tech, Northern Illinois and this one) and he has a lot of time to methodically shoot victims. A few armed people in the area might help, but as DonS points out, you have to have a clear shot. You have to be aware of what is in front of and behind the shooter. I recall that there was a CC person at the Arizona shooting, but he reported he did not have a clear shot. He ended up tackling the shooter.
One thing that stands out for me is the bad guy shot 70 people. He was at it for awhile and might have been stopped at some point.
Shooting in aurora movies people shot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7sIiqq66rk
Would someone else in the crowd with a weapon have mattered?
Generally? almost always yes… even if another person was shooting at the ceiling, the perpetrator, unless uncaring, would react and change behavior.
Specifically? in this instance yes… very much so…
in all these discussions the focus of everyone is almost the same, would the shooter be killed, or shot. but in truth, even if the person shooting at him couldn’t hit him, his shooting will result in “suppression”. unless the person is unflinchingly suicidal, they will react by changing their behavior.
so if they are shooting innocents, another shot not from their gun will instantly change their focus and force them to look around to locate the source.
that alone is enough to change the whole outcome curve.
it is obvious that this particular killer was not interested in suicide, but fame, or rather infamy of some sort. in our society of personal gods, personal definitions of agency, we also have personal realities and the culture has fed into such a thing for a long time. even to the point of trying to live the unreal and create the artificial fake form of alternative realities.
if we can accept military men in love with my little pony. people who dress up as manga cartoon characters, and so on and so forth… then why cant we accept someone who like many who do these things, takes the dark character, but makes it too real.
its interesting as the process that does this to people is also illustrated in neo’s post:
the case would also feature accusations of a right-wing affiliation for the shooter that would in all likelihood turn out to be false
and
was misidentified (ignorantly, sloppily, unforgivably, callously, incompetently, recklessly, purposely–take your pick) by ABC news
Purposely
the reason lies in social engineering and psychology and using that information to create an effect in the population.
forget we are talking people here, and that this includes you and me and everyone reading on some level. think of looking at this as a big set. Marxism is just set theory and odds gaming in its applications side.
when they do this you will find that you will have people that will hear it, and people who wont hear it.
the people who do hear it will either believe it, or not believe it. all things being even this would me 1/4 of the population would accept the message.
when you try to correct it, you get a reinforcement of the information you are “attempting” to correct. you will also get a percentage of the people who never heard it not believing the correction.
the actual numbers of how this turns out is not important, as its a constant process that creates many contradicting facets of reality that keep people from socially knitting up
over years of this kind of thing, each person will have so many different truths formed this way, that no two can match up what they think is valid.
this forces them to pick groups to belong to and accept common ideas by faith to be a part of something and not feel alienated, strange, and have no commonality with anyone else.
they dont have a consistent culture that weeds out invalid and so on, they have a pop culture, which feeds them fads and inconsistencies and tells them to shun the culture that would prevent the disconnectedness.
while this kind of feeling on some level is normal, as great authors would attest to in their writings on it. but this kind of thing amplifies it.
the ability to pick which combination to set the experience culture dial, insures that we each scramble the line of splits offered to us.
with news being inconsistent this way, each different large class group, women, men, races, etc. are each getting incompatible truths.
so is it any wonder that many are not getting along?
that some are coping by withdrawing. others with drugs. some losing touch with reality by trying to make the things they read that they think are cool, real.
a lesson from gold finger:
Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”
🙂
how often do they do this?
on every event to the point of certainty?
why do they keep doing it?
what effect does it have over time?
(which is what i try to explain above)
Artfldgr Says:
July 20th, 2012 at 6:41 pm
That’s more or less what I was thinking. The reason the Ministry of Truth (aka MSM) immediately links incidents like this to the Tea Party is because they know that a percentage of their audience will accept it uncritically and never attempt to find out the facts for themselves. Those people will repeat it to their friends: “I heard on the news he was a Tea Party member.”
If the media keeps doing that enough, a not-insignificant proportion of the populace will automatically–and unconsciously–associate the Tea Party with dangerous, violent, antisocial people.
I am taking it as my project to see that Brian Ross is fired from ABC for casually linking a Tea Party member with the same name as the shooter to the massacre. I am infuriated beyond words at how this casual and reflexive association is being perpetuated by mainstream media – not just now, but for the last two or three years. Last August I finally blew my stack at Open Salon –
http://open.salon.com/blog/sgt_mom/2011/08/03/terrorism_tea_party_hobbits
I want to see Brian Ross gone from ABC and Good Morning America, for unprofessionalism, for casually slandering an innocent civilian with the same name of the arrested shooter and for perpetuating the meme of decent, law-abiding concerned and politically involved citizens. I want to see him made an example of … for the instruction of his fellows in the main-stream so-called-professional media.
State Kindergarten:
Hello boys and girls. This is Jill, a pretty little kitty, Who do you think tries to kill her? Yes, that’s right, the tea party.
Now here boys and girls is a very brave it who defines itself as an it and won’t be called him or her anymore. Who do you think tries to deny this brave action? That’s right, the tea party does.
Can we all sing along:
The tea party does cause
it pushes and it shoves
and makes the kids take drugs.
Makes the kids take drugs.
Now you know what to do when you see a tea party villian, right. Don’t take anything they offer you because it will be drugs and will kill you. Tell your teacher or your generator-sponsor right away. Now, let’s all face the leader board and tell it what we’ll do when we see the nasty tea party monsters.
rickl:
Agreed.
Plus, like all the best Party propagandists, they believe it themselves, even if it turns out to be wrong. a higher truth, and 2+2=5.
DonS. I fully realize that there are problems with screening for mental illness, among other disqualifying issues.
My remark was triggered in response to the report that the mother stated, “(sic) you have the right person” when she was told of the slaughter for the very first time. This suggests that there was a history. There was also a history at Va Tech. That history should have been readily available if the killer attempted to buy a gun legitimately.
You cite California law that makes it a self-reporting event. You touch the problem. Of course it will not be easy to balance patient rights with public safety but I am saying the issue needs to be addressed, and a serious attempt made.
Of course, the answer for many will be to clamp down on gun ownership for the population at large, rather than focus narrowly on the portion that represent a problem.
I hesitate to trot it out, but the cliche “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is a truism. The focus needs to be making it simple to identify the people whose pathology indicate that they are likely to use a gun, a fertilizer based bomb, an SUV, a knife, or any of many other potential weapons, to kill. End of rant.
Busy day….
We have to wait to find out the perps history and not jump the gun (no pun intended) to assign motivation, beyond sick & twisted, to the shooter. It is no surprise that the MSM pounds on the alleged right wing gunnuts – talk radio (and now Tea Party) connection same as they did after the OKC bombing. They are vultures and opportunists seeking to exploit victims for their own disgusting agenda.
You worked your whole life. You weren’t perfect. You made some mistakes. Some big ones. None of them were criminal.
You built something. A grocery store or a restaraunt or a roofing company. Something. But then in a moment, there was a story, you are guilty, and you can never be trusted.
No wonder Jesus said slander is murder. Maybe even worse. Because it leaves the corpse to defend itself.
Enough. We have been murdered enough. We have endured beyond endurance. We know who we are and we know our values. We know the slanderers and we know that God brings judgment, even though not as we expect in this world, yet it happens because his purpose is to make for each and every individual the decision, the choice, for whom you will fight and defend.
Prog radio surprisingly was going on about mental illness and the effects of mood-controlling drugs. I was expecting much more knee-jerk antigunnery.
Then I switched to CNN. Their ignorance about firearms was too much to take. Assault rifle this, assault rifle that. 6,000 round of ammunition! Think of how many people he could have killed!
Yeah, if everyone would have just stood there while the dude stuffed another 50 rounds in his AR-15 drum magazine.
One of my early thoughts, when I didn’t know that this was a lone dude on a sociopathic bender, was “What are we going to ban when the bad guys start crashing Buicks into strip malls.” Now that we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a political terrorist, what are we going to ban when some lone dude on a sociopathic bender drives his Camry through an elementary school?
This is not a case of mental “illness”, since illnesses should be treated. But therapy to no useful effect is balderdash.
This is a case of evil. Too bad if that label bothers you.
And if he had a premonitory history, like the evil Major Hassan of Ft. Hood, all of the non-judgmentalism in the world will accomplish nada. We are constantly reminded that non-judging is a social good, and this is where it gets us.
I am fascinated the Aurora CO police dept has three (!) psychologists on staff who will help the cops “deal with” their reactions to the shootings.
What a load of horse pucky.
About four years ago we had a shooting rampage here in my quiet neck of Puget Sound. Six dead and several wounded. The perp gave up quite easily as did this shooter. The story eventually came out that his mother had been trying to get him mental health treatments, but he refused and the authorities would not force him into treatment or confinement. Turned out he was deeply disturbed – a threat to himself and others. He’s now confined in the state mental institution for life. His poor mother was not surprised by what happened. She tried to get him help or removed from society, but could not. I would not be surprised if there is some such history with the Colorado shooter.
The MSM will never stop trying to disarm the people and everytime something like this happens it gives them a boogey man to use in their propaganda. This will be a continuing battle just like so many other issues between the right and left. We cannot let them make these unfounded claims unchallenged. Good for you, SGT Mom. Brian Ross should be held up as a biased journalist with an agenda.
“Would someone else in the crowd with a weapon have mattered?”
Do you mean would they have known it was not just something being staged? I think so.
Sgt.Mom i’m with you on that. Who are these immoral people like Stephenopolis and Ross and why do they get to be the dominant spokespersons in our country?
I’m just damn sick of televisions touchy feely music followed by the obligatory tragedy logo splashed on the screen for 5 days everytime a horror like this happens. But maybe what makes me sicker is the idiots that consume such manipulative garbage, as though they have no brains to see they’re being played like fiddles to consume a very myopic point of view of this world.
No deterrent works with maniacs and paranoid schizo. To prevent such tragedies it is necessary to quit the present policy when potentially unstable psychos walk in large until do something terrible. USA needs a lot of lunatic asylums and responsible psychiatry aimed not only to help patients but to protect general population from mentally deranged.
Nanny B and Nutter from Philly are now pushing for stronger gun control. They simply don’t get that the psychopaths who commit these mass murders are quite different from the murderers and criminals in their cities who are deliberately socialized by things like gangsta rap and ghetto cool. When people like Bill Cosby try to point out the differences in pathology they are ignored.
What stings me most in such stories that the perps usually fly a lot of red flags before they go on rampage and all this signals were ignored. This is a systemic failure. Even parents of disturbed individuals who are the first to detect the problem usually get no help from authorities if involuntary hospitalization is needed to rectify the problem. Teachers, co-workers, doctors and even shrinks are ignored or do not even attempt to rise the question to authorities knowing beforehand that this is useless.
Ever since a Supreme Court decision in 1975 it has been very difficult to involuntarily commit people to an institution. There used to be lots of “insane asylums” and it was common parlance to speak of the booby hatch. The movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” presents a picture of what such places were thought to look like. Now the individual’s right to freedom trumps the society’s right to safety. The Va Tech and Arizona shooters were clearly nuts (technical term), but nothing was done. Last night Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist said we are going to have to go back to confining people.
It is not wise to base one’s judgement on the whole industry on a single book or film. Mental institutions must be properly monitored to prevent patients abuse, but not abolished. And modern medications are much more powerful than anything existed in 1975, so there is no need in frontal lobotomies, EST therapies, straightjackets or other horrors of bygone epoch.
I’m very happy that Brian Ross tried to pin the action on the Tea Party. These left leaning Media types refuse to admit that they have an agenda that pits them against anything non liberal. His accusations in the Colorado shootings prove that he a Lefty without him saying so.
Someday I hope a Tea Party member slaps the living sh*t out of him so that he can truthfully report that a Tea Party member was the cause of his black eye.
The MSM must have a few sane pundits who have quiet moments when they know they’re in deep doo doo. Which is probably why they seem so much more desperate as time goes on. They’ve invested so much in narrative that is just a lie and unsustainable. Which means they themselves and their high paying positions of influence are unsustainable.
I’ll sleep better when i’m sure they aren’t doing much sleeping at all. The bastards deserve everything about the fate that’s heading like a freight train towards them.
“Would someone else in the crowd with a weapon have mattered?”
Why fall into the trap of asking exactly the question the gun-grabbers want to put in the fore? It’s their idea that disarming the law-abiding populace could stop such massacres that should be under trial, especially as the theater was a no-gun zone but that didn’t stop the murderer.
Their thesis is vacuous, and good chances are they know it. Behind so-called “gun control” is the same idea as “You didn’t build that” and the pre-Reagan failure’s “Trust me”: The idea that the “little people” need to let go of their pride and self-reliance and entrust their livelihood and personal security to their self-appointed betters.
Sergey.
More effective, less intrusive therapies are available.
Two problems: Are they effective for what ailed this guy? Would he submit to them under the current legal regime?
In April, in Aurora CO, some guy went into a church and shot and killed one person. He might have been able to shoot and kill more, but an off duty police officer with his weapon, shot and killed the shooter. Wasn’t nearly asbig a story, huh?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/04/23/police-congregation-likel_n_1446969.html
Sergey, you mean like they had in russia? where it was political as well as semi medical?
hows this… the majority of people that do things to people are not mentally crazy, or do not know that what they are doing is wrong.
ie. the mental people are no more likely to hurt you than the sane…
so your solution would do NOTHING…
while most people in prison are anti social, or sociopathic, neither is a condition that we screen and separate people for. even our president can be sociopathic…
so, you will get the disordered thought people, the ocd, and so on… but they are not your problem, are they?
one of my favorites while watching documentaries is the one in which the doctor of psychiatry finds out using FMRI that he was a sociopath. and he discusses the discovery. made him a real asshole, but he had no compulsion to murder people? hurt them? who knows but him and he aint going to tell you anyway.
no sergey, what you propose is a non solution based on invalid assumptions.
how many such people do we have in our history?
actually very few if you consider what one can do with whats available (not just guns)
if anything, despite the worry about the internet, and availability of how to stuff, out of 300 million people what is the number your willing to create another government tax funded bureaucracy with supreme power over people to declare them and lock them away (as the soviet union did and still does)
personally we would do great if we could send sociaopaths somewhere, but alas, what sociopathic politician will let you make that law?
oh… and the feminists will see all males as mental and needing to be drugged more than they drug em now to get them to sit still (the IQ boost recently reported could have been caused by drugging the males disproportionately)
and the left would love to see adorno’s ideas turned into a means of sorting selecting and genociding the population (or will you allow interpatient copulation and births?)
Sergey, what your proposing ultimately is another form of eugenics in which the state defines the sicknesses, and the administration changes demographic outcomes for that ‘class’
where will they put the born racist white guys who are all oppressors?
think that Hitler didn’t declare jews as sick? and so in acton t4 they died in hospitals? acton t4 came before acton t14 and that was the final solution to that problem, eh?
you basically reinvented one of the more heinious parts of the mass murdering last century as a quick solution to a non problem.
here you sit and PRETEND to be against totaliarianism, while imagining totalitarian solutions to the problme of TOTAL SAFETY.
there is no such thing as total safety, and so there is no way to solve the problem with medical whatnot, or licenses, and state interventions constantly tweaked. there is no solution, life is inherently unsafe.
and while your willing to create a dictatorship to save you from such madmen, your more likely to be killed by a family member or friend… and a robbery after that… but thats if you survive the greatest killer, which is dumb luck…
300 million people would be subjected to medical review, or a subset who wnats or owns firearms (amounting the the same registry that hitler used to get the guns at whim), and then what?
would that really change things?
would the result be the person says to themselves.
oh, look… i am in a crazy mental rampage where i want to kill people and am executing the plan over weeks. i cant get a gun… now time to give up my dream of a killing spree and go back to school and be a phd..
I will tell you this..
i am GLAD he had guns..
guns have to be aimed, and loaded, and so on.
they are point devices.
a 15-20 gallon gasoline firebomb thrown into the crowd in the absence of gun availability and needing an alternative would have been worse, no?
would you also require a psychological exam in factory quantities and quality to be performed on every person buying gasoline?
so used to totalitarian thinking we can oppose totalitarianism, and yet propose totalitarianism as a solution as well…
talk about inured to dissonance.
but i guess what it is is one is opposed to totalitarianism defined by someone else, and the stuff they like that they define that others dont get to protest is just fine.
so totalitarianism would be ok if we all think the same, eh? isnt that what pc multiculti dictated culture was supposed to make happen?
sigh
by the way, your also suggesting a state powered answer to a state solution that isnt supposed to be there…
ie. if everyone had guns…
the shooter in the theater would ahve no chance. period.
but what your all discussing is really how to make limited ownership work… now willing to have some form of medical test or system of testing and approval.
what kept such mass murders in check prior to limited gun ownership laws?
everyone would turn around and shoot him/her
this mass murdering idiot thing is only possible within a framework of mass unprotected people…
but whether you go with ubiquitous gun ownership as in the nordic countries and israel… or you go with none…
you still wont make anyone safe from any of this.
as you still want to have machine shops, and tools, and more open borders than a gulag, etc.
what can be done with whtas commonly around would surprise people who want to stop things…
and thats not even after people start getting inventive in restrictions…
The shooter wanted to be famous. He played the media like a fiddle and the saps cooperated. Nary a word of the victims but the shooter’s name repeated ad naseum.
Note the idiots in the media, an AR-15 is a semi-autumatic rifle and is not an assault rifle.