1. The shooter wore body armor and tactical protective gear, which is impervious to everything except armor piercing bullets (banned for civilian use) and Kryptonite.
2. Which is precisely why we need to ban body armor and tactical protective gear except for military and law enforcement.
3. And of course, he bought ammunition online, in bulk. That needs to stop.
4. That ammo he bought? Was to put in his guns. Plural. Allowing people easy access to a single firearm is bad enough. But allowing them access multiple firearms? At once? That’s just crazy! And leads, inevitably, to just this kind of thing.
5. The shooter ignored postings noting that the emergency exit was not an entrance. But since it would be stupid to ban emergency exits, we should probably just ban guns, ammo, and online purchasing of guns or ammo.
6. Banning something — because you care, and because of the children — means it goes away. Like alcohol in the 20s, or drug use today.
7. Likely, if public violence is committed, the TEA Party has something to do with it. The fact that no direct connection is ever found is proof of just how nefarious the movement is.
8. You know who really likes guns? Rednecks. And militia-types. And Christians — many of whom are redneck militia types. Learned coastal elites may keep the occasional antique firearm as a conversation starter, but that doesn’t mean they shoot the godawful things. Such noise! Plus, what would their friends say?
9. The shooter used a door prop, the purchase of a ticket, and the strategic placement of an automobile in the service of his massacre. But since so many things can be used to prop open a door, and several car companies are now owned by the government, it makes no sense to ban those. So we should probably just stick to banning guns and ammo. Theater tickets, on the other hand? Well, they needn’t be banned, but they should at least be subsidized so that the poor can see movies, too. For fairness and social justice.
10. We’re not sure how, but Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann have something to do with this. We’ll keep checking.
11. It’s nonsense to suggest that had responsible armed citizens been able to bring their concealed carry weapons into the theater where guns were banned, the massacre may have been lessened or even prevented. Because of the body armor. And the bulk ammo. And the internet. Plus, guns. Plural! Besides, do we really want a bunch of fat suburban junkfood eaters drunk on fake butter whipping out their steel dicks in public? That’s what we have public sector police unions for!
12. Has anybody found a connection to either the TEA Party or Sarah Palin, yet? Dig, citizens! Dig!
13. By the way, if it turns out the unemployed student has leftist sensibilities? Well, then naturally political affiliations have nothing to do with any of this, and we’re OUTRAGED you’d even suggest as much. We said Good Day, sirs!
14. Incidentally? No matter what, it turns out, motivated the shooter, the official narrative will be that he was anti-government. As with the Duke rape case, just because we get the facts wrong doesn’t mean we weren’t advancing the correct and proper narrative.
15. Did we suggest banning theater popcorn? May as well throw that in there, too. It makes people fat and lazy and therefore incapable of stopping the efforts of a crazed, impenetrable, unfairly armored TEA Party member with bulk internet ammo and guns, plural!, from taking out lots of citizens who are too dopey and hickish and suburban and mundane to be trusted to have on them a means to protect themselves. So, may was well go with a junkfood ban, or at least take a closer look at the portion size of, say, theater soda.
16. Who cares more than us? No one. No one cares more than us.
We need to have a national conversation on how to punish completely innocent people for the acts of one man.
(But don’t you McCarthyites go looking into where Muslim charity money flows! That’s just hateful!)
Can’t believe they haven’t gotten around to banning murder yet.
You can’t ban theater popcorn! Cutting a hole in a box of Milk Duds just isn’t the same!
At least not according to a guy I know.
Learned coastal elites may keep the occasional antique firearm as a conversation starter
or hire scads of armed bodyguards ::cough::Rushdie::cough::
17. If you call them heroes, that only glorifies violence.
Whatever, Something Must Be Done! So let’s get going Getting It Done, citizens!
I think you forgot to mention that many, many more would have died in the crossfire, had people been allowed to carry guns in that theater.
18. This has something to do with the proliferation of concealed carry laws.
– “Suspected killer appears dazed in first court
appearence.”
I’m assuming that the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was an contributing factor to Colorado’s climate of hate but I haven’t heard the connection acknowledged yet.
I actually heard one intelligent line of inquiry during a major media report: where the hell did this murderer get the money to buy all this stuff?
Is it as though they like to assume he couldn’t have had a job?
Just because you drop out of med school doesn’t mean you can’t keep your student loan money. A semester’s tuition will buy a lot of ammo. A lot.
– The money most likely came from mommy and daddy and his grant. Turns out his apartment, rent free, was also part of the deal, so cash was probably not a problem.
I learned (from the media) that had a theater goer been armed, even MORE people could have been harmed and killed.
By insuring that only the crazy guy has a gun, we have less of a chance of friendly fire.
Oh, slart already covered this for me.
*dang you slart
If Republicans hadn’t sabotaged the Clean Energy Great Leap Forward, he would have had to take the subway, and someone would have noticed all the machine guns.
BBH–thanks! IIRC, his mother reportedly expressed a lack of surprise at his arrest.
Gunga Dan said it best (although about another meme scheme) and I paraphrase:
The Mainstream News is Fake but Accurate.
Courage, you progressive heroes. Cowering and gibbering in the corner.
Half serious — I know something that will make this less likely. Make the owners of public sites that post “gun free zone” signs liable for the safety of the people on their site.
The Supremes have already ruled the police have no duty to protect you. Now these clowns come along and say you can’t protect them while on their property. Fine — they have to provide protection OR pay through the ass when something like this happens.
And, no, an off-duty cop or two wandering the lobby doesn’t count.
Or they can just drop their objection to their patrons defending themselves…
– Amd thats my take on this guy. He;s a coward. His actions in every way is to avoid being killed or hurt.
– He thinks he’s smarter than the dumb cops. His actions in court were just enough. eye rolls, facial ticks, laying more grounds for an insanity plea.
– The video game thing says it all. World of Warcraft. You blow up shit and destroy opponents, but you never get a scratch.
– If they don’t guard him night and day he’ll be lucky to live long enough to be executed.
I think the logic is that with that many bitterclingers in the audience, they’d all be stupid enough to just shoot randomly. And of course they’d all be carrying assault rifles, so the carnage would have been awful.
What “video game thing”?
– Read the link Crawford.
Diane (F)einstein needs to get Roger Ebert’s talking points straight. Or vice versa.
Per Feinstein, we can only have theater “firefights” between the cops and the Joker. Twenty minutes after the dying have died dead and the Joker is out standing by his automobile or something.
Victims? No such rights in real time (although being shot in the back while protecting your girl is noble). Ask cineplex moguls.
What a stupid fucking country.
They are already. Sue them into oblivion.
Which is to say that they can stand trial for a hundred million dollars a victim against the inherent argument of tens of millions of legal gun carrying citizens and try and refute their logic in front of a jury of their peers.
– The gun club incident was another giant red flag, and ties in with everything else thats known so far.
BBH:
You mean this bullshit:
>
Well, thank god he didn’t play cops and robbers as a kid. Or cowboys and indians. Or play like he was a US soldier in WWII. Clearly it was the ebul video games!
This trial *should* be a procedural matter — evidence, witnesses, verdict, execution — but, boy, looks like every nanny and Mrs. Grundy in the country is going to get an axe to grind!
– Thats not the point Crawford. Video games didn’t shoot up a movie theater, a nutbag did that. But he seems to have become so isolated from reality he may not have ‘experienced’ what he was doing as reality.
Maybe another clue into his detachement from reality. Witnesses say he sprayed bullets into the ceiling and then lowered the gun on the audience.
But he seems to have become so isolated from reality he may not have ‘experienced’ what he was doing as reality.
The video game obsession may have been because he was detached from related. Rather than the casual factor.
I think the logic is that with that many bitterclingers in the audience, they’d all be stupid enough to just shoot randomly. And of course they’d all be carrying assault rifles, so the carnage would have been awful.
I just think it’s better that innocent folks get killed by a crazy man who thinks he’s the joker, rather than someone trying to defend them self and others.
Because of the irony or something.
– Yes. Maybe he burned out to many brain cells sniffing all those chemicals he was collecting, who knows.
17. The Patriarchy is so powerful, men will throw women to the ground and lie on top of them to demonstrate their ape-like dominance over womyn even at the expense of their own lives.
BBH,
I have neighbors & friends who are cops here in Colorado. They believe that firing into the air got everyone to stand up, which presented larger targets. He WAS trying to kill as many people as he could.
Part of the reason the body count was not higher was his AR-15 jammed.
18. Bloomberg: “Yeh, popcorn, shakes, and those big soda’s….and guns. Plural….and….and….video games….yeh, why isn’t Romney and Obama talking about banning video games…. they make people fat too, sitting on their asses all day in front of a monitor”
– I can believe that John, but its not hard to believe he was so far gone, so out of touch, it was all just another game to him.
had a theater goer been armed, even MORE people could have been harmed and killed.
Or maybe if everyone knows that in any given theater, a half-dozen or more peeps are armed, spree killers will know that they’ll be taken out long before they score big body counts, and the peeps who shot the spree killer will get all the headlines.
Dude wasn’t insane or delusional: he wanted glory. He used the Joker persona and the Batman movie to augment his personal, narcissistic drama. Blow up his own apartment to draw away the first-responders, then mow down a heap o’ peeps in the meantime.
Genius! Sooper genius! Epic, ground-shaking, soooooper genius!
Ten bux says he’s a by-God sociopath with damage to his frontal lobes, right behind the eyes. Eleven bux says his parents have known he was dangerous since he was very, very young.
I’m guessing CO doesn’t have a SYG law like FL, but why should that stop ’em from saying it?
– He had also taken Vicodin before his spree, and yes to all that Di.
Dude wasn’t insane or delusional: he wanted glory. He used the Joker persona and the Batman movie to augment his personal, narcissistic drama. Blow up his own apartment to draw away the first-responders, then mow down a heap o’ peeps in the meantime.
He wasn’t criminally insane, but he wasn’t right in the head.
in so much as – say – psychopaths aren’t right in the head. I would guess he was psychopathic.
I find it interesting – in an armchair way – what he was studying. It jives with a theory I have.
does he look right in the head?
– I see he attended Miramar follege. One of my step daughters attends there.
– Mommy and daddy were no doubt relieved when junior moved 1200 miles away. U of C taking down the phyche deparments website
– was sort of interesting.
– With sociapaths you can’t tell Car. They’re generally very good at faking things.
You guys are trying to find a rational explanation for this fellow’s behaviour. Guess what? There isn’t one.
As I said the other day when this first happened, the guy most likely has an organic brain disorder of some kind. They will send him for psychological testing and a series of MRIs and EEGs as well as doing extensive labs on his blood and hair. Hair shafts can tell if there was drug abuse.
BBH, he was acting sleepy and twitchy and out of it in court most likely because they have him on meds of some kind. There is also the issue of jailers making everyone get out of their bunks at 4:30 or so for count, meds, and off to breakfast before those who are going to court get strip searched and shackled and put on the bus to go to court where they get to sit around in a hot holding cell for an hour or two. Jail is also very noisy. Inmates are noisy people who do a lot of yelling.
Likewise the gun range owner’s 5 minutes of fame. He was pissed that the kid didn’t call him right back and that he had “a weird message” on his phone. So? Not promptly returning a phone call doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he was out. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe the gun range owner is an asshole. We don’t know.
Guns don’t kill people. Video games don’t kill people. Violent movies don’t kill people. Violent novels and true crime books don’t kill people.
Dicentra, I’m betting he’s suffering from schizophrenia and isn’t necessarily a sociopath. He hasn’t been evaluated yet and armchair speculation is fun and all, but it’s irresponsible for a lot of these newsies to go on teevee and make proclaimations about things they know nothing about. As I said the other day, he is 24 and that is prime time for psychological problems to manifest themselves.
I don’t believe he will try an insanity defense. By the metric used by the justice system, he is not insane. Insanity is a legal term and not a medical term, btw.
We have to wait and see.
BBH, this guy is a biology fellow with a specialty in neuroscience. Not psychology. Two different departments.
Reports tell us there were at least three people who identified the threat, and managed to place themselves between the incoming rounds and their loved ones, saving those others but at the cost of their own lives.
Faced with a threat they chose to do what they could in defense of others. What they could do was clearly limited by law and by the rules of the theatre. Perhaps if they were not so limited in their options they might have chosen a different type of response. Perhaps they might have even succeeded in saving, not just those who did live, but themselves as well.
We simply cannot know if they would have acted differently under a different set of circumstances. But in hindsight it seems grossly unfair and immoral to have denied them the choice.
Every day we continue to deny people the choice to be responsible for themselves and the people they care about is a travesty of justice.
That some seek to use this crime as a vehicle for advancing a further restriction of liberty tells us exactly what those people are.
– Yeh Leigh. I noticed that after I posted. They took down the site of the neuroscience program he was in.
– The police asked them not to talk about his background, which makes sense, but no one suggested they take down the site, so it appears that they’re in damage control and CYA.
– I would be surprised if they aren’t pulled into civil suits when they surface. If for no other reason than evidentual witnesses. Holmrs sudden departure from the program leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
– Yeh the gun club owner could be looking for a little free publicity. He never said exactly what the voice messages were, just that they were bizarr. Its always heart warming to see all the opportunists that come out of the woodwork when something like this happens.
I don’t know that the university is criminally liable, given what we know. He wasn’t enrolled at the time of the shooting and the circumstances of withdrawal or not known, either. Most doctoral programs will allow you up to eight years, some times ten, to complete one’s thesis. He may have withdrawn for ye olde “personal reasons” with the intent to return after a designated period of time. Naturally, the university wishes to distance itself from a killer. I don’t imagine VT wants to draw anymore attentin to their spree killer, either. The difference being, that incident happened on campus and had been referred to counseling a number of times.
The movie theatre is another story. They are going to get their sued. Ambulance chasers are rubbing their hands together as we speak.
– Theres nothing subtle about it. We all know ‘why’ the Left is afraid of guns.
Oh the Left isn’t afraid of guns. DiFi for instance owns one of the E-vi assault rifles at her home in Colorado.
The Left is afraid of the rest of us having guns.
– Wasn’t suggesting they’re liable, but I’m sure they’ll be thoroughly interviewed. I’m pretty sure in hindsite they’ll remember things that seemed off at the time with this guy, but those things in themselves are usually not big enough to sound alarms. We give a pass every day to people we see as just ‘out of the norm’. Smart guys are sort of expected to be a bit weird.
“The Left is afraid of the rest of us having guns.
– Thats what I was really saying. You put it more directly than I.
Oh, sure. They’ll get interviewed six ways to Sunday. Hindsight and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee, so I’m going to bet you that dollar that the university volunteers zero information beyond what they absolutely have to.
I’m interested to learn what his advisor has to say about him. I wonder if he had an assistantship? And if so, what kind. And yeah, scientists are weirdos. ;-)
– With the exception of mua of course – :)
Of course, mon ami.
– Rasmussen: Romney 46%, ~O~ 43%
– So Obama dropped another point. Romney has also moved slightly ahead in Florida for the first time.
– All of which means that if Romney eventually wins we’ll just lose a little slower, but maybe I’ll have time to mow the lawn and write a will.
A lot of the Old Heads are retiring, too. I remain hopeful that things will get better.
– Oh I do too Leigh, but I was talking in grand kids life times.
I think it will take at least that long. Things have been worse and they have been better.
I take Billy Preston’s advice: Life is what you make it. It’s on his “Outta Space” album.
Dicentra, I’m betting he’s suffering from schizophrenia and isn’t necessarily a sociopath.
Way too organized for a schizo. Paranoid schizophrenics usually just show up with a weapon and start shooting. They don’t try to divert first responders with an elaborate diversion. They don’t wear protective clothing. They don’t case the joint and rig the doors to let themselves in later.
His booby-trapping was extremely sophisticated. He began to acquire his ammo and arms a long time ago. He wore protective clothing. He planned the attack well enough to jimmy the exit and to otherwise create an atmosphere that was concordant with the movie, such that viewers thought it was something the theater was doing to enhance the experience.
A schizo would have left behind babbling justifications and other word salads to explain why he had to do it. But this scumbag, after he let slip that his place was booby-trapped, he clammed up. Schizos would at least keep muttering incomprehensible things. So would people trying to fake being schizo.
He’s at the age where schizos have their first break, so people wouldn’t have known ahead of time that something was wrong . However, his mother in San Diego knew right away that “they have the right guy,” even before they contacted her.
I’m guessing he’s closer to the Columbine scum, who were not bullied or tormented or anything: just seduced by the extreme evil of showering the school with bullets and dying in a hail of gunfire. WooHoo!
The only thing that baffles me is that he was obviously planning to make it out alive. Glory killers like the Columbine scum put suicide into their plans to avoid responsibility. I don’t know what he planned to do after it was all over.
BTW, the morons over at Prison Planet are certain that this was a false-flag operation, geared to shut down the Second Amendment or whatnot.
Right.
It depends. Schizophrenia also has spectrum diagnoses.
Unlikely.
Except that by circumstance and net effect — which is partly that the inestimable Press in failshit nation has jimmied itself into endless moral convulsions — it’s having damn near the same effect as if it were anti-2nd Amendment psyops.
Personally, I think it’s all a plot by the major ammunition suppliers to make us think that limits will be placed on how much ammunition one can have at any one time, and there’ll be this huge surge buy of ammo while the limits are off.
/sarc
– Di, a lot of that is why you get the impression he wasn’t going to die by cop if he could help it, even the boobytrap thing. I still think since he wasn’t able to slip away (one detective posed the idea that maybe he hoped to pose as a member of the SWAT team and slip away in the chaos) that he did that, afraid if he killed a cop while he was in custody ‘somehow’ he’d get snuffed, where as if he died at the scene it didn’t matter.
– I know its all conjecture, but so many things fit the “stayin’ alive’ idea.
” – The video game thing says it all. World of Warcraft. You blow up shit and destroy opponents, but you never get a scratch.”
I dunno. Video games are just the latest “evil force that threatens society” like rap music , D&D, heavy metal music, violence and nudity on TV/movies, the beatles, and comic books.
I think it’s about as much as a reach of trying to explain it with dangerous tea party mythology.
– I brought up and linked to the piece that talked about his video game obsession to illustrate his potential disconnect from reality. No one believes that video games shoot up movie theaters.
– Well, maybe Irma Lettella might if Gilda was still alive, or the morons on the Left.
I play World of Warcraft and some other video games, it is a good way to blow off tension and exercise your brain. You fight other folks in open combat or in war games and if you fuck up you get killed. You have to learn strategies, work to get good gear, etc. It is a hell of a lot healthier than sitting on the couch and letting the TV turn your brain to mush.
After a bad day dealing with assholes and pinheads at work I find it very therapuetic to put on my virtual armor, pick up my big fucking virtual axe and split a couple of virtual skulls open.
– But Moe, you’re a natural born Visagoth who just wants to unwind with a friendly game of blood and gore. Holmes is a really weird fuck.
That’s Emily Litella, for future reference.
Thank goodness he wasn’t playing Grand Theft Auto or there’d be no pimps and hoes in Aurora no mo.
They’re further west on Colfax, leigh. Um, not that I’d know…
If the industry gave money to the GOP, Democrats would happily pretend to think otherwise.
However, his mother in San Diego knew right away that “they have the right guy,” even before they contacted her.
Levin is saying that this part wasn’t exactly accurate. I think. Something about the mother.
I hate news organizations.
Turns out that ABC was also wrong about the Mom immediately agreeing her kid did it.
This was linked on another thread and seems to fit here too.
That article is great, geoff. People should heed it.
That guy was just on the radio, Geoff. I think Hannity’s program?
Dicentra, I’m betting he’s suffering from schizophrenia and isn’t necessarily a sociopath. He hasn’t been evaluated yet and armchair speculation is fun and all, but it’s irresponsible for a lot of these newsies to go on teevee and make proclaimations about things they know nothing about. As I said the other day, he is 24 and that is prime time for psychological problems to manifest themselves.
Schizophrenics are rarely violent. I could go with Manic, though. I know our speculation means nada, but no one is really take notes based on what a bunch of people comment on a blog about.
We seek answers not to exploit, but to understand and hope – hope – that we could recognize it should we ever be close. It’s probably for naught. People don’t want to see that potential. Refuse to believe it.
He’s at the age where schizos have their first break, so people wouldn’t have known ahead of time that something was wrong . H
He was also at the stage where manics come of age as well.
So, where did be get the cash for his plural gumsand his internet ammo? A federal grant! The gubmint sure is getting a lot of people killed lately. We should bam that.
Maybe he had a credit card with a $15,000 or $20,000 limit or more, or several cards. Why would he have cared about the eventual bill?
Manic would work too Carin. He could also be very depressed.
Like we both said, we don’t know.
The latest reports are saying that the guns have now been traced to the Fast and Furious program….
…
…
Well hey, it’s at least as factual as the TEA Party connection!
I hear Diane Feinstein is fixing to ban pick-up assault trucks.
Because of course the government wouldn’t ensure guns got into the hands of known groups of violent criminals, and then use the tracing of those guns back to US gun shops to call for gun control and actually implement by executive order with no actual law to back it up a requirement that multiple purchases of long guns be tracked. And it’s a mere coincidence that the government is trying to get a treaty ratified that would serve as a pretext for more gun control.
Tell me something, dicentra: given this Administration’s record for implementing regulation in defiance of both Congress and the courts (Gulf oil drilling, forex), how much money are you prepared to bet that this WASN’T a false flag for exactly that purpose? Paranoia is a survival trait when dealing with these crooks.
No, he really got a federal grant, that was paying for the schooling he was withdrawing from.
I blame Obama. Because it’s that time.
Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
The fact that he’s still alive tends to argue against that, doesn’t it?
“Bonus Card: You get Jack Ruby to kill your patsy. That’s good, because dead men don’t talk!” *
If it were anyone but the O! gang, I’d agree, but their malice appears to be matched by their incompetence….
I tend not to wade in these waters but I’m not sure that all which we’d scoff at in the strong form couldn’t be true in the weak form.
Take a different situation. Someone illegally got Joe the Plumbers records and released them. Someone illegally got Jack Ryan’s records and released them. Is this something that’s an order from the top or is it something that’s understood to be in the greater good through their everything-in-the-state, politics-is-hyper-local mentality?
Don’t know if that applies here in the least but I do know that it’s shocking how often the left now openly breaks the law in general and commits political violence specifically to further their goals.
How did Fast and Furious happen? Let them explain that and I’ll stop having such an open mind about what else they might consider useful.
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