At least 14 people were shot and killed, and 50 injured in a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater showing The Dark Knight Rises this morning around 1 AM. Witnesses have varying accounts of a man in black and/or body armor releasing tear gas and opening fire in what sounds like more than one theater in a multiplex.
Update: The death toll has been revised to 12 and a 24 year-old male suspect is in custody.
Nunca el Jefe
Remind me again, what people cling to? One of those things will actually be helpful in the next few days.
These events are a national embarrassment.
ETA: my tone was too flip by half. This is sickening , and I hope that community can find some comfort in the next few weeks. And then I hope that we, as a country, take stock of the things that help to enable these kinds of incidents and work to make them better. To go back to being flip: the 2nd amendment can suck it, it’s not worth this kind of human cost.
Southern Beale
Suspect is in custody.
He opened fire on the Batman premiere. One report says the guy had Tennessee plates. And he told police he had explosives in his car and his home.
Hate to jump to conclusions this early but it sounds like Rush pushed one of our nutballs over the edge.
When will we learn?
Anya
My thoughts go out to the victims and their families. This is beyond horrible.
As a society we must find a solution to all of this violence.
Kathy
Latest news; the police are saying that there is only one gun man. Shots went through the wall into another theater. The gunman is in custody, he is reported to be a young man in his 20’s. His apartment is being searched and reportedly explosives have been found.
My hearts go out to the victims of this terrible senseless attack.
Betty Cracker
Awful.
jon
Guns, stupidity, toxic masculinity, sociopaths, and Rush Limbaugh will be the most aggrieved.
Tony J
Holy shit.
MikeJ
Please, if you’re going to whip out your phone camera to get video of a tragedy, please turn it so the wide part is sideways, and don’t flip it back and forth. Use both hands and fluid movements.
Also true if you’re making regular amateur sex porn instead of amateur violence porn.
EconWatcher
Colorado seems to get more than its fair share of insane shooitng rampages.
freelancer
The guardian has a liveblog and MSNBC links to a live feed from Denver’s NBC affiliate.
I got home from the Midnight showing in my area only to find this horror story. I saw a theater marathon of all three of Nolan’s Batman movies starting at 6pm, and it was terrific fun. I came home elated, and to see this just, there are no words. I feel deflated. This is sick. They have the gunman in custody. He’s 24 years old and claimed access to explosives. He was also wearing armor and had a rifle and another weapon. He shot a 6 year old. He needs to die in a fire.
Narcissus
Our society has a disease.
PeakVT
Condolences to the victims and their families.
Has anyone tracked down the first wingnut to say that this wouldn’t have happened if more people had been packing heat yet?
Gravenstone
A tragic event, and the coming details will likely make it only more so. However, I thought it was telling the article I saw (yahoo news front page) reassured people through a sheriff’s spokesman that this wasn’t Islamic terrorists. Strangely quiet on the angry white guy domestic variety, though.
Elizabelle
Obama statement included notion that “we need to come together as a nation” in support of the victims and their families.
Struck me as odd wording.
What a tragedy.
SiubhanDuinne
My sister lives in Aurora. It’s a very pleasant community, and I am just sickened and horrified by this tragedy. When, oh when, is this country going to start having grown-up conversations about guns?
Elizabelle
@Gravenstone:
Didn’t even occur to me it might be Islamic terrorists.
Did any of you think that as first impression?
Narcissus
Can you just go on the internet and buy a bulletproof vest?
PeakVT
@SiubhanDuinne: We used to have more grown-up conversations on the topic. We’re regressing, and will be for a while I fear.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gravenstone:
‘Cuz it doesn’t exist. Bad apple. Poorly socialized individual. Probably a liberal. Amirite?
Wyrm1
@PeakVT:
Pretty much the entire CNN comments section is people saying that if people had guns they would have “taken out” the shooter.
Anya
@Elizabelle: I actually did (hangs head in shame!) Only because of all the explosives and the gas mask. It sounded to coordinated for a single gunman.
jayjaybear
@Narcissus:
Apparently.
karen
@Elizabelle:
Nope. Angry and crazy white man was my first thought.
Wyrm1
@PeakVT:
Pretty much the entire CNN comments section is people saying that if people had guns they would have “taken out” the shooter.
jayjaybear
@Narcissus:
Apparently.
demz taters
@Elizabelle: My first impression was “right wing nut job.”
amk
unintended consequences of unlimited first and second amendments.
freelancer
@Elizabelle:
No. My first thought was another Jared Loughner. My second thought was a well-armed Dittohead. My third thought was it doesn’t matter, whatever the motives of the shooter, he’s fucking unhinged. Denver’s NBC affiliate just had a chyron stating a 3 month old was shot. W to the Fuck?!
jon
At least Mittens will protect Americans from Fred Willard shooting off in a theater.
Omnes Omnibus
@Wyrm1: Untrained, terrified people were going to “take out” the guy wearing a bullet proof vest? Yeah, right. They would have added to the innocent death total. Imbeciles.
PeakVT
@Narcissus: Amazon has vests up to level IIIA. Shop through Cole’s link if you’re planning on buying one.
@Wyrm1: Where are these people when you need them? Oh, wait, I know: jacking off in their parents basement.
Joseph Nobles
@Wyrm1: Right, because 50 people shooting instead of one would have killed so many less people.
People depress me mightly sometimes.
EconWatcher
Just last night i was in Walmart and noticed the display of gun magazines, which all have these gleaming and oddly pornographic pictures of guns on the front cover. I remember thinking, if this is considered normal, this really is a weird country. As a lawyer, i do think the 2nd amendment recognizes an individual right (not to start that old fight again). But something is seriously twisted in our culture.
JGabriel
@freelancer:
He shot a 3 month old.
That rumor was floating around, but it’s been confirmed now by Denver’s Channel 9 after speaking with University Hospital. Don’t know if it’s print anywhere yet — I saw it on their live feed about half-an-hour ago.
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The Thin Black Duke
@JGabriel: And nothing will change because the conversation this country needs to have won’t happen. Same as it ever was.
Wag
Holy crap. This happened 5 miles away. Another angry white men with guns. What’s up with these guys and with this country? I won’t be surprised if it turns out to be racially motivated, as the area around the theater is pretty heavily latino/black.
freelancer
@JGabriel:
I saw the same thing. Slow Death by potato peeler would be too kind for this waste of a fuck.
Channel 9 just reported that NBC Nightly News reported they spoke with Aurora Chief of Police and they revised the number of dead down to 12.
Anya
@JGabriel: WT fuck is a 3-month old doing in a theatre, at midnight? I was wondering about the 6-year old, but 3-month?
Raven
@JGabriel: Um, do any of you think that he was just blazing in the dark?
Omnes Omnibus
@EconWatcher:
The fact that the 2d Amendment slaps “well regulated” in there and includes explanatory reasoning leads me toward saying that the individual right is limited. Courts limit the 1st and it is rather unequivocal.
Mary
@Anya: I was wondering the same thing.
Raven
From a Denver Post feed
“”It was all families. Lots of little kids.” #theatershooting
Read more: Aurora Theater Shooting July 20, 2012 http://live.denverpost.com/Event/Aurora_Theater_Shooting_July_20_2012#ixzz21ABbqxS9
Read The Denver Post’s Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse
JGabriel
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Elizabelle:
We’ll find out in due time, but: guy who dresses up in helmet, gas mask, and bulletproof vest, and likes to shoot kids and whatever other random strangers get in the way?
I think we’re looking at another Breivik here, or someone inspired by him.
And, yeah, “right wing nut job” was my first impression.
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Kirbster
A culture that glorifies gun violence plus easy access to military-grade weapons and equipment plus instant fame and notoriety for the shooter. Sometimes I’m more surprised that incidents like this don’t happen more often than they do.
freelancer
@Anya:
Agreed, but the person who brought the 3 month old should have received dirty looks at worst, not for their charge to be bullet-riddled.
JGabriel
@Anya:
Parents had advance tickets and the baby-sitter flaked out? They couldn’t afford a baby-sitter? Who knows?
I imagine we’ll find out eventually.
Edited to Add: What freelancer said, too.
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Keith G
Just for the heck of it, why not put a cap on social/economic/demographic/ideological pronouncements on this shooter. It just seems so reactionary to do this – so much like the other side.
We will know a lot before too long.
NotMax
@freelancer
@JGabriel
This is not to excuse or minimize what occurred, just an attempt at some perspective. Let me be clear about that.
‘Shot’ is not the same as ‘targeted and shot.’
In a chaotic and panicky crowd reacting to the mayhem, with volleys of bullets flying, this is what happens. Bullets are not reactive or sensitive to the age of what they approach and penetrate.
This is not to say anyone ‘deserved’ it. This is not to put any shred of responsibility on the parent(s) for their children having been shot. Let me be clear about that.
While the audience would of course not have expected what happened, had the movie played out without tragedy and interruption, one has to ask what were such young children doing at a movie at 1 a.m.?
EconWatcher
@Omnes Omnibus: you may be right. They may have had in mind something like the current system in Switzerland, which actually has, if I understand correctly, an amzingly high percentage of citizens with military guns in their homes as part of their national defense/militia program, but strict rules about keeping them under lock and key, etc. The diagreement i have is with those who claim that “the people” in the second amendment doesn’t refer to individuals. That’s just not tenable when you consider how that term is used in various places in the bill of rights.
JPL
James Holmes..white male..
JPL
Just alone wolf who is deranged. Yup..whites are always deranged..
Mary
@NotMax: Agreed on all points.
amorphous
I hate that phrase so much. The word terrorism has completely lost whatever meaning it ever had.
MBL
My first thought, honest to God, was “thank god Batman isn’t black.”
Kathy
NBC is reporting that police are lowering the death toll to 12. I pray it can be lowered further. Those poor people, gun culture is sick. BTW gun nuts, it is stupid easy to get and carry guns in Colorado, yet no trained rational person was there to take out the shooter. More gun equals more safety is an epic fail.
Joey Maloney
The name of the suspect was just released, James Holmes, age 24, living in Aurora.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
The NRA and other “guns at any cost” apologists can STFU any time now.
What a waste.
Shooter gets linked to the left in 5,4,3,2…
Aimai
Uh, three month olds sleep anywhere and everywhere. Midnight is the same to them as any other time. In fact lots of them sleep better and longer in crowds than they do alone in a crib. It was either young parents wanting a night out who didn’t have a reliable abt sitter for an infant, we’re exclusively breast ceding, or a family with variable age children who went out altogether and didn’t want to leave mom out of the fun.
Butch
The situation I was in was much less horrific but still involved a lone shooter, and I have to say that anyone who thinks a bunch of panicked, poorly trained civilians would have “taken anyone out” is an idiot.
Raven
@NotMax: You are right, of course. But as far as who was there, it’s summer and this is a huge event for kids.
JGabriel
@NotMax:
I never said “targeted” and I don’t think freelancer did either. To the extent the shooter had a target, I assume it was the entire audience, in that he seems to have decided that anyone there was fair game — even children.
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MikeJ
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): The NRA has nothing to do with guns. They’re a Republican lobbying group.
Of the two candidates running for president, one of them has signed gun control legislation and one has not. The NRA is supporting the one who has. Any time anyone claims the NRA is about protecting rights, laugh in their face.
Cassidy
@Aimai: I’ve been trying to think about how to respond to that and I’m glad you did much more eloquently than I could.
debbie
This must be the next phase of God’s Plan According to Zimmerman.
Raven
@JGabriel: 60 people were shot, it doesn’t make any difference how fucking old they were.
hep kitty
@JGabriel: Sarah Palin used to schlep little Tripp(?) around and display him during the campaign until midnight. Just sayin’
Jay in Oregon
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
I look forward to hearing from Limbaugh how an angry leftist started shooting at The Dark Knight Rises to protest the movie’s…anti-capitalist…anti-Romney (“the bad guy’s name is Bain!”)…message…?
Oh, wait, no I don’t, because Limbaugh is a pathetic waste of the national airwaves and the less I hear his voice, the happier I am.
Laura
Can I be the asshole who asks what kind of horrible terrible parents bring a 3 MONTH OLD BABY to a midnight showing of a loud violent movie???
TheMightyTrowel
the longer i spend out of the country, the less normal this post of tragedy seems. i was in high school during Columbine and while i remember it vividly, i also podcast thinking ‘oh. another one.’ in that horribly blasé teen way. BUT the more time i prof living in countries which either have little history of mass violence or significantly tighter gun laws or both, the sexier and more horrifying the US seems.
WaterGirl
It makes me sad to see people asking why a parent is bringing their 6-year old to the theater at midnight, or why they are bringing their baby. It’s reminiscent, somehow, of asking why a rape victim was out that late, or dressed that way, or why she left her windows open at night.
I saw that time and again during the 3 years I worked with rape victims. It was often the first or second response. I came to the conclusion that it was a coping mechanism — a way of saying, this awful thing couldn’t happen to me because I would never have done that.
People should be able to bring their families to a midnight showing of a huge fun movie like this without having to fear for their lives or the lives of their children. I see no reason to subject these families to questions about their choice to go to a movie. Surely their own “what if” questions will haunt them for a lifetime.
JGabriel
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Laura:
For the time being, can we be judgmental about the shooter rather than the people who were shot, or their parents?
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JPL
@Aimai: Agreed.
I think that we should criticize the shooter at this point, not the victims.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MikeJ: Whoa. Didn’t know that, thanks for the info.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@MikeJ: Whoa. Didn’t know that, thanks for the info.
NotMax
@JGabriel
Perhaps it could have been more artfully put.
Zooming in on “he shot an x-year-old” carries an implication, even an unintended one (which I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever was unintended; I place neither blame nor animus upon you or freelancer) that that was the shooter’s intention.
My intention was just to expand upon and apply some more clarity to what was said, not to cast any aspersions on the messengers.
If I failed in that, that is my fault.
Narcissus
Matt Lauer thinks it was Bane.
chopper
@freelancer:
what’s wrong with bringing a 3 month old to the theater? i certainly wouldn’t bring an infant to some loud-ass shit like batman, and wouldn’t if the kid couldn’t stay asleep and was going to cry, but other than that it’s no problem at all.
Honus
@Laura: See Aimai at 57. We never went at midnight but we took our baby to a lot of movies. The baby sleeps or breast feeds and doesn’t mind and we got an evening out.
Laura
It probably just says something about me that I wasn’t really surprised someone would shoot up a theater, but I was surprised someone would bring a baby to the movies. Ignore me.
kd bart
“The shooter’s name is James Holmes”
Doesn’t the media usually include the middle name in these situations?
chopper
@JGabriel:
not a lot of parents on this blog, i reckon. when my daughter was 3 months she did not sleep as well in the carrier as she did at home. if she did, i would have had her out at movies and dinner and shit all the time.
jesus, just because you have a kid doesn’t mean you have to cloister yourself at home, people.
Mary
@WaterGirl: I can only speak for myself, but I made note of the fact that there were children there mostly because it really surprised me. Obviously no one in their right mind would expect this kind of tragedy to occur during family movie night. The fact that there were children present is relevant only inasmuch as it makes the story that much more tragic. But I must admit that I don’t think of the Batman series as kids movies, so it wouldn’t occur to me to think that a midnight showing was likely to be heavily attended by children. So my reaction was one of surprise and confusion, not criticism.
Anyway, this whole thing is horrible.
ETA – for whatever it’s worth, bringing an infant to a late movie is less surprising to me than a 6 year old.
chopper
@kd bart:
i think it’s just assumed that it’s ‘Wayne’.
Laura
Apparently someone made a post on the site 9gag saying he was going to do this, and the users thought he was joking and gave him tops? It’s apparently been taken down but here’s an ALLEGED screenshot
http://i.imgur.com/b2UMI.jpg
Alex S.
I guess that someone wanted to watch the world burn… He was probably inspired by Heath Ledger’s Joker.
EconWatcher
@Laura: this is just incorrect. When our daughter was an infant, she slept like a rock, anywhere and everwhere, so we took advantage and went to restaurants, movies, etc with her in tow. When she got to be about 15 months, this didn’t work any more, so we pretty much stopped going anywhere ever–didn’t have a babysitter we trusted enough. Those parents did nothing whatsoever wrong.
JPL
@chopper: I brought my youngest to the movie at nine months with his older brother in order to see a disney film. The risk was that we all would have to leave if the baby cried.
freelancer (iPhone)
@chopper:
Well it’s bad theater etiquette, and I’m Larry David when it comes to shit like that, but that wasn’t the point of what I said. Bad theater etiquette should get you a scowl or a “Shhh!” at worst. Anything more is victim blaming and I completely agree with WaterGirl’s post that any anger diverted to the infant’s parents is misguided.
Robin G.
Am I the only one who wasn’t surprised to hear it was Colorado? What the hell goes on up there?
NotMax
@Laura
My worry would be about subjecting one so young, with an undeveloped immune system, to the germs of a closely-packed crowd in an enclosed space with limited air circulation (theatres, like planes, recycle the air – it is cheaper) for an extended period.
But I’m not a parent, so could be way off-base on that.
JGabriel
@NotMax:
Thanks for clarifying that. It’s a nerve-wracking story.
Anyway, my point in bringing up the age of some of the younger victims was less “OMG, he’s killing kids” and more to highlight the shooter’s sociopathic and indiscriminate indifference. So, same point, different means, though perhaps we both failed to reach the level of clarity we usually prefer.
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MikeJ
@Laura: Don’t trust anything on imgur about 9gag. Long running hostilities between them.
Gin & Tonic
@chopper: This. We took a 3-month-old to a big, noisy wedding. She slept peacefully in a port-a-crib under our table. We had a good time, she bothered nobody. Infants are surprisingly resilient.
Gin & Tonic
@chopper: This. We took a 3-month-old to a big, noisy wedding. She slept peacefully in a port-a-crib under our table. We had a good time, she bothered nobody. Infants are surprisingly resilient.
Valdivia
@Laura:
if that image is real, I note the nazi setting. how weird is that?
JPL
@freelancer (iPhone): Since I brought mine to the theater from an early age, they both understand etiquette. When the youngest was three at theater with lots of chatter, he announced loudly that some don’t understand proper movie behavior. Somehow when a toddler announces it, the crowd shuts up.
NotMax
Anyone know what the movie is rated?
PG-13?
freelancer (iPhone)
@Valdivia:
No way this dude did this over something wiki describes as like tumblr. This shit has a manifesto somewhere and it might be TimeCube, apeshit crazy, but he’s got his own reasons. We’ll hear soon enough.
Laura
@MikeJ: Wait, imgur is more than just a photo uploading site? geez
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Elizabelle:
First thought: Colorado. Focus on the Family. New Life Church. I’m surprised there haven’t been more of these.
Second thought: I know people who will never believe this was not Islamic.
Tim F.
Facebook has one James Holmes of the right age in Denver, but his profile does not make any sense. It shows a fairly well-read, witty and non-political kid whose main philosophical influence is a nineteenth century author named Chesterton, who famously said, “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” Very strange.
The Red Pen
@JPL:
The early risers on Free Republic were trying to decide whether this was Muslim terrorism or black gang activity (because those are the only two kinds of bad people they know about). Some Brit news outlet reported that the guy was “Indian” and so they were going with Muslim. I guess not.
My wife was pretty sure he was white because “otherwise they would have mentioned his race.” Nailed it.
Update: The ascendent theory on FR is now that the guy is a “rabid OWS’er.”
freelancer (iPhone)
@NotMax:
Yeah, it’s PG-13, but it is brutal and loud.
Valdivia
@freelancer (iPhone):
I am sure we will hear everything soon, that image just weirded me out.
Jay in Oregon
@Wyrm1:
Whenever I hear someone wanking in public about how much of a badass they’d be in a shootout, I picture them as Ike Clanton in the O.K. Corral shootout from Tombstone. (If you’re not familiar with the movie, he’s the bearded guy dousing his head in the barrel.)
Actually, throughout that entire movie Ike is the same way; a tough-talking bully who crumples the second someone pushes back.
JPL
The local station is reporting that the three month old is fine. The parents brought it to the hospital just to be checked out because of the exposure to the smoke and gas.
Valdivia
@Tim F.:
Chesterton was deeply cahtolic and his books reflected that.
rlrr
@Tim F.:
“James Holmes” sounds like it may be a very common name…
pseudonymous in nc
I think The Onion managed to sum up the sickness of those who treat regular mass shootings as a mark of American exceptionalism.
JPL
@Jay in Oregon: Yup..shooting in a smoky environment makes lots of sense.
JGabriel
@Valdivia:
As noted by MikeJ above, it’s probably not real.
The Nazi theater is likely a reference to Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds.
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NotMax
@freelancer
Thank you.
Litlebritdifrnt
I am just too sad to even comment more.
Someguy
@Tim F.:
Chesterton was a right wing fanatic and ranting Catholic apologist.
chopper
@freelancer (iPhone):
it’s only bad theater etiquette if the baby cries. if the kid sleeps like a rock, like i did when i was that age, then who fucking cares?
The Red Pen
Credit where credit due award to Freeper “Strategerist”:
A bright spot in a sea of dreck, though.
kerFuFFler
@Laura: Comment 57 addressed your question before you asked it….
“Uh, three month olds sleep anywhere and everywhere. Midnight is the same to them as any other time. In fact lots of them sleep better and longer in crowds than they do alone in a crib. It was either young parents wanting a night out who didn’t have a reliable abt sitter for an infant, we’re exclusively breast ceding, or a family with variable age children who went out altogether and didn’t want to leave mom out of the fun.”
(Great answer, Aimai.)
Common Sense
The victim from San Antonio was named Jessica Redfield. She narrowly escaped the shooting in Toronto last month and wrote a haunting blog about it:
—–
What started off as a trip to the mall to get sushi and shop, ended up as a day that has forever changed my life. I was on a mission to eat sushi that day, and when I’m on a mission, nothing will deter me. When I arrived at the Eaton Center mall, I walked down to the food court and spotted a sushi restaurant. Instead of walking in, sitting down and enjoying sushi, I changed my mind, which is very unlike me, and decided that a greasy burger and poutine would do the trick. I rushed through my dinner. I found out after seeing a map of the scene, that minutes later a man was standing in the same spot I just ate at and opened fire in the food court full of people. Had I had sushi, I would’ve been in the same place where one of the victims was found.
My receipt shows my purchase was made at 6:20 pm. After that purchase I said I felt funny. It wasn’t the kind of funny you feel after spending money you know you shouldn’t have spent. It was almost a panicky feeling that left my chest feeling like something was missing. A feeling that was overwhelming enough to lead me to head outside in the rain to get fresh air instead of continuing back into the food court to go shopping at SportChek. The gunshots rung out at 6:23. Had I not gone outside, I would’ve been in the midst of gunfire.
…
I was shown how fragile life was on Saturday. I saw the terror on bystanders’ faces. I saw the victims of a senseless crime. I saw lives change. I was reminded that we don’t know when or where our time on Earth will end. When or where we will breathe our last breath. For one man, it was in the middle of a busy food court on a Saturday evening.
I say all the time that every moment we have to live our life is a blessing. So often I have found myself taking it for granted. Every hug from a family member. Every laugh we share with friends. Even the times of solitude are all blessings. Every second of every day is a gift. After Saturday evening, I know I truly understand how blessed I am for each second I am given.
I feel like I am overreacting about what I experienced. But I can’t help but be thankful for whatever caused me to make the choices that I made that day. My mind keeps replaying what I saw over in my head. I hope the victims make a full recovery. I wish I could shake this odd feeling from my chest. The feeling that’s reminding me how blessed I am. The same feeling that made me leave the Eaton Center. The feeling that may have potentially saved my life.
http://jessicaredfield.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/late-night-thoughts-on-the-eaton-center-shooting/
Tim F.
@rlrr: @rlrr: Yes, no point guessing when we will know soon enough.
Valdivia
@JGabriel:
ah. now I get it. See I missed the pop culture reference but totally knew Chesterton. Story of my life ;)
NotMax
As no one else has posted it, Obama’s statement:
Nicole
Latest news is that the 3-month-old is fine; the parents took the infant to the hospital as a precaution.
Regarding the post about germs- the real risk is in the first 8 weeks, not because the baby is so terribly fragile but because, prior to receiving the vaccine for meningitis at 8 weeks old, if an infant runs a fever, it means a precautionary three days in the hospital and a spinal tap, even though the odds of meningitis are quite low.
Though I have yet to take our toddler to a movie, I find I’m more sympathetic to parents who do than I used to be. Babysitting in NYC averages $15/hr, which means an additional $45-$60 to the cost of a movie. And most infants do sleep through movies. I imagine e dark and the noise must make them feel like they’re right back in the womb.
gelfling545
@Anya: Probably sleeping. The thing about 3 month olds is that they are amazingly portable. A 6 year old would be more of a problem because likely to get cranky. I don’t see this as very unusual or questionable and I do hope we will not start the “if they hadn’t been somewhere they shouldn’t be” business.
JGabriel
@The Red Pen:
Now, now, don’t be unfair. Some of the Freepers speculated that it might be Hispanic gang activity.
So that’s three kinds of bad people they know about.
And I’m sure some of them will get to Occupy or liberals eventually.
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Southern Beale
Damn but I wish Anonymous or Wikileaks would hack into the NRA’s computers and publicize their major donor list. They’ve been fighting to keep that shit secret. We have a right to know which corporations (COUGHWalmart!COUGH) are funding domestic terrorism and violence.
Tim F.
BTW, the people who think the whole audience should have been packing are out of their goddamn mind. Let’s say that crazy person opens fire and hero #1 reaches for his heat and returns fire. Will he respond calmly and take the time to aim with 100% accuracy at a dude standing in he middle of a crowd of innocents? Take a wild guess. Hero number two sees two guys shooting civilians and has to make a split second decision about who to shoot at, while hero number one is most likely firing from the hip and hitting anything near the crazy person. Hero number one will now think that there are two shooters, and so will hero number two. Now you have a Mexican standoff between a terrorist and two or more freaked out heroes who cannot be sure which way to point their guns. Now the police arrive. Whom do they shoot?
Southern Beale
So the suspect has a name: James Holmes.
Punchy
Just logged on….what happened? Some clown went Columbine?
I believe this all could have been avoided if everyone in the theater were forced by law to carry a piece, so that everyone in the theater could have shot back at the person they thought was the shooter. I’m sure that would have worked awesome saucely.
Someguy
@Southern Beale:
All you have to do to get their major donor list is request their tax returns. As a 501(c)(3) they are required to give you a copy of them if you request, in person.
Steeplejack
With regard to that bullshit about armed bystanders “taking out the shooter,” there was this interesting story in the New York Times Tuesday:
Okay, three out of four people involved in this incident were trained professionals, and it still turned into a clusterfuck. Tell me again how any number of armed citizens sitting in a dark theater and taken by surprise are going to be able to do better?
There was another story I read recently about someone coming upon a crime in progress and shooting the wrong person, but I can’t find it now. Stupid Google.
NotMax
@Nicole
Thanks for the information.
Though in some movie theaters I’ve been in, it seems the floors haven’t been properly cleaned since the Coolidge administration.
kd bart
@Tim F.:
Don’t you know that in commenter fantasies, everyone in the theatre is an expert marksman with nerves of steel and that there is no possible way anyone would get killed or hurt in all the crossfire.
TS
So now I’m reading – maybe we shouldn’t have these midnight movies – the gun lobby is slowly removing individual rights – one massacre at a time.
Steeplejack
Front-pager to the courtesy phone! Any front-pager!
Please unmoderate my previous comment. My intentions were pure. FYWP.
LAC
@Anya: More importantly what was a morherfucker with a gun doing shooting up a theatre? Give us some time to process this over our coffee before we start the “perfect soccer mom” tut-tutting, m’kay ?
JPL
How long before Romney blames the President?
peach flavored shampoo
That’s easy. Any and all blacks, hispanics, and brown-skinned people. Thats the only way to be sure you’ll cap the bad guy.
JGabriel
__
__
JPL:
Thanks, JPL. That’s a relief for the parents.
.
JGabriel
@Punchy:
Or went Brievik, or Loughner. Be a while before we know.
.
chopper
@Tim F.:
never mind the fact that the shooter had a gas mask on and dropped a canister of tear gas. yeah, that’d have been really great, bunch of john waynes whipping out their concealed handguns in a big cloud of fucking tear gas. that would have saved countless lives.
El Cid
Dude was clearly just standing his ground in a movie theater where there was a shitload of people with hoodies, skittles, and flavored tea drinks.
Face
Not to sound insensitive, but I imagine this will significantly hurt ticket sales of this movie, at least for a few days. Who wants to be the victim of a copycat (even though statistics say that’s nearly impossible, most people are not logical about this stuff)?
Do production companies have insurance for a movie flopping for this sort of thing?
El Cid
@chopper: Yes, but it’s not how many lives were saved; it’s about the principle of finally being able to shoot at people in public because you think you’re defending yourself.
If more people have to die so that more people can finally feel like owning a firearm paid off, well, that’s why George Washington died on the cross for our 2nd Amendment.
Steeplejack
Something is funky with this post. I’m not seeing the sidebar stuff (recent comments and posts), and there is no Reply button or time stamp for each comment. Other threads seem okay.
NotMax
@TS
Because guns don’t function at, say, 5 p.m.?
Or maybe because the unbalanced only prowl after midnight?
Talk about panicked overreaction by the people writing what you’ve read.
Dork
Note to self: do NOT move to Denver suburbs without body armor.
jon
@NotMax: Germs and babies again? Babies need to get exposed to the world, either through crowds or vaccines or whatever way it takes to develop an immune system for their environment. Not that I advocate purposeful seeking out of germs for babies, but hiding them away can be harmful.
A grocery store and a park can have more germs than a crowded movie theater, and the average kitchen is more germ-laden than most toilets, so kids will get that exposure whether or not they go to the movies or their parents do. I’m sure when you’re a parent of an infant, you’ll go through a Silkwood decontamination after the movies before touching your child.
Babies aren’t fully grown with fully-developed immune systems, but they aren’t going to die if they get a sniffle.
MikeJ
@Face:
It could do more than that. I know of a mall that had one or two shootings in the parking lot with car thefts. It became known as a dangerous place and was bulldozed. It was less than 30 years old, which for something that costs as much as a mall to build isn’t that old.
NotMax
@El Cid
Not to mention shooting one another in the heat of the moment.
“I thought he/she was one of the bad guys. He/she was shooting.”
JPL
The President is going to make a statement at 11:20 and then the rest of his campaign events are canceled for the day.
Mitt is going to make a statement, probably blaming the President and then campaign.
Loviatar
angry white man + easy access to guns and explosives = this country will not end well.
—
We think the middle east is a shit hole; with our easy access to powerful automatic weapons, high explosives and personal protection gear when we get started with our class/race war we’ll make the middle east look like a children’s playground pushing contest.
Robin G.
@kd bart: I’m already fighting with someone on FB who is claiming this with a straight face (I assume). I walked away when I found out he’s a conservative Christian Marine. Not gonna get through there.
redshirt
Sounds like a Batman villain.
I know this won’t sound pleasing, but despite horrific acts of violence like this, we as a species are living in the safest, least violent period in our history, and in America in general the overall crime rates are way, way down from the the past. So don’t take one act of horror like this and extrapolate out for the entirety of society/humanity. It’s an aberration.
Howlin Wolfe
@EconWatcher: As a lawyer, I think the individual right to bear arms is a recent development fostered by the right wing, and it’s ironic that wing and gun nuts all talk about original intent when the “original” intent of the 2nd amendment is pretty clearly not to create an individual right to bear arms.
xian
@Omnes Omnibus: regulated meant drilled, as a militia, at the time, fwiw
NotMax
@jon
Ain’t gonna happen. Not anything I ever care to be.
And didn’t want in my 50s, 40s, 30s, 20s or teens. ;)
KXB
I still have a lot of family back in India. In observing the two countries, we’ve realized that in order to get through the day, people condition themselves to ignore certain conditions in their midst. In India, a middle class person ignores the poverty, because it is so overwhelming, that to give it the attention that it is due would make a man incapable of getting anything else done that day. That is not an original thought – Naipaul wrote it better than I could.
In the U.S., we are generally oblivious to gun violence. No other developed nation has anywhere near the scale of gun violence we have in America. Yet, we condition ourselves to deal with a certain amount of it. Here in the Chicago area, the city is dealing with an almost 30% spike in murders over 2011, but because they occur in the usual dens of urban dysfunction, we go about our day.
What is unsettling about this movie shooting is how in keeping it is with what the Joker said in The Dark Knight. No one pays too much attention when a bunch of troops get killed in combat, or a bunch of men die working in a risky job. But people freak out if a bus load of kids falls of a cliff. That is not a part of the plan, to use the Joker’s phrasing. People getting shot at a midnight movie is not a part of the plan.
I find myself in agreement with some posters here who are wondering what the hell some parents were thinking to bring young kids to The Dark Knight Rises – it is simply not a kids movie. Why did the theater owners even let a 3-month old inside? Wait till you have a free night where you can get a sitter or a relative. You don’t have to see the first showing. I got past that thinking in my 20s.
Howlin Wolfe
@Kathy: More guns = more outlaws with guns.
Punchy
How do we know James wasn’t following 12 hooded, suspicious black men who just bought Skittles and Tea into the theater, then felt threatened and needed himself some self defense?
rlrr
On a lighter note…
Mr Stagger Lee
@Wyrm1: I was at a barbershop, not long after the shooting at Virginia Tech, and we had a wingnut who sputtered that nonsense. One of the customers was a Iraq war vet who basically asked the Limpball Guy if he had ever been shot at for starters,and then turned Mr Macho into a quivering mass of mumbling mealy mouth words, who slinked out of the shop. It was beautiful watching the dressing down.
Howlin Wolfe
@kd bart: Just like in the movies!!
What could go wrong?
Jay in Oregon
@Punchy:
God forbid someone rolls a couple of tear gas canisters into the GOP convention in Florida. If that happens, Marco Rubio better hide in a closet until the shooting stops…
hep kitty
It’s all Obama’s fault for trying to take away our guns, even though he’s not, or something.
Regardless, Rush will blame it on liberals & Obama today.
TS
@NotMax:
And now the president cancels most of his day – no doubt will fly to Colorado within the week – and if it’s even possible (given current levels) his security will be tighter etc etc.
Soon the internets will be the only contact we have with other people & who knows if we are talking to robots or the real thing?
KXB
@JGabriel:
That may be the only bit of good news to come out of this.
NotMax
@Punchy
Or a fervent, rabid Adam West worshiper.
jon
@Howlin Wolfe: I always thought ownership of guns fell under the 9th Amendment, where all the unenumerated rights aren’t listed. If the Founders, version 3 or 4*, wanted to make ownership of personal guns (which was common at the time) part of the Bill of Rights, then they would have it in there. Instead, it was about militias and the government’s right to have weapons ready for them.
*these would be those Founders who were inspired by God to come up with a Bill of Rights for the Constitution that replaced the God-inspired Articles of Confederation that didn’t work out so well after the God-inspired Declaration of Independence was determined to be just a political argument rather than a procedural guideline of a way to govern.
Wazmo
Mass Shootings as modern-day slave rebellion.
Frankensteinbeck
The killer was 24, and the killing occurred at the premier of a movie that has a strong theme of vigilante justice? I believe we will find out that the voices told him to do it. He’s at the age for his first bad schizophrenic outbreak, and the venue is the kind a sick mind planning to kill someone would latch onto. It is sad and horrible and almost impossible to predict. It occurs in every society in every time period. Availability of weapons has some effect, but the only thing the voices are good at planning is finding some way, any way to kill lots of innocent people. I don’t know if people that sick should be hated or pitied, but their brains have been scrambled and the darkest parts of their id are literally giving them orders constantly. This sounds exactly like that kind of scenario, and it is a rare but horrible tragedy that is baked into humanity as a species.
g
@Wyrm1: Oh, right. Just the thing to have, if you’re in a dark, smoke-filled theatre with bullets flying all around – more bullets flying all around.
NotMax
@jay in Oregon
Guns are allowed at Tampa outside the GOP convention, but specifically not inside.
Those entering who are packing heat are supposed to check them at the door (I know, I know – it’s ludicrous).
RaflW
@Butch:
Not to mention that in the theater, there was reported to be a ton of noise and shooting, etc, on the screen which covered the early actual shots.
I was living in Austin, TX when the Luby’s shooting happened back in ’91. People then said “armed guests could have taken him out” as if anyone armed might have been able to tell that person #2 with a gun going after the real perp wasn’t also a perp. Etc, till mayhem.
Then add darkened theater with explosions and violence on the screen, and multiple armed ‘civilians’ and things would have been far, far worse I would imagine.
We really do live in a very sick culture.
g
@amorphous: Someone – whatever their goal – made a decision to go to a crowded public place and terrify and kill random people. If that’s not terrorism, I don’t know what is.
WaterGirl
Just returned from my morning swim, where one of the other swimmers used to live in Aurora, CO. According to her, Aurora has the highest diversity rate per capita of anywhere in the country. She mentioned families from Africa, for one.
For what it’s worth.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
Thank you again, NRA.
Frankensteinbeck
@g:
Terrorism has a goal. It is sowing fear among a population for some political purpose. It is possible there was some political purpose here, but no reason to believe that yet. More likely it is just a crazy man being violent because his brain is broken. That is bad enough.
xian
@jon: i’m no gun nut but “keep and bear arms” doesn’t mean “the gov’t has a gun stored for you.”
KXB
Just learned that one of the dead in Aurora, Jessica Redfield, was also in the Eaton Centre in Toronto when a gunman opened fire in the food court back in June. Her thoughts about that shooting:
Late Night Thoughts on Eaton Centre Shooting
Elie
@Southern Beale:
It doesnt take much to push paranoid schizophrenics over the edge. Add a culture of guns and violent language all over the airwaves and internet and finally, very poor, inadequate psychiatric referral and treatment services.
satanicpanic
Fucking horrible.
Laura
@WaterGirl: That’s worth…absolutely nothing?
hep kitty
@NotMax: Yeh, whose going to check them in the streets? The cops will be way outnumbered. Because I’m predicting some kind of shooting, at least one attempted shooting. I predict a very ugly convention. Very ugly.
g
@Valdivia: if that image is real, I note the nazi setting. how weird is that?
The image at looks like a screen cap from “Inglorious Basterds” which is a film that features such a planned event in a movie theatre. In the movie, it’s the “good guys” who plan it, and the inhabitants of the theatre are all Nazis or collaborators.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Tim F.:
Take it a bit further than that. If the theater held 300, what would it have been like if 100 of them were armed?
A fucking bloodbath.
Those who say that someone who had been packing would have stopped the shooter are fucking idiots who love their guns more than they care for people. They don’t think beyond their Rambo fantasies which shows how fucking delusional they are.
This is a tragedy and those who say it wasn’t a terrorist act are idiots. This asshole is a terrorist, a white terrorist. A chicken shit terrorist who was willing to kill unarmed people and wilted when law enforcement had the drop on him.
Gun control now, please. The Second Amendment was not intended to allow this and our forefathers would shit if they could see what has happened to our country.
Elie
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well said.
We also seem to have poor tools for catching these young people early in their evolution. The schools and families seem unable to get them help or to have that help stick — I imagine a fair number scare their own families…
Villago Delenda Est
@Jay in Oregon:
Rubio looks pretty white. He’s safe.
Allan West, on the other hand, should quake with fear.
Terry
@chopper: Thanks. I’ve been thinking the same thing. I can easily imagine parents taking a vacation, kids sleeping early and getting up, and excitedly preparing to watch a first showing of a Batman movie. (I was Mr. Mom for our 3 kids.)
We did it once or twice, actually, and it was great. We also got up a number of times to watch the Perseides meteor shower in August. And … well, it seems hard to imagine that someone who’s been a parent would think anything negative about this. Bizarre.
elmo
I have to sound a dissenting note here, albeit a mild one. I think the wingers with their fantasies of a steely-eyed paladin taking out the shooter are childish and silly. But I am uncomfortable at the equally ludicrous fantasies I’m seeing here, that just because somebody else is carrying a gun, that means they will necessarily do the worst possible thing with it and just start shooting up the place themselves.
It’s making me uncomfortable, because it does a disservice to the actual people, with actual guns, who have in fact stopped a few such mass shootings. The lady in Colorado Springs at the church, for example. She was a volunteer security guard — no real training, but she did have a gun, knew how to use it, and had the courage and skill to save lives that day.
I’m not taking the wingers’ side in this. Obviously they’re fantasizing. But so are folks here. And frankly, I think individual gun owners with courage have stopped more mass shootings than individual gun owners have jumped in and increased the mayhem, shooting blindly at the shooter.
We will never, ever, remove guns from this society. So it isn’t a matter of “yes, but if nobody had guns, stuff like this wouldn’t happen.” So let’s have at least a modicum of respect for the people who have stopped crazy shooters like this, without blazing away at the shooter and all passers-by.
Villago Delenda Est
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
“It sounded like bottle rockets going off.”
How often do you hear this earwitness recollection from events like this?
This is because that’s what real live rounds being sent downrange sounds like.
It’s NOTHING like the movies or TV, where gunfire is “enhanced” for greater dramatic effect.
This is all most of these people know about firearms.
Porco rosso
Well crap.
JPL
Bozo Boortz is using his forum to discuss the use of concealed weapons. If everyone had guns, fewer would be killed…yadda,yadda,yadda
I was at Home Depot and the man checking me out said that he and his s.o. canceled plans to see the movie tonight.
Villago Delenda Est
@elmo:
This is based on what? Please cite incidents where this happened.
Steeplejack
@kd bart:
And the middle name is usually Wayne.
beltane
ABC reports a possible Tea Party connection to the shooting http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/07/aurora-abc-draws-possible-tea-party-connection-129568.html
g
@KXB: Oh, that’s sad. Of course, it’s sad that all of the dead are dead, but how terrified she must have been during her last moments.
Cassidy
@elmo: I have to passionately disagree with you. In the military we do what are called “stress shoots”. Basically, you do a bunch of exercise, pull a Humvee, carry some watercans, some sprints, etc. then, once the adrenaline is flowing and your heart rate is through the roof, you go to the line and start shooting at targets. The purpose is to teach you to be accurate after your body has gone through the fight or flight response and you’ve had to sprint to cover, etc.
The reality is that people, including trained professionals, are not just innately accurate with their bullets when they are stressed. It takes practice. It’s also reality that the majority of gun owners do not practice on a regular basis, much less try to replicate stressful conditions. Gun fetishists don’t carry guns; they carry metal/ polymer teddy bears. It makes them feel good and secure, but is close to useless.
KXB
@elmo:
I go back and forth on this myself. Just a few days ago, an old man in Florida shot at two guys who were trying to rob an Internet cafe. Thankfully, no one was killed.
Samuel Williams in ‘Gran Torino’ Remake
I’ve know guys who work in gas stations, bars, or other places open late at night in very sketchy parts of the city, and I don’t know how I can tell them that they should not have the option to protect themselves and their business. I still remember the LA Riot footage, seeing Korean grocery owners with guns protecting their businesses.
Now, the type of gun is another story.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cassidy:
Bah. Military experience. It’s a liberal thing. Soldiers who have been in combat tend to not see gun play as fun.
If military experience were relevant, guys like Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, and Beck would have been in the military once.
satanicpanic
@Villago Delenda Est: This is a good point- how many people have heard a gun going off and know what it actually sounds like? I would guess not many. Hollywood could do people a favor and get rid of the BLAMMO cannon sound.
Also, this is pretty tangential- movies theatres are so damn loud. Even if you don’t immediately recognize the sound of guns going off, a sound that loud in a closed room really out to be audible and ought to be shocking whether you recognize it or not.
elmo
@Villago Delenda Est:
Two off the top of my head:
The church security guard I mentioned.
The Pearl Mississippi high school shooter was subdued by an assistant principal with a gun.
I can’t think of any incidents, in contrast, where an armed innocent has started blazing away indiscriminately because somebody else started shooting. If I’m wrong about that, I gladly welcome correction.
Cassidy
@satanicpanic: It really depends on the caliber. A .22LR literally sounds like little firecrackers or bigger versions of those little things you throw on the ground and they make that popping noise. Seems innocuous and tiny. Imagine 100 rounds of those in an extended mag and hollowpointed. That’s a weapon of mass destruction for less than $250.
NotMax
@Cassidy
That ought to be stitched on samplers and offered for sale.
Well put.
elmo
@Cassidy:
Listen, I don’t have any experience of my own to counter yours, certainly; and I don’t think I would have the courage or nerve myself to do what I’m talking about. But I do know that sometimes, the gun doesn’t actually have to be fired to be effective. The assistant principal who subdued the Pearl high school shooter didn’t shoot him – he just came upon him armed while the shooter was trying to drive away (and therefore didn’t have his gun right handy).
All I’m saying is that people actually have done this and saved lives. That’s a fact. And I don’t know of any instances where people have done the disastrous thing that’s suggested here, just start blazing away at the shooter without regard to the situation.
elmo
@NotMax:
Oh, and when I was replying to Cassidy earlier I meant to agree. Very nicely put.
jon
@xian: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The Constitution uses “people” in some instances and “person” or “persons” in others. The 2nd Amendment uses “people” and clearly means something involving groups. The 5th Amendment uses “person” and it’s pretty clear that means an individual. At that time, individuals already had weapons, so I’m of the opinion that an individual’s right wasn’t being questioned (but could have been, leading to the thinking that the 9th Amendment was needed,) but that the people needed to have militias so those individuals wouldn’t go nuts on occasion and not have organized opposition to control them and thus lead to something other than the intended “free state”. It would lead to a Galtian state of terrorists with individual agendas.
I’m no gun nut. Or anti-gun nut. I’m just saying the 2nd Amendment is pretty clear about what it is about, and it isn’t individuals with private militias of one.
Mnemosyne
@elmo:
So now security guards are just ordinary citizens standing by who stumble upon a crime scene? WTF?
I’m pretty sure that someone who’s a security guard — even a volunteer one — is doing things like watching the people who come in, scanning the crowd for trouble, staying alert in case something happens. They’re not sitting peacefully in their seats paging through the church bulletin when someone starts shooting.
I would also like to see a few links to these many, many stories you have of ordinary citizens — not off-duty police officers or volunteer security guards, but actual ordinary citizens — who just happen to have their sidearm with them in public and also just happen to thwart a crime. How about three verifiable stories so you don’t trip the spam filter?
satanicpanic
@Cassidy: Yeah, I’m not an expert or anything. I base it on whatever my neighbors were shooting at birds with back where I grew up.
Josh G.
This is a good article about how Hollywood weapons sounds differ from real weapons sounds. (The author has some wingnut views on unrelated issues, but this particular article is solid.) The money quote:
Mnemosyne
@elmo:
Well, sort of. He caught up to the kid as the kid got into his (dead) mother’s car and was preparing to drive away AFTER he killed people inside the school. The assistant principal didn’t prevent jack shit.
Cassidy
@elmo: In those cases you are right, and I’m not personally attacking you over your position, so don’t take it that way.
Yes, sometimes a person with a gun has been able to do something good. I can think of several. And yes, a gun is a deterrent in some case by simply being present. But, here is a problem with that: if you point a gun at someone and they stop. yay! crime deterred. What happens when they fight you and go for the gun? I forgot the statistic and where to cite it from, but the percentage of people who miss a fast moving target within 10 meteres is amazingly high.
Secondly, you’re looking at a small incident of lone gunman opening fire on a crowd and seeing a small percentage of sucessful interventions due to personal gun ownership. If you look at the totality of gun violence, though, that is a negligible statistic. How many women have been murdered because thier controlling SO was legally able to obtain a gun? Trayvon Martin? So on and so forth.
WaterGirl
@Laura: I suggest you take a look at what your “contributions” to this conversation have been before you start disparaging other people’s comments.
And now I am off to water my flowers before I say something I regret.
elmo
@Mnemosyne:
Mnem, please don’t put words in my mouth. Did I say “many, many?” I did not. I knew of two instances off the top of my head, and cited them in a post above. I tend to think of a “volunteer security guard” at a church event as somebody who tells people where to park and keeps kids from climbing the downspouts, not like a cop who goes to work every day expecting gun violence. If you think of her differently, that’s your prerogative.
What I was trying to do, apparently unsuccessfully, was to point out that the rhetoric of “thank God nobody else was carrying a gun, there would have been a bloodbath” is just as silly as “if only everyone else had been carrying a gun, it would have been stopped.” Because lots of people carry guns. And it has occurred that people have stopped such incidents with guns, and without resorting to the “spray and pray” that people upthread are talking about.
It is perfectly possible to have a gun in your waistband or your purse and not pull it out and start shooting at the first hint of danger. It’s even possible to have a gun in your possession and still decide that the safest, smartest thing to do is to hunker down and wait for the police, or flee. Very occasionally, and providentially, it has even occurred that somebody has had a gun and not only not started shooting indiscriminately, but actually managed to stop a tragedy. That’s the only point I was trying to make – that the over-the-top claims made in this thread about what bystanders would have done if they’d had guns with them are just silly, overwrought, and do a disservice to people who have done just the opposite.
carolus
Not the best example.
As it turned out, Koreans suffered the greatest financial losses during the riots. And one of the armed Koreans was accidentally shot and killed by a fellow armed Korean.
elmo
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, he did. The boy was planning to continue his spree at another location.
elmo
@Cassidy:
No worries, I’m not taking anything as an attack – in fact, I don’t think you and I disagree all that much. I’m not taking the wingers’ position here; I was just made uncomfortable by overwrought fantasies of what armed bystanders would do, as though the gun would remove all reason and self-control from the equation. It doesn’t do that. Some people actually keep their self-control, even with a gun in the waistband. That’s all.
Laura
@elmo:
Please provide information on this.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
I have been shot at before. I won’t go into the circumstances of them but I was armed on more than one of the occasions.
You make a split second decision. Shoot, fall to the ground, run like hell, be a better target. Those are your options. If you shoot you are supposed to be able to know where the bullet is going, collateral damage and all that bullshit. If you don’t you aren’t supposed to shoot. That’s how I was trained anyway. In a crowd, in darkness, being gassed? An armed professional should not be shooting in that situation. An armed person who has never taken fire? It is ludicrous to imagine that they could take a “reasonable” shot. Let me amend that. It’s bullshit.
You are correct it is always a clusterfuck. Always. It only gets sorted out afterwards. I have a police officer friend who has had to shoot someone as he was attacked with a knife and knocked down. As he was going to the ground he was attacked again. He killed the guy, laying on the ground on his back. He is about 6ft4, 215lbs, in excellent shape, going into a situation on duty. He was as ready as anyone can be, and he still was not fully ready. No one is. No one. Well maybe a total psychopath.
I add my name to the list of people who ask when are we going to have at the very least a grownup national discussion about guns?
Steeplejack
The thread hinkiness starts at comment 116, if any front-pager is working on a fix (or postmortem).
Cassidy
@elmo: Heh…I can tell you from personal experience, most of my fellow gun owners scare the bejesus out of me. It is mostly anecdotal, and I don’t present it as anything more, but I have informally questioned many, many gun owners and I get a lot of “Huh?” when I ask how they train.
Personally, While I don’t have guns right now (whole ‘nother story), I will in the future. And when I did have some, I never carried in public. The only time I took them out of the house was to go shoot, and on road trips/ camping/ etc. And even on the road trips they weren’t close, just available. When I go out in public, my primary concern is to find multiple evacuation routes to get my family out of something crazy like that. So, I don’t consider it particularly brave to have a gun and be willing to use it in that Rambo type fantasy; I always ask those guys “what about your family? You’re the man. Aren’t you supposed to be guiding them to safety?”. I never get a good answer.
elmo
@Ruckus:
You’re making exactly, exactly my point, better than I did.
You’ve taken fire while armed. I take it from your story that you didn’t automatically yank out your firearm and start shooting back, regardless of the tactical situation? Of course not. Had you been in that theater, and been armed, you wouldn’t have returned fire, it would have been madness.
There are millions of gun owners in this country. Many of them carry. Very, very few of them are so stark raving mad that they would open fire in a crowded, dark, gas-filled theater, no matter who was shooting at them.
Loviatar
@Ruckus:
Never.
As long as the NRA and its supporters know they win if they can keep the rhetoric at the level of “DADDY THAT BAD MAN WANTS TO TAKE AWAY MY TOYS”.
Loviatar
@elmo:
Wow, either you’re an ASS or very obtuse.
Nahh, you’re just a very obtuse ASS.
elmo
@Cassidy:
Funny.
I do have guns, but I don’t carry. I’ve considered on long solo road trips maybe having a gun in the car, but always decided against it – as you say, I don’t train, I wouldn’t want to leave it in the car if I stopped, etc.
But I have brandished a shotgun in self-defense, on my front porch. Thank God that was all I had to do.
Villago Delenda Est
@elmo:
But the assistant principle could not know this at the time.
You’re retconning.
Cassidy
@elmo: I don’t think you’re argument is entirely wrong, but I do think your initial premise gives way too much credit ot the average American.
But the real problem is how easy it is to get your hands on something that make sit easy to kill multiple people in seconds.
RaflW
@elmo:
Of course not. But other Western societies have guns without functionally unlimited access.
Can a determined person get a gun and go nuts in a highly controlled country? Of course, look at the Norwegian tragedy.
But there are countries that have active hunting and shooting cultures but that don’t have the scope and scale of gun deaths that the US has.
Someone up-stream said that we become in effect blind to the things we can’t cope with changing. I feel like your comment, elmo, is in that vein.
That we can’t totally ban guns doesn’t mean we shouldn’t restrict them to reasonable use, reasonable licensing and control. It won’t get all the guns out of circulation and that shouldn’t be the goal in my opinion.
But we can say enough! to the torrent of unregistered, unmonitored gun sales, ammo sales, high-powered weapons, large magazines, etc.
This binary proposition is absurd and counter to what is done in other decent nations. Yes we have a second amendment. That shouldn’t mean we as a nation just give in to guns as the ultimate symbol of ‘freedom.’
Ugh.
Keith G
@elmo: Are you expecting that attention be paid to nuance here?
elmo
@Cassidy:
Maybe. I just hate seeing this discussed as essentially a tribal signifier: the winger tribe believes that guns make people brave, strong, loyal, thrifty and true. Then our tribe claims that guns make people insane.
They’re tools. I have a fire extinguisher in my truck, and this one time I helped put out a car fire on the side of the road. Go me. But I wouldn’t rush over to a blazing inferno just to prove that I’m strong and fearless. I’m not trained to fight big fires, and my little truck extinguisher is totally inadequate to the job.
Why do people insist that inanimate objects have magic powers?
Whidby
Another “deranged white guy”?
That’s some racist shit right there.
elmo
@Keith G:
Not expecting, but asking? Nicely?
Cassidy
@elmo: Well, I think you’re drawing an incorrect conclusion. You can find plenty of material that “suggests” the fetishization of guns among the right. Is the use of fetish entirely accurate, no, but I think that a conclusion can be drawn that they are committing some type of idolatry. The gun has become a symbol of masculinity and power and FREEDOM! and other such nonsense, despite, as you state, it’s a tool…used for killing. we’re not putting up wallpaper or hanging drywall with our handy-dandy multipurpose gun.
As for the liberal conclusion that “ZOMG! Guns make you insane!”, I don’t think that’s what people are saying. I think the general consensus here is that ordinary people, when confronted with an extraordinary, violent scenario are not going to respond with the level of calm required to hit a relatively small target with the precision necessary to not endanger those around them. If you want to take that bet, go for it, but I don’t like the odds. In panicky situations, people panic. Panic and guns are not a good mix. The statistical anamoly of those who have been able to respond in a calm fashion are exactly that: an anamoly.
elmo
@Cassidy:
See, I agree with that sentiment entirely, but that isn’t what people were saying that I objected to.
I agree that the vast, vast majority of people would panic in that situation. I just also think that those same people, if they are armed, will not pull the gun out and start shooting, but will instead do the non-crazy thing and run.
If people upthread were saying “Silly wingers, more armed people in the theater wouldn’t have done any good. They would have run away, just like the unarmed people did.” That wouldn’t get any objection from me, because that’s what I believe.
But that’s not what people were saying. People were saying “Well at least we can thank God that there was only the one armed person, because ZOMG bloodbath if any of the bystanders had been armed as well.” As though the bystander’s gun would remove all self-control and reason from the situation, simply by being there.
PurpleGirl
@elmo: When Congresswoman Giffords was shot there was an innocent who had his gun and was around the corner of the store. He heard the shooting and decided not to take out his gun because he wouldn’t be able to tell who had done the shooting and who was innocent.
ETA: I seem to remember an incident in NYC when the cops came to an in progress holdup at a fast food place; there was an off-duty officer who ended up being shot by the cops. He had tried to take out the robber. The on-duty cops didn’t know who was who at the scene.
elmo
@PurpleGirl:
Exactly, exactly my point. Thank you for the additional data.
BruinKid
My Ron Paul friend just responded this way:
Sigh.
Cassidy
@elmo: It’s not the gun that would remove all reason and self-control, but the panic. And remember, the rwinger’s intitial response is to say if more people were armed they could have fought back. So the premise is already established that these mythical RW he-men are whipping out thier
dickschrome plated four-nickels and going Chuck Norris on this guy. No one’s assuming that a bunch of random strangers are pulling guns and descending into bloodlust. They’re commenting on the already established and well documented RW fantasy.Ruckus
@elmo:
I am not making your point. Emphatically not making your point.
Arming citizens so they can pull out their guns when some other nut pulls out his is fucking insane. In the wild wild west my understanding is that most people did not carry guns. It just wasn’t necessary when not hunting for food. It still isn’t. More guns means more dead people. That’s how it works. In many countries in this world gun control is strictly enforced. They have dramatically fewer deaths by guns.
The more guns the more possibility for gun deaths. Period. End of sentence. End of discussion. Everything else is pure bullshit.
Ruckus
@Loviatar:
Yeah that’s about the time frame I was thinking. Fucking never.
rb
@WaterGirl: THANK YOU. Well said.
Cris (without an H)
sigh indeed. Among other things, this shows a complete misunderstanding of the state of mind of the shooter. This isn’t a bank robber or a commando raid. Anybody who would fire into a crowded movie theater is not thinking or acting rationally.
Maybe the guy already thinks he’s invincible, or an action hero who can dodge return fire; or maybe he isn’t bothered by thoughts of his own death; or maybe he hasn’t even considered what could really happen. But I just don’t see an armed society being a deterrent to someone so far gone.
TooManyJens
@BruinKid: The words “violence” and “coercion” have such a strange and circumscribed meaning to libertarians.
Mnemosyne
@elmo:
I’m still waiting for you to give us some examples of that. Again, a security guard is not a bystander minding their own business — she is a security guard whose job it is to watch for trouble. And the vice principal didn’t “stop” a tragedy since it had already occurred — he just managed to hold the perpetrator until the police arrived.
If you want to talk about heroes, let’s talk about people like Greg McKendry, an unarmed man who stopped the shooting at a Knoxville church by sacrificing his own life.
Sorry, but I don’t buy this NRA bullshit that you should be allowed to carry a gun with you wherever you please and make up your own mind about whether or not you should intervene in any situation you happen upon. As was pointed out at #130, even trained professionals screw up and get themselves killed when they try to cowboy in and save the day.
rb
@NotMax: It would have been R if a booby was shown. Violence and mass murder are OK for PG.
gorram
@Jay in Oregon:
Of all the places to hide where there’s many Republicans – closet is likely to be the least pleasant. If you’re not getting felt up, then you’ll have to deal with all the skeletons.
PurpleGirl
@elmo: I wasn’t intending to back up your point. In the Gifford instance, the guy who decided not use his gun didn’t think he could stop anything. I think he instead went for physically tackling Loughner.
In the NYC incident, the off-duty cop got shot by the on-duty cops because the on-duty cops couldn’t tell who was who when they arrived. And they didn’t know he was a cop. He was a “civilian” with a gun. That’s why NYPD’s official stance is that people shouldn’t get involved, period, with using guns during in-progress crime.
Mnemosyne
@elmo:
… says the person insisting that people who carry guns in public are always responsible and never make situations worse.
Mnemosyne
@Cassidy:
THIS. Elmo, if you think that you’re not going to have an e-mail box full of messages from your gun buddies declaring that none of this would have happened if everyone in that theater had been packing, you’re even more delusional than I thought. That’s the refrain we’re going to be hearing for weeks, and it’s the reason why nothing will be done. Again.
Don
Again, a security guard is not a bystander minding their own business—she is a security guard whose job it is to watch for trouble. And the vice principal didn’t “stop” a tragedy since it had already occurred—he just managed to hold the perpetrator until the police arrived.
Even a security guard likely shouldn’t get involved in most gun incidents. Every state is different, I’m sure, but I went through the armed security guard training here in Virginia. It was made clear to us, repeatedly, that we are not law enforcement and should go out of our way not to use our weapons unless there is no other option. Our authority in that regard is no different than any other civilian: to prevent harm to ourselves or others when there is no other choice, including retreating from the scene.
“Don’t get into a firefight” was explicitly stated. So was “you are not a police officer” and “call the cops.”
I’m pretty ambivalent about weapons and citizens. I can think of situations where it might work out well; cases like the Virginia Tech incident where people were pinned down in an enclosed space and with time to suss out what was going on? A weapon could have made an impact without being more likely to cause more damage. But that’s an exceedingly rare circumstance, and barely resembles the chaos of a shooting spree.
In a dark theater, full of movie noise, panicking people, smoke? I’ve been a gun owner for 15 years and it takes concentration to put bullets in a space the size of a chest from 10 yards. The qualifier for armed security guard required us to draw from a shoulder-width stance, in full lighting and with nobody shooting at us, and put two in center mass in a few seconds. Not everyone passed, and we weren’t required to hit every time to pass.
Did I mention that you weren’t required to hit the target every try in order to pass? I think that should be kept in mind when wondering if we want armed security to engage with attackers. There may well be cases when the possible additional risk is justified by the chance of stopping the gunner, but this wild west sort of belief where someone deploying their weapon doesn’t risk shooting other people is foolish.
The training for concealed carry, which I have also been through, didn’t require any time-based shooting.
The required training for open carry is zero, at least here in Virginia.
I guess some people can go through these training sessions and be certain that armed civilian resistance will, typically, be more likely to result in a positive result when shooting breaks out. I am not those people.
celticdragonchick
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yep. I happen to think that the Va Tech massacre could likely have been stopped by somebody with a gun. The rooms and halls were well lit, the gunman was alone and obvious and it is highly plausible that there were multiple occasions where a clear shot could have been taken had a person with a handgun been there.
That simply does not apply here. It was pitch dark in a very congested movie theater with panicked people running around trying to avoid the gunman who was wearing body armor, and many people possibly unsure who the gunman even was.
I dare anybody to explain how the hell they would have taken a shot under those circumstances, especially when the guy has armor and outguns you with a rifle(while surrounded with screaming movie patrons). Bullshit. You lay low between the seats and hide yourself and your party.
Joel
@Don: Great post FWIW.
Joel
@Don: Great post FWIW.
dill
@Mnemosyne:
Here you go: http://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-man-71-shoots-alleged-robbers-internet-cafe/story?id=16800859
If you google around, there is video.
celticdragonchick
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe not…but as a trans woman who has been stalked (as well as my spouse) and has been directly threatened with physical harm in public, I am responsible for my own safety on some level. I am not interested in intervening in anything. I am scared as hell of the people who want to intervene with me, and I have zero problem with shooting to kill when somebody decides to have a beat down on me like what happened here…
elmo
@Mnemosyne:
Jesus. Mnem, if I hadn’t seen you post here and over at Pandagon for years I’d just decide that you were trolling and give it up. For the last time, will you please stop putting words in my mouth? You’re just making shit up that I didn’t say, and you’re usually better than that. It’s beneath you, and a shit way of discussing serious subjects with another human being.
I’m out, because I can see I’m not able to make myself clear, and that probably means I shouldn’t be discussing the subject at all on a day like this.
Mary
@elmo:
Yes, but if you’re in a room with say 100 people who carry guns, it doesn’t matter if 99% of them would do the non-crazy thing. All it takes is one crazy person to make an already tragic situation a hundred times worse.
Ruckus
@Mary:
Save your breath.
Berial
It’s just this, over and over and over again isn’t it?
http://thismodernworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/TMW2011-01-12acolorlowres-copy-2.jpg
eemom
Haven’t read the thread, but I just got done saying elsewhere that surely not even the gun nuts can insist that bystanders packing heat would have helped in a situation like this.
I haz a wrong?
wrb
@eemom:
you haz
Steeplejack
@PurpleGirl:
See above.