Colorado Shooter
While it is a little too early to say why James Holmes, 24, started a shooting rampage at the opening of a Batman movie, it’s now known he is unconnected with the Tea Party.
Editor’s Note: An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado Tea Party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect. ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted.
Slate says ABC’s mistake is partly the Internet’s fault. There are just too many James Holmes’ on Facebook, Twitter and Google for a responsible journalist not to think he wasn’t a member of the Tea Party.
The Internet has trained us to assume that the intimate details of people’s lives must be out there on the Web somewhere, just waiting for us to enter the right Google search term or trawl the right social media platform.
News of the massacre at the Batman screening in Aurora, Colorado this morning sent a thousand journalists (and “citizen journalists”) to their browsers, racing to be the first to uncover the telling detail about the suspect …
“I cannot get over what an online ghost Holmes appears to be,” Ulanoff wrote.
At least Ulanoff came up with nothing. Others came up with something worse—misinformation and mistaken identity. “There is a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, uh, page, ah, on the Colorado tea party site, talking about him joining the tea party last year,” ABC News’ Brian Ross excitedly informed milions of Good Morning America viewers Friday morning. Ross and the news organization apologized soon after, acknowledging that the report was incorrect.
Conservative sites such as Breitbart.com were predictably outraged by the bogus link, seeing in it a case of liberal media bias. But that indignation is perhaps undermined by Breitbart blogger Joel Pollak’s own unconfirmed “exclusive” headline that Holmes “could be a registered Democrat.”
It might also turn out that Holmes is a nut. Tom Mai, a neighbor who actually knew the suspect says Holmes was “shy” and “a loner”. That would explain, among other things, why he lacked a Facebook page, Twitter feed or much of an online track record.
Mai says the mother told him Holmes couldn’t find a job after earning a master’s degree from a public university in California.
Holmes “was in the process from withdrawing from a doctorate program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado-Denver, according to university spokesman Dan Myers. Holmes began the program last year.”
Aurora Police chief Dan Oates said Holmes’ apartment is booby trapped with a “sophisticated” maze of flammable devices. It could take hours or days for authorities to disarm it.
It sounds like he was living in a world of his own, not any place you would recognize, but the one which the Batman movie depicts. Maybe the Batman didn’t show up at Holmes’ apartment, so he went to the opening premier looking for him. Reports now say he went to the theater dressed as the Joker.
At another level, he might also have felt cheated and confused at the way the world treated him. There is sometimes a tendency to think a job is something that walks up to you right after you walk off the stage with your diploma. Nobody ever explained to kids that there’s a step between. The Washington Post had an eerie story on the subject of unemployed neuroscience PhDs.
Michelle Amaral wanted to be a brain scientist to help cure diseases. She planned a traditional academic science career: PhD, university professorship and, eventually, her own lab.
But three years after earning a doctorate in neuroscience, she gave up trying to find a permanent job in her field.
Dropping her dream, she took an administrative position at her university, experiencing firsthand an economic reality that, at first look, is counterintuitive: There are too many laboratory scientists for too few jobs.
That reality runs counter to messages sent by President Obama and the National Science Foundation and other influential groups, who in recent years have called for U.S. universities to churn out more scientists.
Obama has made science education a priority, launching a White House science fair to get young people interested in the field.
But it’s questionable whether those youths will be able to find work when they get a PhD. Although jobs in some high-tech areas, especially computer and petroleum engineering, seem to be booming, the market is much tighter for lab-bound scientists — those seeking new discoveries in biology, chemistry and medicine.
While this is not to suggest that unemployment “made him do it”, any more than than Space Aliens or other things, it does suggest that Holmes may have been driven to his act by mental illness, personal or financial problems or other reasons not connected with the 2012 political campaign. Life is tough. Success is not a right politicians can promise you. People knew that once.
Once.
A friend of mine wrote that the great thing about Tolstoy’s War and Peace is that nobody gets what he seems to deserve. “By the end of War and Peace, Nicholas marries Mary and they are both happy. Pierre marries Natasha, and they, too, are happy. Russia defeats France, and they are happy. But not everyone is happy.”
Life introduces the element of the random. Some of the characters finish up well from pure blind luck. But some of the blackguards prosper despite everything. And “And Petya, poor sweet Petya, dies in combat and breaks his parents’ hearts”.
Perhaps the oddest thing about the false ABC news report is that they expected life to be just like a narrative of their own making. They expected a Tea Party villain at a shooting, just perhaps as Holmes expected the world would treat him better than it did. And boy, were they both surprised. In actuality only Batman really lives in a movie. All the rest of us live in some other place, though some of us are trying their best to get away.
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Cinemark owns the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Cinemark’s official policy is that ONLY LEO’S CAN CARRY INTO THEIR THEATERS. NO CONCEALED WEAPONS, NO OC.
So CCW permit holders, aka “the good guys”, can’t carry into the theater. Obviously James Holmes, aka “the bad guy” could.
I wonder how many lives would’ve been saved if an armed citizen had made Mr. Holmes duck bullets?
“when seconds count, the police are only minutes away”
My view is, Most theater emergency exits open from the inside and are locked to entry from outside.
A key or help from inside to hold the door open would circumvent the locks.
How did this alleged, mass murder suspect with pistol, shotgun and AR-15 get inside so easy?
Maybe the victims should sue the theater for criminal negligence in allowing an armed non-LEO in???
Carl Von Clausewitz defined war as having two parts: The object is to disarm your enemy, the purpose is to impose your rule. By this standard the gun-control political movement in this country constitutes an act of war on the American people prosecuted entirely by the statist left who have politicized self defense. This must end.
While the MSM continues it’s fervent prayers that something — anything! — connect this bum somehow to Conservatives, it doesn’t strike me as a political statement kind of shooting. It’s too random, too anarchic. And in fact some reports have it that under his gas mask he was painted like the Joker. The Joker, you will recall, only wanted to see things burn.
If this guy has any political affiliation at all, I would guess it will be an OWS connection. First, he looks a bit like one. Second, there is a strong anarchist, burn-the-world streak to them, something not at all prevalent in the Tea Party (despite the MSM contention that wanting to cut a few percent of government spending equals burning down the world).
If he was just seeking to wreak havoc for its own sake, that doesn’t suggest a Tea Party person, or even a far Right grudge like that of Anders Brevik. Shooting up a movie theater is just too pointless.
Well we shall see. It was “interesting” how right from the start media reports labeled him a white man. Not very shy about naming the race when the race fits The Narrative.
“There are too many laboratory scientists for too few jobs.”
Add to that calls to give H1B visas to anyone with an advanced degree.
We are churning out more PhD’s because that is how teachers and administrators can justify million dollar pensions. Meanwhile, the lower rungs to the labor ladder have been given to foreign workers. Burgeoning government has eaten the guts out of the middle class and small business. Small business may not be the foundation of our economy but it is certainly a leg of a three legged stool.
By sucking capital out of the private sector to keep the lights on in some bureaucratic backrooms the Obama administration has all but killed the economy. I have watched with astonishment as everything but what is needed has been tried, all the new antidotes instead of the tried and true. Why in the hell can’t congress try to invigorate small business? Apparently reinventing America must be done using any alternative to reason.
So what does this have to do with the lone shooter? I don’t know. If you want to be taken care of from cradle to grave by the government, try committing a capital crime while you’re young. Our prison inmates live better than most free people in the third world.
Maybe that we are in a cold civil war right now with the government working full tilt to destroy their enemy… the middle class. Maybe this is just a little side show of how this might end with life imitating art; Inglorious Bastards.
More news:
“Aurora, Colo., police and FBI officials told Denver NBC affiliate 9News
Friday morning that the suspect in the early Friday movie theater mass
shooting has “booby-trapped” his apartment with a sophisticated setup of
flammable devices that could take authorities days to disarm.”
See:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/fbi-police-says-suspect-apartment-booby-trapped-150431578.html
I also have no Facebook page, and I abhor Twitter.
Does that make me a dangerous “loner”? Or simply somebody who knows that Facebook is basically a self-submitted dossier, and that Twitter is for twits?
Really, folks.
How long, exactly, before a ‘public demand’ for TSA in public venues-
malls, theaters, stadiums, roadsides, political conventions?
Perhaps as a jobs program for the hardcore unemployable.
Prison training, buddy, it’s all just prison training
“Qu’est Que C’est?”
– Talking Heads
1. DLA: If you’re really carrying ‘concealed’ how are the theater guys going to know? If someone had been armed, and dealt with this maniac, what could they do? Sue you for violating their rules?
2. HEP-T: A news report this morning cited a witness as saying that a man sitting near the exit received a cell-phone call, and subsequently got up and out the exit; presumably that is how the shooter gained entry.
And, Haven’t there been more of these mass shootings lately? Seems as if there’s much more gun violence in the news lately.
I daresay no convincing rational argument will be found for what he did.
James Holmes dressed up and went out and committed an atrocity.
So did Brian Ross.
Kumbaya.
I also have no Facebook page, and I abhor Twitter.
There are two schools of thought in this regard. One is that by getting on the Web you are opening yourself for inspection and creating the possibility others manipulating or misinterpreting your online reputation.
One person I know will never create an online presence of any sort.
But the counterargument is that the data miners are going to be looking for the complement — those people who aren’t on Facebook, Twitter, etc. on the theory that these are the guys to watch out for. If you were “normal” then you wouldn’t have “anything to hide”.
It’s just like the argument over whether to encrypt your email. Of course Google can read your Gmail if it wanted to, so why not encrypt? Well the theory is that if you encrypt then they’ll focus on you because “he’s got something to hide because he’s encrypting it”.
In reality people are looking for a pattern they’ve dreamed up. The media people were primed to look for a Tea Party guy so they found him. If the same guys are looking for “loners” without Facebook accounts, they’ll find them too.
My own view is that you can’t please everybody. There’s always going to be someone who thinks that carrying a gun, or not carrying a gun, having a computer or not having a computer, having a tv or not have a tv is a sign of dangerous tendencies.
In my view these are the guys who should go to the fruit farm. Of course, that’s not going to happen because they’re in charge of the happy places.
What is it about the Tea Party that’s so threatening to these people? Is it because they are law-abiding, proud Americans? I have a liberal co-worker who is usually very nice but believes that all the evil in the world is caused by “those G-D Tea Partiers.” A Tea Party rally looks like a Rockwell painting come to life. I can’t recall even one violent act by the TP-the raping, stealing, pillaging, defecating OWS nutjobs get a complete pass. Liberals, I think, truly believe that TP’ers are more evil than Al Qaeda.
Once not so very long ago so-called “scientists” worked primarily in private industry. We did not then imagine that scientists must work in academia or government labs, or require government support. Along with this we generally thought that that scientist–indeed science itself–was the handmaiden of the entrepreneur and the engineer; we did not think of it as a some sort of “pure pursuit of knowledge”, explained all of being or the cosmos (or even a substantial part of it), or was some sort of “rational” substitute for Faith, Morality, Civilization or Religion. Our notion of what science was about was more reasonable and informed by a broader and richer understanding of Man, the World, and our Culture, Heritage and Civilization.
Moreover, we did not imagine that a scientific career had much to do with wealth, power, glamor or prestige.
Over time this has changed. Now the “scientist” mostly exists in University, government lab or NGO setting and, in the main, is wholly supported by government grants either directly or indirectly. The scientist is seen as some sort of cleric, and least in some quarters, and Science, like the performing arts, has become a sort of quasi-feudal patronage system that largely benefits the Leftist Nomenklatura and the Democrat Party. Thus we get bizarre mass hallucinations such as AGW; thus these “Scientist” cannot find “work”; thus our Universities have much dubious, bootless and fruitless “research”; thus scientists assume wildly inflated notions of their roles, competencies and contributions.
Science, industry and the nation suffers from much from such a state of affairs.
Take the fetters of of industry, reduce government interference and thievery, and reduce the government patronage; sbove all, dismantle the Democrats’ Nomenklatura.
Then there will be plenty of “Scientific” jobs. Of course, those jobs will actually require the “Scientist” to actually do something worthwhile and productive. Such jobs will also be much less glamorous.
I don’t know about the person selling tickets but if some wild eyed dude toating an AR-15, a shotgun, 2 pistols walked up to me, I would hope he didn’t notice me and went on to shoot somebody else.
I used to scoff at that ‘world ends on Dec 12, 2012′ stuff but now I wonder if it will last that long. It seems like the top has spun down and is starting to wobble.
I close on my new place in Missouri Aug 06, so I just have to survive til then.
The shooter was in the process of withdrawing from a doctorate program (probably flunked his qualifying exam). Getting a Ph.D. is a grueling process. At the Dept. of Aero. and Astro. at Stanford University, a candidate had to first get a masters degree, pass a course indicating capability as an experimentalist and have a decent GPA. Then the candidate had to find a thesis adviser and get through the qualifying exams. The qualifying exams were first a one hour oral examination by a committee of four professors followed by four 15 minute one-on-one oral examinations. The one hour oral examination was lethal because the candidate had to have several basic equations memorized (isentropic chain, Kutta–Joukowski theorem, etc.) and be able to do real time problem solving at the chalk board. The professors would deliberately try to wind you up so you’d freeze and not be able to do the calculations. One guy got so wound up that he went catatonic and had to be lead out of the room. After surviving the oral examinations, you need to acquire funding, put in your three-four years of research and write your thesis. You then need to go through your thesis defense (a one hour lecture followed by an oral examination by committee). That could be either a rubber stamp or as horrible as the qualifying exams. My thesis defense was a rubber stamp but the guy after me got dipped head first in a bucket of manure and flunked (it depends upon how well your thesis was written and whether your thesis adviser would go to bat for you). It was not uncommon for this process to drive a guy completely nuts. While I was a graduate student, a math Ph.D. student lost his marbles and murdered his thesis advisor with a claw hammer. At the time, us graduate students were saying amongst ourselves that it was justifiable man-slaughter.
I feel bad for the victims of this recent outrage and think the perpetrator should spend the rest of his life in jail. However I understand the psychology.
RWE @ 18 said:
“As for academic credentials, I just read an article about a man who confessed being a fake in his own obituary. He had amassed only 3 years of college credits and through a paperwork error received a diploma saying he had a Phd in Electrical Engineering. So he got hired based on that.”
Many people claiming to be Stanford Ph.D.s are frauds. Only way to be sure is to request a direct transcript from Stanford.
One twitter report this morning said that “Hannity and Rush Limbaugh Paraphernalia” were found in the shooter’s apartment. No one knows what that could be and in any case they have never gotten into the place, anyway. A complete fabrication by someone who very probably is as loopy as Holmes.
And that is one reason I will never have a Twitter or Facebook account. And why I’ll never write an article for Rolling Stone or Mother Jones, either. Or do any reporting for NBC. As I told Bill Whittle in what he said was one of the very best e-mails he had ever got, “You are known by who you are with.” And Twitter and Facebook carry all the prestige and veracity of something written on the bathroom wall of an abandoned Cities Service gas station in Ponca City, OK.
As for academic credentials, I just read an article about a man who confessed being a fake in his own obituary. He had amassed only 3 years of college credits and through a paperwork error received a diploma saying he had a Phd in Electrical Engineering. So he got hired based on that.
As for the shooter, word has it that his own mother believed that he was responsible the moment she heard. Folks, this is a pattern. People knew the Va Tech shooter was nuts and had no business with a gun. People knew that this guy was loopy as a loon. Nobody said squat.
Whatever happened to Brian Ross? Didn’t he once upon a time present himself as logical and sane?
But one could say that for the entire mainstream, mass-market news business.
It used to be it was at least as important to get the story right as to get it first. Now it seems that if the story fits the narrative, then that’s close enough – and consequently good enough.
I’d warn them that will be bad business, long-term. But I sincerely doubt that it matters to them anymore.
agitators on the left are going to say more gun control would have made a difference, those on the right are going to say more concealed carry could have made a difference – I think both are way off base. Sad fact is that someone who is mono-maniacally focused on murder and mayhem with no regard to his well being is virtually impossible to stop in an urban, civilian setting – at least not until he runs out of ammo. Loughner in Az got stopped when he fumbled trying to reload, for example.
The impression from the emergency situations I have been in (and nothing like this shooting, thank God) is that things happen unbelievably fast and that most of the situation is over before you even realize what’s really happening. That’s the problem with thinking concealed carry could have changed things here; it assumes that someone in a dark and chaotic room full of scrambling people could figure out a) what was happening and b) who was doing it in time to do something about it. Most people just realized that shots were being fired, but in that situation it would have almost impossible to have figured out who was doing it, not to mention being able to get a clear shot for return fire. Remember, you’d have been in the middle of a room with hundreds of people running in every direction, and the lights are off. Oh, and now reports say he was wearing body armor, of all things.
As far as how he got in – looks like it was the easiest way possible. He just walked up to the ticket office in costume and gear, pulled out his guns, and started shooting as he marched into the theatre. Who’s going to stop him, the attendant saying “I’m sorry sir, you can’t go in there without a ticket!” He didn’t need anyone to open any emergency door for him, and unless there’s armed guards and checkpoints at every entrance, there is no way to stop someone who wants to do this!
Of course that’s the same reason that more gun control would not have made a difference, either; someone committed to murder is not going to respect the regulatory niceties of whatever framework there is.
All these ideas of thinking it could have been stopped this way or that way are madness. It couldn’t have been, unless it was by someone who knew him and who knew what he was up to beforehand.
And yet even then, it is remarkably hard. Where I live, a teacher was stabbed to death by a special education student (a teen) with extremely violent and psychopathic tendencies. Everyone wondered what he was doing in the regular school system, but it turned out that his family had been begging state agencies to commit him to a psychiatric facility for better than a year! (he had attacked a family member with a knife, and threatened them constantly) The state refused, for reasons that are really unclear but came down to something like they didn’t have the budget to commit every troubled teen parents complained about, so screw you.
So much of the time when family members and acquaintances do take the risk of telling the authorities (and it is a risk, since the target always finds out about the complaint) the authorities just sit back and say “well, he hasn’t done that much yet so there’s nothing we can do.”
so what do you do?
If I were a betting man, I would wager the MSM has already been primed to look for anything, A.N.Y.T.H.I.N.G.., that could be used to distract the American voting populace from how badly the Obama administration has botched the past 4 years. Throw everything against the wall and see what sticks, it doesn’t have to be true and we can just say we regret it afterward. The only true surprise for me was they did not also allege he was a Mormon.
Yes, blame the Internet. Don’t expect the sophisticates in the mainstream media to consider the possibility of more than one James Holmes in the Denver area; that’s asking too much. Our intellectual betters are above such pesky details. And don’t for a second consider the glaring mistake to be the result of hair-trigger bigotry. No, we’ve been told for so long that the Tea Partiers are violent extremists, and we’re sure that evidence of that will appear at some point…
14. dlsada
What is it about the Tea Party that’s so threatening to these people?
I dunno. What was it about innocuous Jews that so set off Medieval European gentiles? None of the reasons were rational.
wws
He’s alive and talking plenty…
HE bought a ticket, watched the first fifteen minutes — then exited via a panic-bar exit — which HE propped open…
THEN he went to his car and wheeled it around…
Whereupon, he re-entered the theater in full regalia…
Starting with smoke cannisters — and then blazing with a shot gun and later still an AR-15…
Finally, he shifted down to a Glock 40.
Concealed carry would’ve done him in — no doubt — via a face shot. He never fired from a crouch — and the projector was directly on him.
=========
His mother figured him as the lone nut from the moment she was phoned.
Like the Korean nut our Joker was screwy all the way down to the last turtle.
His course of study seems oriented towards finding out why he, himself, was wired wrong.
I thought it was a wonderful touch of comedic mockery that Breitbart was reporting that there were reports that the shooter was a democrat.
Blert: Concealed carry would’ve done him in — no doubt — via a face shot.
Wouldn’t even need that. This is not a trained SEAL for goodness sake. The minute shots started coming his way he probably would have turned to jelly. Body armor doesn’t mean you can’t feel bullets hitting you.
And if nothing else, he would have to address the person or persons firing at him, giving more people time to flee.
But then people don’t kill people, guns kill people. I just read that on Twitter.
How many times have we each heard stories of someone being stalked or harassed or whatever and the cops are called and they say they can’t do anything until a law is broken or there is a restraining order issued and the person kills whoever anyway?
Our system, since the mental system was flushed by the liberals in the 80′s, is not set to handle nutters; even by the families. There is no such thing as preemetive commital anymore.
When I was in High School I spent a Summer murdering mice at Adelphi. It was for a grad student’s project on building fetal placental monoculture. I was a mouse abortionist. At the Oral Defense a proessor looked at him and asked “Why?”. He froze. It was horrible to watch.
Don …
There actually is a connection: ignorance and stupidity…
You see, virtually EVERYONE of the relevant gentiles was a hick from the sticks — rural peon/ serf/ rube…
Then they joined the Crusade to ‘cleanse’ the Holy Lands…
And as their human convoy wildly overloaded the water supply ‘systems’ encountered upon the trek — stinking up the potables with their own outputs — disease rates simply exploded.
Not being ‘hip’ to the mechanism of contagion… they focused their ire on the ‘bad water’ and the hapless locals that happened about… especially to include URBAN JEWRY.
It became a self-fulfilling scourge. Not yet knowing of Pogo’s dictum — they took their foul hygiene down the trail — razing hell as they went.
IIRC, the original roudy ‘convoy’ froze to death in Anatolia — finally meeting a stretch of trail completely barren of ‘resources to hand.’ Relics of that tragi-farce are still littered upon the mountainside all these centuries later — found if you know what to look for.
Government regulation stands directly in the way of more jobs for advanced workers in chemistry and biology. It costs a half a billion dollars to move a new drug through the testing process mandated by the FDA, and many years. If something could speed this up, there would be boutique molecular biology companies springing up all over the place. This venue is a natural for U.S. leadership because we have so many good people, but right now they are wasted because many can’t get jobs.
We need something like the zone for experimental medicine that my local Tea Party has been pushing – a virtual place where regulations could be relaxed. Where people in a bad way could choose to try promising medicines that were being developed just on the basis of calculating the odds of: would it help? No need to involve the FDA. You would make this choice purely on the basis of your own research and a doctor’s recommendation. If a medicine was proved good in the zone, then let it get on the market right away with minimal FDA interference. This kind of regime could really stimulate the biotech industry in this country and cement American preeminence.
peterike @ 26 said:
“This is not a trained SEAL for goodness sake. The minute shots started coming his way he probably would have turned to jelly.”
It may come to this but I really don’t want to see us returning to the “Wild West” where we are all carrying side arms. I’ve sometimes joked that the best defense against airplane hijacking would be to hand each passenger a pistol as they embarked on the plane then collect the pistols as they left.
Amusing head line: Al Qaeda terrorist shot 113 times at 30,000 ft while attempting to hijack plane.
Only problem with this bright idea is at least one idiot would trigger a pistol by accident, blow out a window and some innocent would get sucked out of the plane.
b @ 24: His course of study seems oriented towards finding out why he, himself, was wired wrong.
Yeah, had the same thought.
Gonna be a story of who knew what, when, like his parents giving him up immediately. And it won’t be pretty.
dlsada @ 14: “What is it about the Tea Party that’s so threatening to these people?”
The idea of human liberty is threatening to tyrants and those who are attracted to tyrants because rightful human liberty is a function of equal unalienable human rights. Tyrants by definition enjoy superior rights, and that is what their supports desire as well. King George III enjoyed unobstructed action according to his will with no limit, or within limits drawn around him by the inferior rights of others. Ditto for Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler. The idea of equal rights for everyone, and the rightful human liberty which follows, is like a Cross in the face of Dracula, because equal rights represents a demotion of rights for the tyrant. The American Tea Party was threatening to King George III in 1774-1776, and so today’s American Tea Party is threatening to those so-called Americans today who resent the “little people” standing up for their equal God-given rights to life, liberty and the fruit of labor in pursuit of happiness. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
“I wonder how many lives would’ve been saved if an armed citizen had made Mr. Holmes duck bullets?”
None. That citizen shooting back is fantasy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby%27s_massacre
Local Legend is that there were at least a dozen armed citizens in Ruby’s. They were smart and hid.
There is a saying in Texas; “Don’t fight the drop”. That means when somebody has the drop on you, don’t get brave. Don’t try for hero. Graveyard is full of heroes. Pulling out a pistol means you get shot next. Now if you had been outside and armed it might have been worth a shot. You would have had a slim chance of getting the drop on him. Most likely the cops would have plugged you.
The responding officer normally has only a 10 code to go on. If he’s lucky and there is time, he might have a guess as to counts and vague descriptions. He is putting his life on the line and isn’t going to take any chances.
The last thing the cops need is more armed people at the scene. They might just shoot them all and let the jury figure it out.
Old infantry maxim; If the enemy is in range, so are you. First you find cover. Try to start thinking. When the shooting starts most people panic. Find cover, try to think of a way to turn the tables and get the drop on him. Remember, the shooter is in the zone. His weapon is hot, he’s hitting where he wants and is in high blood. You are NOT going to out shoot him from a cold start. Find cover, ready your weapon and be ready if he makes a mistake. If he has back up like at that high school in Colorado, you are going to die anyway, so you might as well stand and deliver.
The Dude killed himself. I doubt that he would have ducked.
Ah Brian Ross and company at ABC. He’s offered an apology for fingering one of the many Jim Holmes in and around Aurora. Just another slice off the credibility of the Main Scream Media. Yeah and verily does not Obama desperately need a MSM with credibility especially this time period before the Olympics start sucking up the air in the News Cycle?
Stoi…
He was virtually firing blind — because the film projector was straight into his eyes.
Use you imagination.
That explains why the casualties are so low — considering the astounding amounts of ammo discharged…
The ‘cop factor’ is no factor at all until they enter the theater. Until then, it’s the Joker’s kill box.
No, in this case, ANYONE with a weapon could’ve gotten repeated shots off — with practically no counter-fire.
He was standing up like an arcade target.
Sheesh.
And with such a crowd, one might think that it would hold three or more concealed carry citizens.
The idea that they’d lay down to take his punishment per your musings is anti-logical even anti-emotive.
“I wonder how many lives would’ve been saved if an armed citizen had made Mr. Holmes duck bullets?”
Many lives would have been saved if a single brave man or woman, armed with a handgun, sent bullets in the direction of James Holmes. If we are not the home of the brave we won’t remain the land of the free.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/07/20/flashback_armed_woman_in_colorado_saves_lives_prevents_mass_shooting
One at a time – sigh.
First: 31. Eggplant “I really don’t want to see us returning to the “Wild West” where we are all carrying side arms” Please remember that the “Wild West” was a Hollywood and novel writer fantasy concocted mostly in the 1950′s – no basis in historical reality.
Second: 34. stoicheion “Local Legend is that there were at least a dozen armed citizens in Ruby’s.” Hmmm and I’ve heard there was a shooter on a grass knowl too…Official reports say otherwise.
For both of you to consider, just 3 days ago a 71yr old man foiled an armed robbery by shooting both suspects. It’s all on video and the old guy exhibited good form as he capped the perps. My point is simple: armed good guys can do some good things while waiting for the police.
I am applying the 48 hour rule (OK, at least the 24 hour rule) on myself before blogging any of my own thoughts and suppositions about the Aurora shooter … but that does not go as far as GMA and Brian Ross, and his careless and unprofessional identification of a Tea Party member as being the shooter. I’ve been Tea Party since almost the very beginning, and I am sick to death and fed to the teeth with having good, responsible, concerned Americans of the Tea Party being slimed as terrorists by the mainstream news media.
http://open.salon.com/blog/sgt_mom/2011/08/03/terrorism_tea_party_hobbits
Ross needs to go. His apology is not acceptable to me. I have emailed ABC through their contacts page on their website three times today, and re-tweeted Iowahawk’s tweets on the subject. I want to see Brian Ross on the unemployment line, if not tomorrow, then by the end of the month.
Tomorrow,I start with a list of GMA’s sponsors.
“They expected a Tea Party villain at a shooting,. . .”
While there’s no way to know for sure, when it comes to each individual journalist researching this breaking story, I suspect for many it went a bit further than merely expecting the Tea Party villain.
It sounds, from ABC’s description, that instead of just looking up his name, and trying to find the guy while expecting it would come out that he had affiliation with a Tea Party organization, they actually went straight to the roster of the area Tea Party organization, and searched IT for his name. . . and when they happened to stumble across the name that wanted to see on that roster, they attempted no further verification that they had their man.
That’s not just expectation, that’s the same sort of thing that has gotten climate science alarmists in trouble. They look for a specific set of data supporting their narrative, and don’t just ignore contradictory data. . .they don’t even bother to seek it out, until their malfeasance becomes public knowledge.
Every interest group will blame their own pet devils. Whatever they fear the most.
He was a nutter. Period. Anybody that walks into any place with their guns a blaz’in is a nutter.
If he had a reason, he wouldn’t be a nutter and he would not have walked in shooting…. Pundits cannot make money off nutters, so they will get paid to search for another reason. The media is going full bore on this because if it bleeds it leads and they can get visuals on it. Syria is much more important but there is no chance for the Media to get visuals out of Syria, since both sides have no problem shooting reporters.
The Japanese Navy ( Not sure if it’s the IJN any more) and the PLA Navy are doing a stare down over some island smaller then my back yard. Egypt is about to explode, Israel is about to raid Hezzabollah and Iran has almost no choice but to close the strait, or try to.
Yet the media focuses on another mass shooting. Watch, they will use this as reason to try and cut the 2nd amendment out of the Constitution. America has a mass shooting every other year by some nutter. It is the price of freedom.
“What is it about the Tea Party that’s so threatening to these people?”
The idea that the Tea Partiers believe themselves better equipped to determine how their money should be spent than the government is offensive in the extreme to progressives, and violates their ideal of a wise, benevolent central authority.
The idea that the immorality of borrowing against our children and childrens’ childrens’ futures is as or more important than social justice related spending programs is anathema to progressives.
The fact that the Tea Partiers actually have turned out to have a higher education level than the average American, meaning they themselves qualify as a sort of ‘intelligentsia (sic?)’ puts them in a position that progressive liberals usually visualize as their sole province. Thus, they comprise a threat.
The fact that most Tea Party talking points regarding fiscal issues are sound, and supported by tons of historical precedent, simply infuriates many on the left, as they prefer to decide issues on the basis of feel, rather than fact.
I could go on, as there are numerous other ways in which the Tea Party are an obvious foil to the progressive left merely by merit of their existence. . .but I’m pretty sure everyone has a pretty good notion of what those ways are.
dla @ 38:
“Please remember that the “Wild West” was a Hollywood and novel writer fantasy concocted mostly in the 1950′s – no basis in historical reality.”
I understand this. However I had an ancestor who got killed by horse thieves (bushwhacked in front of his house) and another ancestor had a brother who made a living out of killing bad guys in Oklahoma.
Wyatt Earp, Jesse James and Bat Masterson were real people. There is some truth behind the “Wild West” legend of Hollywood.
sirius @ 19: “It used to be it was at least as important to get the story right as to get it first. ”
Nowadays being first is a mania, and the media seem to be operating on that gambling system Wretchard has described, of doubling your bet every time. Just keep flinging the wild accusations out there. ONE time you’ll get lucky and it will match the facts, and when that happens, everyone will forget all about the 30 times you got it wrong. You’ll be famous forever as “The guy who broke the ___________ story.”
Consider how a devout Catholic might react to someone who advocated outlawing Communion. Then realize that for devout Lefists, Government telling other people how to live their lives is their sacrament, their religion, their salvation. They can lead horrible lives, but if they vote for The Party, their sins are forgiven.
It’s the exact same wiring, just put to different use.
Concealed carry, maybe some good shooter might have prevented some of this horror. That did not happen. This was a date night movie or out with friends who like this stuff, I do.
I refuse to accept that with all I give up to government that I cannot go to the movies without a weapon. I am all for gun rights. We see this happen in places like Norway with much more restrictive laws.
No answers for me about this. It is not about the hardware used it is much deeper than that.
Eggplant, thanks for helping focus it back on the individual criminal. That’s so often the first thing that gets lost in these things. But while I agree the perpetrator should spend the rest of his life in jail, that should be a fairly short period, ending in a hanging.
“What is it about the Tea Party that’s so threatening to these people?”
* Tea Party is “other”.
* All Evil is “other”.
=> Tea Part is All Evil.
QED.
also: all evil is not me, me is not evil, me very good.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims. My prayers go out to the family of Jim Holmes, as they are victims also.
When the Arizona shooting occurred that resulted in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords being shot in the head and 6 people dead, I wondered why some patriotic American standing in the audience, at the rally, didn’t take him down with their own personal firearm. Then it occurred to me that it was a liberal democratic rally. These people don’t believe in the second amendment. They are the Sheeple of our country.
Again, I wonder way someone didn’t take Jim Holmes down with their personal concealed carry weapon. Why? I would expect, in a crowded theater, that someone would be carrying a legally obtained firearm for self protection.
As far as I am concerned, this is not just a tragedy, it’s a failure of an armed citizenry to defend itself from a crazed killer. Laws need to be enacted that if you are not allowed carry a legally obtained firearm for self protection of yourself and your family, then the establishment is obligated to provide that protection. If they fail to provide that protection, then they would be held responsible.
God Bless America and God Bless the 2nd Amendment.
Raleigh, NC
”I would expect, in a crowded theater, that someone would be carrying a legally obtained firearm for self protection.”
I have read that the theater chain forbids concealed carry on their property. In Texas this is done by posting what’s called a ”30.06 notice –’thirty-ought six’– ”. If this is done in the prescribed manner then you can’t carry there. Other sorts of places, eg courtrooms, etc, are spelled out in the law itself.
You’re right. If the theater held 2-300 people there well could’ve been one or more people carrying.
Eggplant #31:
Nobody is getting sucked out a window. First, the windows are designed to withstand cracking and bullets tend to drill nice neat stress-relived holes, anyway.. Second, aircraft cabins are pressurized to 8000 ft altitude. The pressure differential with an aircraft altitude of 20,000 ft is only a few PSI. And there is only so much air in the cabin; the engines can replenish it only so fast. I was once in an altitude chamber set to 8000 ft where they opened the door to the other section of the chamber that was set at 25,000 ft. There was no discernable air movement. You have more chance of sucking up a full grown Labrador Retriever with a shop vac. Not that you could get anywhere near the dog with the vacuum, based on my experience.
As for as the Killin Luby’s shootings, there was indeed a young lady with a right to carry permit. The restaurant rules forced her to leave her gun in the car. She got to see both her parents killed.
The guy in the theater had a gas mask on. If someone had been shooting at him he would have been dead before he could figure out where the shots were coming from.
Docbill #27:
In the 1960’s the Earl Warren Supreme Court ruled that people that had not committed a crime could not be kept in mental institutions except voluntarily. This also fit the idea of the time that “Nobody’s crazy, we’re just all different.” And the money used for the mental hospitals was needed for the Great Society Welfare programs. That ended protective incarceration and inflicted the mentally ill on society. The latest trick is putting the nuts in retirement rest homes where they literally prey upon the invalid elderly.
this story looks like a bit like Merah’s, who also failed to realise his dreams as a narcissic person, thus devoted his energy into a morbid crusade
14 @dlsada
Simple, it’s The Narrative. It worked wonders on nearly every leftist and a good portion of the squishy middle. They have virtually zero evidence of anything unsavory happening with the Tea Party, but the constant enemedia drumbeat of “racist”, “homophobe”, “violent”, “redneck”, etc. has done the job very, very well. I bet if you asked that dude what’s so horrible about the Tea Party, he’d be reduced to sputtering some variation of the words above, with nothing of substance to back them up. Goebbels would be envious.
In a sane world, Brian Ross would have been toting his box of personal effects back to his car by noon. But it’s just a slander against the evil “teabaggers” (gawd, I hate that word), so it’s OK.
52 @Marie Claude
I thought of him too, especially after hearing about the booby-trapped apartment. With all that’s going on in the world right now, and the way we’ve known for years of the ease of attacking soft targets like this, it would be foolish not to check for motives beyond batshit crazy. I’m sure if they find some certain, undesired connections in this guy’s background, they’ll just sweep it right under the rug.
Edit: Almost forgot about this bit of brilliance. Next time there’s some nasty violence like this, let’s remind people of the violent tendencies of the media:
Iowahawk Media Violence Project
So now we know that the shooter is not Tea Party.
We also know that his party affiliation is somehow relevant to the story.
So, what is his party affiliation? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?
We also know that his party affiliation is somehow relevant to the story.
I think this is precisely the error. A person is always a member of something. The Mormon Church, the Kiwanis, the Democratic Party or the Shriners. Something. But the membership is not always relevant to the crime. Unless he commits the offensive explicitly in the pursuit of some supremacist objective — The World Domination of Mormons for example — then the crime ought not include those irrelevant factors. Ditto if the guy is white, black, asian, latino, gay, transgender, straight.
But today every high profile crime is examined for a political angle. The Duke Lacrosse team, the gay guy who killed himself when his Indian roommate put the webcam on him, the Trayvon Martin case and now this. You can think of a hundred cases.
There is now no such thing as a plain vanilla suspect. He is a gay, or Muslim or white, or black or female suspect. The reason that Elizabeth Warren and Ward Churchill have become native Americans is because unless you are hyphenated you are vulnerable. Thus every crime, now and in the future is going to become a political litmus test.
Nothing is simple any more.
Speakeasy@21,
You’re dead to rights on your point: the MSM is primed to hype any distraction it thinks will grab eyeballs away from the building critique of ‘their guy.’
But notice that the Bulgaria bombing is off the radar right now. There’s no talk about rescidivist Gitmo detainees bombing tourists, Gitmo torture, Iranian-exported terrorism, nor our President’s cavalier attitude about housing non-uniformed, enemy combatants and that now-infamous prison complex in Cuba he once promised to close.
Also scratched from the program is George Zimmerman’s Hannity interview. It damns the Democrat’s media complex and so it must be a relief to see it go. Relegated to the back-burner now, stories about Trayvon’s aggression, Al Sharpton et al’s opportunism, and NBC News’ criminal tampered recording can now be softly muffled, like a secret malignant baby no-one wants anymore might be suffocated in its soiled crib.
And, of course, there’s the Holder contempt vote, the “You didn’t build that” meme, and the coming pushback in Congress as Americans realize that Obama has gutted the popular ‘back-to-work’ provisions that passage of Bill Clinton’s welfare reforms was predicated on.
All-in-all, it’s a good thing for Obama that his media have a new catastrophe to distract us with. It’s the only upside in an otherwise horrific event.
cientious citizen’s plight when its resolution conflicts with the complex’s other social goals.
And notice what is on the radar now: Obama feels the victim’s pain and we should unite,
Speakeasy@21,
You’re dead to rights on your point: the MSM is primed to hype any distraction it thinks will grab eyeballs away from the building critique of ‘their guy.’
Notice for instance that the Bulgaria bombing is off the radar right now. There’s no talk about rescidivist Gitmo detainees bombing tourists, Gitmo torture, Iranian-exported terrorism, nor our President’s cavalier attitude about housing non-uniformed, enemy combatants and that now-infamous prison complex in Cuba he once promised to close.
Also scratched from the program is George Zimmerman’s Hannity interview. It damns the Democrat’s media complex and so it must be a relief to many to see it swirl down the memory hole. Relegated to the back-burner now, stories about Trayvon’s aggression, “White-Hispanics,” Al Sharpton et al’s opportunism, and NBC News’ broadcast of a tampered recording can be softly muffled, like a secret malignant baby no-one wants anymore might be suffocated by its parent at night in its soiled crib.
The media produce these perishable fictions – they know how to dispose of them, too.
And, of course, there’s the Holder contempt vote, the “You didn’t build that” faux pas, and the coming pushback in Congress as Americans realize that Obama has gutted the popular ‘back-to-work’ provisions that passage of Bill Clinton’s welfare reforms was predicated on.
All-in-all, it’s a good thing for Obama that his media have a new catastrophe to distract us with. It’s the only upside I can see in an otherwise horrific event.
Ross, Stephanopoulos and ABC News are partisan hacks…
Of course they could have blamed John Holmes for this but he is dead. And Sherlock Holmes was really a fictional character. And the James Holmes in police custody may be a Democrat. Does that mean all Democrats are to blame?
I have heard that he was Black Bloc, the extreme Anarchist group, and that earlier he had been connected with Occupy San Diego. Then there is this report
http://www.pibillwarner.com/2012/07/occupy-black-bloc-member-james-holmes.html
So now there are reports seeming to tie him to The Imposter (who wasn’t elected, ACORN made that happen for him). We still need to wait a bit, but I’ll put my money on him being another Lefty. We’ve been promised uncivil disorder this summer; brace yourselves.
WWS @ 20 said: “…those on the right are going to say more concealed carry could have made a difference – I think both are way off base …”
And referencing dla @ 38:
May I direct your attention to the video at:
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120716/ARTICLES/120719707?p=all&tc=pgall
The ‘money’quote: “… never expected anyone to be armed.”
Even if turns out that Holmes was a Democrat, a member of the Black Bloc anarchists and OWS all rolled in one I think the arrow of causation goes the other way. Though I have no admiration for those groups, I doubt they put him up to it. It’s unlikely that some member of the Democratic Party or even the Black Bloc told him, “dress up like the Joker and kill yerself some civilians”.
But it is undeniable that the OWS attracts its share of mentally ill and unstable people. Read the news accounts about the rapes in their tent cities. The fact is that like the guys who wanted to blow up the bridge and got busted by the Feds, that scene attracts types who are one sandwich short of a picnic.
Because the OWS contains so many marginal types it is statistically inevitable that there will be some overlap between the two populations. But it doesn’t mean, ipso facto, that these organizations caused this crime.
He was batshit crazy. And at that point logic has got nothing to do with nothing.
Would this be the same Brian Ross who was the “brains” behind the creative story about the dangers of certain GM vehicles? You remember, the clown who arranged for vehicles to be fitted with explosive charge to make a “point” about an alleged “design defect” that was supposed to lead to vehicle fires in the case of a collision.
Is this the same character? Furthermore, how many similar stunts have he and his “moral guardian” colleagues pulled?
Supplementary question: was this particular James Holmes a hard-core player from Black Bloc etc, or just a “wind-up toy”?
Outrages like this one make me think we need to bring back public executions. This guy should not be alive to see 2013. If he is, it is yet one more insult to those he already mortally offended.
Another movie that came to mind regarding people’s expectations: It’s a Wonderful Life.
To Stoicheion #34: “That citizen shooting back is fantasy.” Well since guns in the hands of good citizens can never do any good, I guess there’s no reason not to confiscate all firearms and delete the 2A?
42. Yashmak
42. Yashmak
Excellent point. It showed how the media type all (ok, most of them) exist within an echo chamber. Ross (and Stephanolpoulos) did not deserve the title ‘journalist’.
Annoy Mouse @ #6, and others, regarding the hiring of foreign labor…
I’d been working for about 3 years in Silicon Valley in the 1990s when I became acutely aware that very large numbers of those companies were laying off their most senior programmers and engineers, then replacing them with much younger and less experienced recent grads from India, Pakistan, and a couple of other South Asian regions.
Of course, the U.S. citizens laid off had been drawing much higher salaries and were shortly due to be fully vested in substantial retirement benefit packages. They had seniority, because the companies for decades had enjoyed their productivity with solutions that resulted in countless patents and license royalty revenues.
Those Silicon Valley Enterpreneurs we love so much, coldly calculated that they could better afford to take the hit of the few years it might take for the new hires to learn their “chops” than to continue paying their native-born double-E and programming staff.
So they applied much pressure to Mr. Clinton, whom they had massively supported in the previous election, asking him to increase the allowed VISA totals for the sort of employees they were seeking. Of course, the relaxation of previous restrictions was soon forthcoming.
Not surprisingly, it was a group of Silicon Valley enterpreneurs who formed the core of the group that established “MoveOn.org” during Clinton’s later legal troubles.
2. HEP-T,
11. Chris:
This is funny because I was going to write a comment about the experience of turning off my two sources of news (Internet talk radio and the web) from when I heard about it (2 hours after it happened) ’til now, but I spent ten minutes or less skimming news before seeing
2. HEP-T’s query. (haven’t read wretch, even)
In those ten minutes the answer I read was:
He got up and left the theater, propped open the exit door, and returned fully armed.
So now I’ve read two comments and written one, which is more than I had planned, plus I’ve got to get some groceries!
RWE @ 51 said:
“Nobody is getting sucked out a window. First, the windows are designed to withstand cracking and bullets tend to drill nice neat stress-relived holes, anyway.. Second, aircraft cabins are pressurized to 8000 ft altitude. The pressure differential with an aircraft altitude of 20,000 ft is only a few PSI. And there is only so much air in the cabin; the engines can replenish it only so fast. I was once in an altitude chamber set to 8000 ft where they opened the door to the other section of the chamber that was set at 25,000 ft.”
Let’s do the numbers: Pressure at 8000 ft (call it 2500 m) is about 0.7383 atm. Pressure at 30,000 ft (call it 9000 m) is about 0.3040 atm. The delta is 0.4343 atm. That translates to 6.4 psi. Assume the window has an area of one square foot or 144 square inches. The applied force is 922 lbf. That’s a lot of force. Looks like Goldfinger does get sucked out the airplane window.
I’m too lazy to do the complete calculation but the flow through an aircraft window is probably “choked”, i.e. supersonic. Choked flow would restrict the flow rate of air leaving the aircraft. If a man sized door was allowed to suddenly open then the flow would probably not be choked and the two chambers would almost instantly reach equilibrium. It must have really hurt your ears when they opened that door to the other section of the chamber. You’re lucky that you didn’t get bent. What’s the highest simulated atmosphere that you have ever experienced?
In Ian Fleming’s book it was Oddjob, not Goldfinger who was sucked out the plane.
Part of Ian Fleming’s skill as an author was his ability to describe ghastly death scenes. Probably Mr. Big’s was the worst.
Roger Simon has a piece up asking it isn’t the modern audience’s insatiable fascination with gory death that drives people like Holmes. When you think about it, the modern world sees more gory stuff on average in the movies than the Roman audiences saw at the arena. Of course we know it isn’t real, but then again we want it to look indistinguishably real, and if possible, realer than real. You know, in slow motion and close-ups.
I think Roger’s got a point. Maybe it isn’t the the NRA the liberals should crack down on as much as Hollywood. But what makes them think the Beast isn’t inside them? Mankind has been cruel through history. I think it was a Clint Eastwood character who once observed “that we’ve all got it coming.”
That by the way, is the doctrine of Original Sin. “We’ve all got it coming.”
Weird day:
Thot I’d check after my comment, read Eggplant, must contribute:
Explanation of maui in flight fuselage failure.
I’ll read RWE when I get back!
…one guy has an elaborate alternative to official finding, thinks stewardness temporarily blocked hole on exit leading to shock leading too further failure.
Goes into some pretty elaborate analysis.
The Final Result
Simplified Version of Alternative Explanation
From final result link above:
…This is a detective story. It’s about a mystery that aviation professionals say was solved 12 years ago and the persistence of Austin, a former Hawai‘i boiler inspector, who has spent all those years and $45,000 of his money trying to prove that the experts got it wrong.
It’s also about an accident that forever changed maintenance practices for old planes and about an alternative theory that could have far-reaching consequences. Finally, it’s about the intriguing possible parallels between boiler safety and airplane safety.
Austin, a mechanical engineer, has no professional expertise in airplane accidents. He is an expert on boilers; the NTSB once consulted him about a train boiler explosion in Gettysburg, Pa. Austin, 43, runs a consulting business, Hawaiian Steam Engineering, which designs, inspects and restores boilers and locomotives. He also consults for the Navy on servicing nuclear submarine power plant components…
Depictions of violence do not make people numb to it nor do they make unstable and psychotic individuals go off like a bomb. That is just so much psychobabble. Have you ever read the Bible? Some serious violence in that very valuable book. How about the history of the Spanish inquisition? As late as the early 19th century life was nasty, short and brutish for 80 percent of the worlds population. It didn’t make us all animals. At any rate this person snapped and devolved into his own world of fantasy and control. The most important part being “control”. We live in a time of chaos and a decided lack of control in our daily lives. Some of us, through genetics, rearing or bad sandwich meat (I personally think it is genetically modified red wheat, seriously) can’t handle the lack of control and snap. That is the connecting thread between all of these miscreants. A lack of control or the ability of society to provide a safe haven and a way to regain control of their faculties.
Read “Wheat Belly” by Dr. William Davis M.D. It will change your life.
A (liberal) friend of mine on Facebook asked why there aren’t laws to keep guns out of the hands of crazy people. Of course the question then is who decides who’s crazy? Stoichion’s reservations aside, one mentally stable guy with a CCW and a .45 under his jacket in that theater might have been able to end it all with minimal casualties. But a lot of people, almost certainly a majority of those who’d support a “mental evaluation” gun control law, would think wanting a CCW is prime evidence of mental instability in and of itself.
This guy, his mother knew it was him as soon as she heard. The Giffords shooter in AZ, people knew he was nuts too but his mom pulled strings with the Sheriff to keep him on the loose. Capt. Allah Akbar down at Ft. Hood, the Army knew he was unstable but it was politically incorrect to do anything about a Muslim nutbar. None of these guys are ever really a surprise, are they?
We know who the dangerous people are. But we refuse to admit it because then we’d have to do something about it.
It is peculiar that the Democrats keep harping on gun control when it has been such a politically losing issue. As Bill Clinton was reported to say,”We underestimated the NRA.” Also nation wide more and more states have gone the “will issue” route for CCW permits and have noticed a drop in crime.
I’ve been trying to remember the details in a comic book that I read back in the 1950′s. There was a line in it that talked about a society that collapsed and it went something like,”Like a fast growing bacteria in a Petri dish they died from their own waste products poisoning them before they ran out of food. This reminds me of the dish the Left is living in now.
I guess that Brian Ross, Investigative Reporter, (check out his Twitter handle picture), is now one of those guys sitting around in HIS pajamas. A Google search and he’s solved the mystery as far as he’s concerned. It’s breathlessly reported to get out the desired false narrative first with Stephanopoulos aiding and abetting, actually probably conspiring. Early on also I heard it reported that Holmes apartment contained “Rush and Hannity paraphernalia.” What in God’s name would Sean Hannity paraphernalia consist of-a Lee Greenwood CD?
#58-I doubt this would have happened at a John Holmes flick. You of course recall that in his famous film, “Tell Them Johhny Wadd Was Here,” he played a private detective, a/k/a “private dick,” and actually went to Mexico to investigate an illegal drug operation. Unlike Ross, he didn’t do all his work from his bed.
One facet of the story that bothers me is the behavior of the first police to respond. According to what I read, and correct me if this is wrong, the first police to arrive were flumoxed by the tear gas. They were not equipped with gas masks, so they dithered and waned. My reaction is to say, “You are kidding me, right?” How far have we come already from the behavior of the 9/11 first responders, many of whom fought upwards into the burning towers with real knowledge that they might not make it out alive.
I also have to disagree with the notion that the audience would not have been helped if some of them had been armed. If the story about the problem of the lack of gas masks can be believed, then the police can even be outside the very door and yet find a way to neuter themselves in the face of your onslaught. If you’ve got the Joker bearing down on you in his full bore evil mode, then it really is incumbent upon you to fight back. He’s not coming to get you when the odds aren’t in his favor.
Along the lines of first impressions and the admonition against “judging a book by its cover,” a healthy percentage of the modern whack jobs tend to “look” psycho. Makes one wonder if it’s possible to really “see” something in the cover. (I hope not. A goodly number of pictures from my personal record would likely increase my “risk profile.”)
w@13: There’s always going to be someone who thinks that carrying a gun, or not carrying a gun, having a computer or not having a computer, having a tv or not have a tv is a sign of dangerous tendencies.
b@24: Like the Korean nut our Joker was screwy all the way down to the last turtle.
So which is the more worrisome take-away: they’re coming after our guns, or they’re coming after … us, because we fit some Minority Report profile, or lack some statistically determined optimum number of Facebook Friends, or, the piece de resistance, we’re “unfriendly loners”, or … [Reminder to self: put a lid on the snarling.]
Another six months of psychological hand-wringing and soul-searching. “Nutters” don’t interest me. Nobody promised a risk-free existence.
Constraining marginal profiles will always be problematic – and difficult. It requires, after all, judgment.
I think Roger has it at least partly backwards. Hollywood isn’t driving culture towards violence, it’s reflecting violent urges arising in our culture from other sources.
I think people feel a growing sense of frustration, even a sense that Society itself is against them. So many of our instituions are either dysfunctional, predatory, or both, that more people are losing faith in the basic justice of society. Justice is a strong urge, and it basically comes in two flavors. One is personal, bloody, and violent. The Dark Knight, or Rambo, or Jack Bauer. The other is civic, orderly, and dispassionate. Jack Webb playing Sgt. Joe Friday.
In the wake of all the violence of WWII, people lost faith in the bloody, personal sort of violence, and wanted to try a more orderly approach. Now, in the wake of all the official corruption and ineptitude, people are losing faith in civic justice, and the tempation to pick up a gun, a cudgel, or just a big rock, is stronger and stronger.
Plus, there are the demotivating, disempowering messages we get from our elites. The corollary to Obama saying Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple is saying James Holmes couldn’t build it either. If nobody can get anywhere without the help of the government, and the government is nothing more than a corrupt bag of cronyism that you don’t have an in with… well, what else is there to do but start causing as much mayhem as you can?
wretchard@55
I think this is precisely the error. A person is always a member of something.
Yes, I know. Perhaps I was too oblique. Let me try again.
The dog needs to have its nose rubbed in the poo until it learns not to make a mess in the house.
dog = MSM
poo = artfully indirect, derogatory suggestion
mess = good chance the guy is actually team D
Read Rurik’ s link, from it:
“James Holmes, DOB 12/13/1987, the car he was driving had Tenn license plates. The Batman movie portrays the OWS crowd in a negative vein,the new Batman movie featured the villain as an Occupy Wall Street type. I would first look at the possibility that James Holmes, DOB 12/13/1987, was caught up in the OWS movement took it upon himself to strike back against “THE MAN.”
Bill Warner private investigator at http://www.wbipi.com/
Ace of Spades makes a good point that this guy was not insane and knew exactly what he was doing. This operation was too well planned.
Re. #41 stoicheon – Who was it who said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact?
Leaving aside (which I and many others think we shouldn’t) the purpose clause in the 2nd Amendment, there is still the technological change in the 200 years since it was written that makes the point perhaps moot. Then, a well-trained gunman could get off perhaps 3 shots per minute. Now, he can do that in a second even with a civilian weapon. Why does that matter? Simple. Someone fires off a muzzle-loading firearm, and you have perhaps 20-30 seconds to decide he is a lunatic and do something about it. With an AR-15…
Perhaps the answer is for everyone to be allowed to “bear arms” – after a psychological workup to weed out the nutcases, and then a fairly extensive training program in the use of the firearm. “Well-regulated”, huh?
Sure, many of those who buy guns take the time, trouble and expense to get themselves trained in their use. However, many (and probably more) don’t. Else there would be less accidents.
“ Air from the pressurized cabin begins to rush out at about 700 mph. A flight attendent is sucked into, but not through, the opening. This shuts off the rush of escaping air for a few ten-thousands of a second and pressure builds up to hundreds of pounds psi – powerful enough to rip the plane apart…”
from
72. Doug
“Simplified Version of Alternative Explanation” link
“Austin says that a weakened fuselage was not the main reason for the extensive damage.
A 10-inch-by-10-inch hole opened, he says, in the roof of the cabin at a location known as body station 500. (Body stations are points on the fuselage that are measured in inches from near the nose of the jet to the rear.) A powerful stream of air swept an Aloha flight attendant off her feet and toward the hole, Austin says. Her head and right arm went through the hole, he says, but her body momentarily plugged it, blocking the escaping air and creating a jolt of pressure that ripped the jet apart. The flight attendant was swept out, and her body was never found.
“Slamming the door on a 700 mph jet stream creates a localized, short-duration high-pressure spike, up to several orders of magnitude (greater than) the allowable design pressure,” Austin says. “This is a fluid hammer.”
Forensic evidence, Austin says, shows where the flight attendant’s skull struck the exterior of the plane. The location of the skull print is consistent with the location of a plugged hole at body station 500, he says.”
“final result” link above
@20 WWS Sounds like that kid was ‘woods crazy’ Let me tell you a story. One fine day in the 50s in the small town I grew up in, a man long known to be completely nuts walked over to my 4th grade teacher’s house and methodically put 46 .22 bullets into her house and one in each of her car’s tires. He then went home. The sheriff, who had to come from some distance away, was eventually informed that my 4th grade school teacher and a friend had sent lightning into the man’s bed. The sheriff didn’t buy this explanation, but on every previous occasion when someone reported crazy threats by the man the Sheriff had refused to act – saying that he was just ‘woods crazy’. Plus ca change……
I wonder how many of you have actually known a psychotic. Reporters keep asking about motive. If you knew his motive, it would not make any sense to you.
Here’s another take on what might have happened. The guy was a severe introvert. He was on the track to go to the best schools. That means he was under continual academic pressure to perform so he never had a chance to come to grip with loneliness and his need to relate to the other sex – probably just said to himself, maybe after the next term I’ll force myself to get into a real relationship. For now I’ll go to the library and study. But he never could come fully into the adult world because he was such a loner and under such pressure to keep up in his academic program. So he just kept doing what he was doing, and the pressure kept building.
Add to this the fact that he was in a neuroscience program. A staple of these kinds of programs is the use of all kinds of drugs on experimental animals to map various brain pathways. He would have had access to those drugs. For someone who just couldn’t interface very well with the world, it must have been a great temptation to just try a drug cocktail that had worked well in mice making them more intelligent, more aggressive, whatever. Only the balance was elusive and he got it wrong – can’t use too much physostigmine or too much LSD. Reality must have become elusive.
14.disada and 23. Don Rodrigo:
What is it about the Tea Party that’s so threatening to these people?
Well, just off the top of the head and in random order: …the loss of monopoly power…the coming of change…the fear of confronting an angry group with money, brains, organization skills and resolve…the terror that goes with knowing you’ve lost control over the peasants…the inability to locate a single source or spokesman to write your headlines for you…the knowledge that you’re a fraud and the day of reckoning looms…and about fifty thousand other reasons, perhaps led by the idea that bluffing is for elderly Republicans, not the rest of us.
Surely you know that?
But what if there is nothing sinister found? Just read reports that he was very active in his church growing up. What if he turns out to be your average Joe?
Then search and search we will to find the reason he went bad and what it was that caused him to come unhinged. We must find it! Indeed, we will invent it if we have to…because the alternative is even more terrifying! What if he is just your average Joe, one of us? If that’s the case then no super hero can remedy our situation.
Census figures show 33,800 people died in the US in 2009 within 30 days of a motor vehicle accident. In a typical day, 93 human lives come to premature ends due to motor vehicle accidents. Ho hum; didn’t see anything about that on the evening news yesterday.
According to CNN (yes, I know!), the UN estimates that more than 10,000 people have been killed in Syria since the crisis began in March 2011 — average about 22 people per day. But that is yesterday’s news.
“Nearly 60 people have been killed this week in fighting between Arab tribes in Sudan’s conflict-plagued Darfur region, the official SUNA news agency said on Thursday”. And that is not news at all.
Violent death is always a tragedy for those involved and their nearest & dearest. But which violent deaths do the rest of us choose to become exercised about, and why?
When funding for public universities was cut, so were mental health facilities for students. I’m sure his grad program knew something was wrong with him. Parents of psychotics don’t know how to deal with the situation and may even be experiencing denial — blaming things on recreational drugs, for example. Psychotics choose from media influences to create their delusional systems but that doesn’t make those sources responsible. No one here has pointed out Limbaugh’s vocal criticisms of the movie, nor that this is the anniversary of Breivik’s shooting. Our society, for whatever reason, has chosen to pretend the actions of the mentally ill are a matter of individual choice. We suffer the consequences rather than provide screening or treatment. Others societies do things differently. That is our individual choice and we are all responsible for these sorts of outcomes because we ignore those with mental problems. There is pressure in a competitive economy and grad school doesn’t make people crazy any more than the post office does. Most people get their advanced degrees and go on to get jobs, or not, without break-downs. I see calls for gun control after every mass shooting, but I never hear any calls for better mental health care. Why not? Young adulthood is prime time for developing schizophrenia and that major mental illness is not caused by being the neighborhood loner or having too few girlfriends, although if he had had a girlfriend maybe she would have directed him toward a doctor instead of just breaking up with him. His grad program only cared enough about him to let him resign. When we don’t care about or for others in trouble, they nevertheless affect us, as a whole bunch of people in CO found out. But we will put this person in jail and go on with life as if mental illness didn’t exist. Most mentally ill people don’t shoot people, after all, they just have “personal problems” so we can leave them to suffer alone.
No one has mentioned how many very young children were at that midnight showing. Among those treated at the hospital were a 3 mo old baby and a 6 year old. Who takes young kids to a violent movie at midnight? Violent movies don’t cause violence but they do interact with whatever mental health problems someone has. What does it say about us that we think this movie is appropriate to inflict on young children?
The best trick the Devil ever performed is the lie “he doesn’t exist”…Yes there is an evil being we refer to as the Devil..He is real, real as any microbe or germ..You believe in germs, you see them, so you believe..You see evil, but do not believe the Devil is also real.. Neat trick, hey?
Eggplant #70:
I had guesstimated 1000 lb of force max, since my atmospheric data charts are at the office 21 miles away.
But the thing is, the cabin pressure goes down very, very fast when the hole opens up. Like right friggin’ NOW! Like in the altitude chamber. It goes down too fast to suck anyone out. The cabin outflow valve that opens and closes to control the pressure has an area nowhere near as big as the window. It does not have to be, since the pressurization is via the air conditioning system and converting the cabin into a wind tunnel is very much frowned upon in ECS design circles, even when you are trying to cool things down fast. So the pressure capacity to blow anyone out is just not there. If you could blow that much air into the cabin they would not need emergency oxygen masks.
Plunging the chamber with an explosive decompression is standard USAF training. The cabin pressure goes from 8000 ft to 20,000 ft instantly and you need to not close up your throat in order to keep from blowing out your eardrums. Then you grab your oxygen mask and get it working and checked out while doing many Val Salvas continuously as they perform a simulated rapid descent. If you know how to handle it there is no pain. If you don’t handle it they have to rush you to the base dentist to drill a a hole through your teeth into the sinus cavity to relieve the pressure. When going up the valves in your ears work fine to equalize the pressure. Coming down, if you do not keep forcing the valves open they reach a point where the pressure differential is too great for them to open.
In the chamber they took it to 25,000 ft and had me take off my mask. It took me a few minutes to get woozy. Some people pass out in 5 sec. The thing that surprised me was that the air did not feel any different. They probably thought I was hypoxic as I tried to feel the air and waved may hand to feel the wind.
Needless to say, the 737 in Hawaii had a bunch of its top come off, and pressurization was nothing when it came to ejecting people who were not strapped as compared to having a convertible jet.
DOUG, Did read wretch, but even at midnight a man fully dressed out like he was gonna do a thunder run down Baghdad’s main drag should have stood out like a sore thumb in the parking lot. Our movie theaters usually have some kind of security and they are armed.
P/S Pick me up some Sol beer when ya go!
My query now is: One handgun, one shotgun and an AR-15 body armor, a helmet and tear gas canisters with 6,000 rounds of ammo and booby traps built and placed at his apartment.
The question now is, Where did he get the money for all that stuff?
I have friends who were Paratroopers in the 82d AA they told me about an event when the back doors of a C-141 open there is a cold wind that sweeps through the cargo bay. The guys called it “The Hawk” so why don’t paratroopers get sucked out the minute the clam shell doors open? I understand the crew may drop pressure or drop altitude before the doors open.
94. HEP-T
“Where did he get the money for all that stuff?”
Student loans.
@ 94. HEP-T
“My query now is: One handgun, one shotgun and an AR-15 body armor, a helmet and tear gas canisters with 6,000 rounds of ammo and booby traps built and placed at his apartment.
The question now is, Where did he get the money for all that stuff?”
Student loans.
But really, that’s a couple thousand dollars of equipment. It’s not chump change, but I don’t think it’s outside the budget of a socio-economic-middle-class nutjob on a doomsday mission.
Matt @97: “But really, that’s a couple thousand dollars of equipment. It’s not chump change, but I don’t think it’s outside the budget of a socio-economic-middle-class nutjob on a doomsday mission.”
It ain’t chump change to me either.
I was wondering why .gov seemed so intent at impoverishing the [independent] middle class…Evidently, a uniform lack of individual discretionary surplus doesn’t just an ‘equitable commie distribution’ make.
Wouldn’t it be surreal if it turned out that graduate student/joker James ‘Bugnut’ Holmes financed his doomsday mission by re-purposing federal grant and loan funds?
Anyway, tyrant types have long known that it takes funds to purchase the beans, bullets, and band-aids required to sustain any sort of revolt. As such, starving peasants fixed upon the necessity of procuring the next meal for the wife and kids have neither time, resources, or energy to engage in open revolt…That is, until such a time as they are left with no other choice but to overthrow the real bitter clingers that have been hoovering up the fruits of their labors.
@83. FC;
No one says the Constitution is a suicide pact. The wording says that the individual states have the power to decide upon limitations within the framework of the enumerated limits upon the Federal govt.
The second amendment is the people’s power to meet the govt with equal power. In my opinion we have strayed far enough away from equal power that our govt no longer fears the power of the people. The term “well regulated” meant that the militia would be equipped in a manner equal to and consistent with the armies of the day. Should individuals be equipped with nukes? I would say that it should be so if they can afford and maintain such equipment. Mutually Assured Destruction works on individuals the same as it would on govts.
As to the decision process being easier with muzzle loaders versus automatic weapons. If people didn’t walk around in condition white (oblivious) it doesn’t take anymore time to make that decision. I am almost positive that someone noticed Mr. Holmes going out the emergency exit and propping the door open. If that person or persons had acted in a manner consistent with such an action that doing so was illegal and improper and notified or got up and secured the door then this event may have been nullified. In any case had Mr. Holmes made it back into the theater and stood up in front with his weapon at the ready. If the public had been armed he would have been met with return fire and the event would have been lessened to a great degree. It has been noted that no where in the Constitution is the right to a risk free life enumerated. It isn’t possible.
As to the training and licensing issue. We see how well the use of such tools has lessened the carnage on the roads of the world, haven’t we? Training is very important to a person’s survival in the world and it will always be that way.
We can no more stop such events than we can stop the sun from shining. What we can do is be prepared. It is every man’s responsibility to himself and his family to be “well regulated” in the martial arts. It matters not if the time is 1776 or 2076. You either act upon your world or you are acted upon. A man once said that if a man had no sword let him sell his coat and acquire one.
A person only has the rights he is willing to defend. It doesn’t matter if they are G-d given or not, if he doesn’t defend them then they will not be his long. The rule of law only works for men of virtue and honor. Those without virtue and honor do not see words on a paper as a impediment to their desires.
I am sure you know these ideas, although I am not sure that you have made the decision to make the sacrifices necessary to ensure the survival of you and yours. Life, for the free man is never easy. If it was, all men would choose Freedom.
Be Prepared.
Why hasn’t anyone pointed out the education connection? Could it possibly be the American Universities are twisting these young peoples minds. Just sayin…
93. RWE –
The stew did indeed get blown out, leaving an outline of her head in blood on the fuselage. Newspapers carried the picture.
Originally there was a 10 by 10 inch safe decompression hole, as was designed in by Boeing. When she got stuck for thousandths of a second, the fluid hammer effect of mommentarily stopping the 700 mph flow of air blew the roof.
“But the thing is, the cabin pressure goes down very, very fast when the hole opens up. Like right friggin’ NOW!”
A whole cabin’s worth of air going through a ten inch hole has gotta being going pretty fast to empty the cabin that quickly.
89. Mick -
“If that’s the case then no super hero can remedy our situation.”
SuperDoug solved the problem by refusing to expose himself to the 24 – 7 coverage like kryptonite.
A Mickey’s might help, also!
jfsanders – I live in the UK, and as such it is just about impossible to be be prepared in the military arts as well as you might find appropriate. Further to that, for reasons I won’t bother anyone here with, being trained in hand-to-hand is just about as impossible for me in particular.
I have nobody who is important enough (and considers me important enough) to be worth bothering about. Notwithstanding all that, if TSHTF in the UK, I know enough about “unconventional” methods to be a thorn in the side of any oppressor – and although I have yet to be tested I think I’d use that knowledge.
I’m not going to be specific – but anyone with a basic knowledge of chemistry (and mine is a lot more than basic) is goddamn dangerous to autocrats, using materials that aren’t all that difficult to get.
Further again, I’m already part of the resistance in a very minor way. For example, I will never again patronise any business run by Pakistanis. Never. IMHO, giving money to Muslims is tantamount to treason.
IMO: It’s the nihilism.
I’ve never been a fan of the Batman movies. Any of ‘em. Saw the first Nolan version (“Batman Begins”) on DVD & found it wayyyy overwrought. So when TDK came out in 2008, I was not inclined to see it. And when publicity pix were released of Heath Ledger in the grotesque (and just plain gross) Joker’s makeup, I *really* wasn’t gonna go see it.
It struck me at the time that some kind of line had been crossed … yeah, the Joker had always been a psycho type, and Jack Nicholson had brought his stamp of dangerous psycho to the psycho. But in TDK, Ledger was basically playing a walking, talking death mask. Or so it seemed to me. Character didn’t interest me, movie didn’t interest me. I’m not into death cult cr@p. But something about TDK and Ledger’s Joker in particular caught people’s imagination and became a cultural phenom in a way that did not seem healthy to me.
Mass media entertainment does two basic things with respect to culture, I think: (1) it reflects what’s out there, and (2) it intensifies what’s out there by amplifying it (via circulating it through the cultural system).
The prevailing tide of TV and movies was not one of nihilism when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. It is now. Sometimes the nihilism is gory, sometimes it wears a Brooks Brothers suit (as in Mad Men). But there’s a reason I call cable dramas “the carnival of the damned.” Don Draper … Walter White … Nucky Johnson … Cullen Bohannon … all miserable guys on a drawn-out journey to hell (it could be argued that one or more of them is already there). Doom doom doom. It’s like Macbeth for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snacks, hors d’oeuvres, etc etc. WTF?
I’m not saying that every show has to be The Waltons. Or like (the gag-inducing) Touched by an Angel. Blechhhh. What mystifies me is the downright obsession with death, damnation, depravity & debauchery on the “critically acclaimed” TV shows. Why? The makers of these shows live lives of unprecedented luxury, privilege and safety. These people are among the most materially comfortable and creatively powerful and free human beings ever to walk the earth. So, does their incredible fortune, their unrivaled blessings of circumstance, result in a creative vision of grace, gratitude and hope from them? Nope. What we get instead is an unremitting stream of gloom and negativity.
It’s my opinion that the next stop after existentialism (which inevitably fails; man is simply not capable of bearing the burden of creating his own meaning) is nihilism. And this is where we are at, culturally, today, at least in America.
While I don’t believe entertainment has “created” the nihilistic culture, I do think that Hollywood and the music industry do bear a lot of the blame to the extent that they have produced and distributed content that expresses and even celebrates nihilism (or, more precisely put, celebrates style over substance, where that substance is nihilistic and we are just supposed to nudge-nudge-wink-wink at how cleverly and beautifully it was put across).
Many posts ago, another commenter here on BC said, “We need better artists.”
Yes.
64K question: Will the worm turn?
(follow-up question: In my lifetime?)
BW
The Dark Knight was a moral treatise on islamic jihad with the Joker being at the apex of unlawful warfare.
Deception and the use of mentally impaired human bombs…
An utter lack of ethics…
TOTAL manipulation of the criminal classes…
And the media…
TDK has too much weight for a comic book film.
======
TDK is the ONLY way that the current war can be depicted by Hollywood.
#104 bogie wheel: Why the disrespect of Touched by an Angel?
Roma Downey? Give me more of what you call “blech.”
14. dlsada
What is it about the Tea Party that’s so threatening to these people? Is it because they are law-abiding, proud Americans? I have a liberal co-worker who is usually very nice but believes that all the evil in the world is caused by “those G-D Tea Partiers.” A Tea Party rally looks like a Rockwell painting come to life.
I think you’ve got it there dl: White, conservative, probably did a stint in the armed forces, clinging to their guns and religion and probably not trusting “people of color.”
Dude! That’s a leftist recipe for a terrorist!
blert –
I do get the WOT allegory/overtones of TDK. And I’m not being dismissive of Nolan, who is one of the sharpest (if not *the* sharpest, in his current form) writer-directors out there.
My objections to the Joker character were/are people’s fascination with him on a quasi-fashion/identification level. The whole “oooh, Heath Ledger” thing for starters (casting lending allure to the character). Second, his makeup. Gone was the playing-card Joker makeup where the red lips were just — red, lipsticked lips. On Ledger’s joker, the red mouth became a huge, wet-looking “Glasgow smile” bloody slash. It was deliberate gore, a conspicuous death reference (Black Dahlia, anyone?) staring you in the face. Disgusting.
Third, and I’m not quite sure where the locus/origin of this was (whether it was a combination of how the character was written, the Heather Ledger mystique, or something else, IDK), but the Joker became cooler & more fascinating & more talked about than Batman. Think about this. The Joker, the ultimate nihilist, “upstaged” the good guy. Became “the face” (and, what a [terrible!] face) of the movie, i.e., when things were written about it, guess whose picture they used most of the time? The Joker was … sexy.
I would have thought we learned our lesson with Tony Soprano about how far to let our imaginations be seduced by an evil character. But unfortunately the popular reaction to (fascination with, proliferation of imagery using) the Joker shows that we just descended even further into the gutter.
And herein is my problem with such creations. A culture that wallows in death imagery walks a dangerous line wherein the nutters (like Holmes) get all sorts of message reinforcement in quantity of depictions of violence, and in the popular regard of characters like the Joker as cool and sexy and fascinating.
A culture that marinates itself in nihilism and countless graphic depictions of violence and death is a culture playing with fire.
Aurora was us getting burned.
This is just my take on things & I realize others will disagree. And no, I’m not saying that we allow the lowest common denominator (the nutters, whose line of reality vs. fiction is blurred to nonexistent) to dictate what is and is not acceptable in entertainment content. What I’m saying is that there are such things as proportionality, and needfulness, and saturation points. And that I think a critical mass of our popular entertainment is all out of proportion, that we have passed the saturation point, and much of this stuff was not necessary (artistically speaking) to begin with.
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”
Paul @ 106 -
Oh, nothing against hot Irish brunettes.
The “blech” was for the writing, which assumed a stoopid audience in need of spoonfeeding.
It was usu. given to the Della Reese character, in the opening of every episode, to explain to the Roma Downey character (a) a detailed backstory of the “hurting” character and (b) what that character needed (something along the lines of, “She needs to learn to trust people again. Otherwise, she’ll end up alone, just her and her pain.”)
This approach to exposition runs afoul of two basic rules of dramatic storytelling: (1) show, don’t tell, and (2) avoid OTN (on the nose) dialogue. It’s lazy writing. Or the mark of a n00b.
I applaud the decency of TBAA & would take a dozen of that show over vulgar dreck like Deadwood and Rome. But. It’s unfortunate for “our side” that the “other side” is, or seems to be, better creative communicators of their worldview than we are of ours.
Wanna know why the Devil gets all the best lines? He has the better screenwriters.
20. wws
Oh, and now reports say he was wearing body armor, of all things.
I just know what I’ve read, but “body armor” comes in all shapes and sizes. Light body armor will stop many different pistol rounds, but it will not stop rifle rounds. Even the metal/ceramic plates that our guys wear in the Sandbox are supposed to stop rifle rounds, but that sometimes depends on how close the stot was taken. Thirty feet versus 3000 meters yields a whole different outcome.
My sense is if there was a “trained” conceiled carry operator (off duty police or even a handy civilian) five hits of .45 ACP (nothwithstanding body armor) would have put the guy on his back and would have made a “rush” conceivable.
If I ever squared off against a 6′ 3″ 220 wise acre in a bar…well, if he hit me five times in the chest it would be because he held me up for the last three. Most folk would be done with 2.
I liken a .45 ACP FMJ into a light vest at 20 feet on about the same scale as 1 solid rap to the solar plexus. Some indiviuals could handle one…but 5? I doubt it. Not only that, even though he had armor all over, a round to an extremity might shatter the bone under the protective gear.
I believe it would have been a game changer. What if there were 2 civilians carrying? Actually that might be worse, unless they knew their buddy was also in the theatre. Otherwise, there could be fratricide. Even so, in that case you only have two folk shot – not 70.
34. stoicheion
Some seem to differ:
Two Aurora Shootings: One Widely Known; the Other Ignored
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/12175-two-aurora-shootings-one-widely-known-the-other-ignored
If this isn’t a hoax or copycat, there just may be more to the story than “batshit crazy” after all:
Police looking for second “person of interest” in theater shooting
Sources tell Justin Joseph someone made a call from the person of interest’s phone threatening violence if James Egan Holmes was not released from jail.
Person of interest and shooting suspect James Holmes both attended same Colorado university. — KDVR #Theatershooting
61. wretchard
It’s unlikely that some member of the Democratic Party or even the Black Bloc told him, “dress up like the Joker and kill yerself some civilians”.
I would have thought that too. That is before the intentional lawlessness of “Fast and Furious” and the vote on the 27th at the United Nations for the Small Arm Treaty that both the President and Hitlery have said they would vote for. Peculiar that this Massacre would come just 7 days before that signing. Michael Bloomberg only yesterday repeated his druthers of a gun-free america.
I have read a lot about that treaty and the significance of the vote on July 27th. I am not a legal scholar, but I have heard seemingly reputable sources intimate that whatever comes out of that agreement must be “observed” until the Senate ratification in the Fall. If the treaty says no private ownership of firearms…well, things will get interesting.
What with the phenomenol Health Care Act passage pressure that resulted in a law that 60-70% of the population HATES, the untimely death of Andrew Breightbart (who promised an Obama “vetting”), the very strange death of Breightbart’s coroner of arsenic poisening just hours before his conclusions were to be announced, and the recent aberant judicial “judgement” of John Roberts, it would seem to me that there is certainly something sinister afoot.
Conspiracy Therory? I’m not in a knowledgable enough position to even postulate a “theory,” but I know that the hair is, right now, standing straight up on the back of my neck.
Armed citizens stopping a crime is a fantasy, hunh?
O RLY?
“71-Year-Old Man Foils Armed Robbery, Shoots Suspects”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XSJv8nwVBk
Not a superhero, just an old guy with a set and the presence of mind to fight back. There are MANY, MANY examples of this; this old dude just made the news last week. I’m sorry, but it’s just senseless to say that being armed makes no difference. If that were true, armed robbers could be stopped by those WITHOUT arms.
Whatevs, folks.
91. Sally
Who takes young kids to a violent movie at midnight?
Apparently, parents who are unable to afford a babysitter at $15 an hour. It was before the “wheel” but in junior high I remember getting $.35 an hour and $.50 after Midnight.
#111 Dworkin Barimen and #112 Sgian Dubh
In reference to the second “Person of Interest”; subject has been identified by Reuters as a “Yoem Pyo Lee”; which is a really strange anglicization of an Asian name. It could be either Chinese or Korean, and the Facebook picture is indeterminate. The subject is not just at the same university, but in the exact same neuroscience doctoral program as Holmes. Further, he reportedly has not been seen since the shooting, and there is conjecture that he was the one who opened the exit door to allow Holmes in after he retrieved his weapons from his car.
The existence of a second involved party plays hob with the ‘lone psycho’ theory.
I have been taking part in online discussions with acquaintances who are familiar with the field of terrorism. Part of the discussions have covered the templates used by different terrorist groups with different goals and operational methods. Without going into details, there is a template for Leftist terrorism by certain groups. The more that is learned, the more the template seems to match; and the more that is learned about Holmes’ background, the more he meets the template.
And there is the detail of financing. This was not cheap. I have seen estimates of $10-20K for what he is known to have purchased. He was a graduate student. These are not known to be historically a high disposable income group. He was on unemployment insurance. He also had just rented the booby-trapped apartment just two weeks ago. That assumes a cash damage deposit on the order of $1000 plus first month’s and possibly the last month’s rent. Between the time he graduated with honors in California, and he arrived at CU Med School; the only job he could find was a part time job at McDonalds. Who paid for it?
And as someone who has had professional involvement on the fringes of EOD and who has later worked with explosives professionally; while I can admit that it is theoretically possible that a savant could master the skill sets of improvised explosive substances, the parallel skills in improvised explosive DEVICES [multiple sophisticated, interconnected explosive devices as described by the Aurora Police Chief] do not overlap with his historically known skill sets. The learning curve with this is …. steep and exothermic.
If the deficiencies in Holmes’ personal skills and/or finances were furnished by other parties; or if he indeed did have help in executing the operation … that implies a group, planning, and a chain of command. There are suspicious gaps in this story.
Just a thought. If “Yoem Pyo Lee” is in fact being sought, and if he turns up deceased, it means that the planners and logistics sources are still out there.
Subotai Bahadur
Fun question: how does a man receiving unemployment benefits acquire $20,000 worth of military-grade armor and weapons, in a span of 60 days? That’s just what was on his person / in his car (i.e. not counting the bombs, etc in his apartment).
Further down the rabbit hole: is it just a coincidence the United Nations is voting on / editing its Small Arms Treaty in the next short while?
108. bogie wheel said…
“A culture that marinates itself in nihilism and countless graphic depictions of violence and death is a culture playing with fire.”
On the day of, one of the videos available on the front page of the NY Times were from helmet cams of accidents of various activities.
…bikes, skateboards, etc.
I’m guessing, as I did not partake.
116. Howard said…
“Fun question: how does a man receiving unemployment benefits acquire $20,000 worth of military-grade armor and weapons, in a span of 60 days?”
—
Prior to going on unemployment, he was diligently working his way through college, like Michelle and BHO.
115 @Subotai
A few random thoughts based on your intriguing post.
I’ve heard two conflicting stories about how he assaulted the theater from the emergency exit. First said that someone (not Holmes) answered a cell phone call, then stepped out the exit to take the call, leaving Holmes (waiting outside) a chance to prop it open. Second said that Holmes purchased a ticket, sat near the front, right exit, then at the appropriate time egressed through it and propped it open so he could retrieve his arsenal/armor. If the first story is true, it virtually guarantees an accomplish. People rarely use that door, and I’ve never seen someone step out one to take a phone call. He would have to just sit there by the exit and get lucky, which seems impossible given his displayed level of planning. It would be very nice to get this detail correctly documented.
I had no idea he had only moved in to his apartment two weeks earlier. That puts another layer of intrigue on this. I’m a total layman when it comes to explosives, but I also thought it curious that an amateur (albeit a smart one) could build a complex incendiary trap like that. It obviously implies professional training, since amateur practice would almost certainly have lead to death or dismemberment at some point. If you want to get real conspiratorial, since he only moved in two weeks ago, maybe most of the trap was already pre-installed by his local Welcome Wagon.
And one more thing about the apartment trap. Why did he suddenly have concern for police safety once he was apprehended and decide to notify them of the trap? He relished mowing down all those unarmed civilians in the theater; you would think he’d get some jollies out of blowing up a pack of cops as well.
Regarding the connections to leftist terrorism, I’d be curious to hear what you think some comps are
Let us also not forget that his mother knew it was him who did it immediately when contacted (by media/police?). What an odd reaction. Even if mom knew the guy had been going Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs recently, most parents first reaction to a situation like this is total denial.
I also notice at this late hour, the Aurora PD is now walking back this 2nd person of interest story almost completely.
http://i.imgur.com/SHw8R.png
Hmmmmmmmmm
116 @Howard
I have a hard time believing in convenient coincidences, especially when feral govt is involved.
RE nihilism comments @104,108 (and 105)
Interesting thematic development(s), but I’m not convinced. My take is different.
First, the comic book genre is not my favorite suite of movies. Each series has a select few elements that add interest (as well as box office gross.) Robert Downey Jr screen-projected as himself, which was more than adequate, and Gwyneth Paltrow actually revealed a likeable facet of her (alleged) personality. The Transformers were fun to watch, in a loveable giant sort of way. Etc. (And they were reasonable movies for kids of a certain age, to address another theme raised upthread.)
But second, and to the point, “descent into nihilism” is a reach too far. The Middle Class has been “hit by a truck” (Carville). The mood is foul, a couple of shades beyond Carter’s malaise.
The Grunge Rock movement (out of the uber-liberal NW) spanned the decade of mid 1980′s to mid 1990′s (after the Sex Pistols – remember them? – in the 1970′s and dance-pop disco of the 1980′s.) The Batman movies were released 1989, 1992, 1995, 1997, (Clooney flop) 2005, and 2012.
Music has moved on – into synthpop and electropop. The nihilism argument doesn’t follow in that cultural venue.
Cinema – especially “big box” cinema – is different. The “indies” (independent movie houses) will continue to become more competitive but right now there is still “big money” to be made in blockbusters – if you get the formula right. And that’s what the old Hollywood guard is doing – they analyze what worked and magnify it. That is not artistic creativity. Nor is it necessarily a cultural looking glass. It’s a business decision. James Cameron did the same thing with Avatar – marginal results. Kevin Costner did it with Water World – the box office was not impressed.
Third, regarding the feedback loops between culture and individuals, I dated a guy over thirty years ago who told me a story. He used to laugh at The Three Stooges as a kid. His mother became worried about adverse influence and asked him about it. My friend said something to the effect that he would never resort to violence trying to imitate a fictional character, because the character was not real. The character was fake, imaginary, abstract, for entertainment purposes only. Iow, my friend, by virtue of genes and/or upbringing, was demonstrating a capability for maintaining a well defined distinction between reality and imagination. In my experience, most people are like my friend (although virtual reality technology s opening up other worlds – literally – but one thing at a time.)
(The Colorado shooter was not – apparently, although I can’t imagine what new information would emerge to mitigate the motive, aside from the possibility of a larger operation which so far is nothing more than speculation. Those of you who like to dig deep into these kinds of episodes, think back to Hinckley. How many really understand the Jodie Foster motive? I don’t. I have to take it at face value.)
Before we descend into nihilistic despair: one, these things happen; two, not to all of us, most of whom are living and struggling in the real world; and three, the bankers got us into a financial pickle that’s going to be very (existentially) miserable for the middle class. That’s not nihilism contaminating the middle class. That’s naked hubris driving a banking elite. Take away a large chunk of money from a target group, let me rephrase – steal, as in fraud – and I guarantee you’re going to see a lot of behavior that *looks* like nihilism. It’s not. It’s rage, which is very different.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The appropriate Batman villain for a neuroscientist would have been The Scarecrow.
This has a lot of similarities to the Anders Brevick killings. I heard on a radio account that the neighbor reported that the loud music in the apartment came on at midnight. (Stereo on a timer?)
Neighbor went to complain and thought better of it. She called the police, but not until after the shooting began, which was 15 or 20 minutes after midnight. If she had called the police sooner, the police would have, conceivably set off the bomb at about the same time as the shooting began.
Remember, Brevick set off a bomb at a government building before driving to the boat dock to go to the island where the shootings took place.
Copycat? Inspiration? Coincidence? Damfino. / erc
Hey, Brian Ross! Possible second person of interest! Still a chance for that Tea Party meme to work out. Then you can be both correct and clairvoyant.
117. Doug
That’s because the NYT loves “Jackasses.”
120. MusicLover
Terrific post.
I presume he financed most of this with credit cards, and now has a humongous bill he will not be paying.
And really, who says he mastered explosives? All we know for sure is he mastered hair dye, and maybe strung up some apparently easily visible wires in his apartment.
And shot a crowd of unarmed people. Not much mastery in that.
#119 Dworkin Barimen
Noting first that since 0-dark-30 this morning there are denials that the “second person of interest” is being sought; a response to your questions.
Keeping in mind that there are strong indications from prior to the attack, if not probative evidence, that Holmes could not have done this alone that are NOT negated by the denials; I also heard two versions in on air statements from purported eyewitnesses. Noting that eyewitnesses are not that accurate as individuals, and investigations start by functionally averaging accounts.
Version one is that Holmes, in costume, got the “phone call”, left by the exit door propping it so it would not latch, and returned armed. Version two is that he left at some point via the exit, apparently armed up, and a second party “got a cell phone call”, went to the door and held it open waving someone in. I have not heard anyone directly address the further actions of the purported second party; and he may have left via the same door as Holmes entered.
There is a fairly large number of witnesses who saw Holmes enter the theater from the front with a ticket. He was not carrying the weaponry used. If the weaponry was not concealed in the theater [not likely, too easy to be found by the wrong person in the crowd], then one variant of the emergency exit door story would seem at this point to be most likely to have occurred. As you said, one version of that depends on luck and is not consistent with other planning. Possible, but not likely.
Without going into explicit detail about terrorist templates, let me give part of one of my segments of the discussion.
I grew up in Aurora, and still know the area. Given the uncivilized nature of the area, I was betting gang violence until I heard the details that got out. This was not gangbanger MO in any way.
Inserted into this BC posting: Since this was written we have learned much more of his background. Honor graduate in a difficult field, he would expect in normal economic times to have success. These are not normal times. All college graduates are facing a horrendous unemployment rate, even those who have excelled in STEM fields. When he graduated college, the only job he could find was part time at a McDonalds. He was on unemployment in Colorado.
He apparently [from the pictures of the family neighborhood in the background during the few statements out of California] came from fairly comfortable circumstances, which would contrast with his personal ones. There is an air of thwarted entitlement about. Sounds like an ideal recruit for #Occupy or similar groups.
I find it noteworthy and interesting that we know almost nothing about Holmes’ family. The MSM is “respecting their privacy”. Past performance is the best explanation for current and future behavior. Can anyone name any case in recent memory where such respect was shown to anyone who was politically unaligned or Conservative? Can anyone name any case in recent memory where anyone on the Left was not reflexively lied for or protected by the MSM?
>
Just some thoughts to throw into the mix.
Subotai Bahadur
Previous post: Michelle Taking on Major New Campaign Role
.
Obama Headed to Site of Colorado Shootings
President Obama will depart for Aurora, Colorado Sunday to meet with families of the shooting victims and talk to local officials.
Obama will leave the White House a 2:15 pm ET and arrive in Colorado at 3:40 pm MT, spending two hours and twenty five minutes on the ground before leaving for San Francisco, where he had been scheduled to arrive Monday.
The Aurora appearance will offer Obama a chance to present himself as a healing unifier, even as he has waged a slash and burn campaign that has featured unsubstantiated charges against Mitt Romney, elements of class warfare, and suggestions by Vice President Joe Biden and other surrogates that Republicans are practicing racism.
On Monday, Obama will begin a previously scheduled West Coast campaign swing that will take him to Reno, Oakland, Seattle, New Orleans and Portland, Oregon before he returns to the White House Wednesday.
—
Cleaning and upkeep on the Oval Office must be minimal, so that’s something to be thankful about.
Doug…
The only item getting any use is the prayer rug — oriented towards Brussels, natch.
MusicLover @ 120 -
I’m glad to hear that your sane & well-adjusted friend was not driven to violent outbursts by watching the 3 Stooges as a kid. I don’t really know what this proves re: the influence of movie violence except that sane & well-adjusted people with involved parents are not driven to violent outbursts by repeated watchings of head-bopping & eye-poking.
But can we admit that there is a world of difference between The Three Stooges and, say, Inglorious Basterds? Between Psycho and Hostel? The technological advances in cinema & TV production have grown by such leaps & bounds that we are really talking apples & oranges in terms of explicitness & (mimicking) realistic portrayals of violence. 3 Stooges and Looney Tunes and even war movies from the 1960s and 1970s are ancient history. If you can find a mother today willing to let her sane & well-adjusted 10-year-old watch the “Saw” series (over and over), please report back to me whether that 10Y.O. is able to give the same answer as your friend did: that the movie did not influence him because it and the characters are “fake, imaginary, and for entertainment purposes only.”
But second, and to the point, “descent into nihilism” is a reach too far. The Middle Class has been “hit by a truck” (Carville). The mood is foul, a couple of shades beyond Carter’s malaise.
So you see no trend-line whatsoever?
I do. A lot of things that were fringe a generation or two ago are acceptable (bought & consumed by) the mainstream now. Some of what Hollywood is pumping out is rejected by The Middle Class, yeah, but plenty of it is still consumed, and eagerly so. And more than a fair share of what gets consumed by Nice Middle Class Folks and Their Nice Children and Youth would have been considered appalling and unacceptable not too long ago.
My assertion was not that we are living in Gotham City but that we have, as a culture, blown past a lot of significant warning signs. One of which is, beware the seductive power of evil.
Do you consider Mad Men to be a nihilistic show? If not, then you & I really are seeing two very different shows, which might be an indication that your “glasses” are not my “glasses.”
Here’s the conversation that was, for me, the key to Don Draper’s character. It occurs in the pilot:
Rachel: For a lot of people, love isn’t just a slogan.
Don: Oh, “love.” You mean the big lightning bolt to the heart, where you can’t eat, can’t work, so you run off and get married and make babies.
(He looks at Rachel and smiles. She doesn’t smile back.)
Don: The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call “love” was invented by guys like me to sell nylons.
Rachel: Is that right?
Don: I’m pretty sure about it. You’re born alone, you die alone, and this world just drops a bunch of rules on you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. (finishing drink) I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.
So, yeah …. he’s pretty much a nihilistic hedonist. Or a hedonistic nihilist. And for all its chippy wit the show itself has a very bleak view of its own characters. The only one in Season 1 who demonstrates actual scruples is Rachel (belatedly, and after bad behavior, but she does demonstrate them eventually).
One doesn’t get much more “Middle Class” in American entertainment than American television. Here’s an abbreviated list of Emmy dramas since the 1960s (winners listed first):
1960
Playhouse 90, Ford Startime, The Untouchables
1961
Hallmark Hall of Fame: Macbeth, Naked City, The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables
1970
Marcus Welby, M.D., The Forsyte Saga, Ironside, The Mod Squad, The Name of the Game, NET Playhouse
1971
The Bold Ones: The Senator, The First Churchills, Ironside, Marcus Welby, NET Playhouse
1980
Lou Grant, Dallas, Family, The Rockford Files, The White Shadow
1981
Hill Street Blues, Dallas, Lou Grant, Quincy, The White Shadow
1990
LA Law, China Beach, Quantum Leap, thirtysomething, Twin Peaks
1991
LA Law, China Beach, Northern Exposure, Quantum Leap, thirtysomething
2000
The West Wing, ER, Law & Order, The Practice, The Sopranos
2001
The West Wing, ER, Law & Order, The Practice, The Sopranos
2010
Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Good Wife, Lost, True Blood
2011
Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Friday Night Lights, Game of Thrones, The Good Wife
***********
No trend-line whatsoever?
No sense of the content getting darker? More explicitly violent? More obsessed with main characters who are immoral and/or brutes?
No increase in vulgarity? No decrease in depictions of traditional religion?
Yeah, yeah, that’s it. 1960′s “Untouchables” is *exactly* like today’s “Boardwalk Empire.” Same worldviews. Same treatment of good and evil.
126. Doug
This will be a perfect time to feign outrage, shed a tear, and radically change his message on gun control – something we all know that his tongue is raw from constantly biting to keep himself quiet until the appropriate “time.”
Watching FOX News Sunday panel at 6 PM EST, Bill Kristol indicated he was “squishy” about semi-automatic weapons seeing that they were not that important to Americans and thought them being outlawed wouldn’t much matter.
I immediately got a flashback of why I dropped Bill Kristol’s rag, while I was spitting my milk across the table.
I dropped the Weekly Standard in 2005 because I could feel a generic “squishiness” about almost everything conservative that the magazine originally stood for; especially even (and amazingly) about his “squishiness” with respect to Israel.
Seeing that he is Jewish, I began to understand he may be much the same as are most liberal Jews living in America. That astonished me, so Good-by, Weakly Standard.
stoicheion (35),
That’s crazy. First of all, at the time of Luby’s Texas did not have concealed carry; most responsible people probably did exactly what Suzanna Hupp did, and left their handguns in their cars. (If you don’t know who Hupp is and her subsequent history, you have no business opining on Luby’s or on Texas firearm law.)
Then, the “carry is worthless: pull it out and get shot next” is also silly: the shooter can’t look at everyone all the time. We have numerous instances of concealed carriers beneficially intervening, most recently the customer at the Florida internet cafe.
RWE (51),
Sorry, you’ve got your details and chronology a bit wrong. Luby’s happened before Texas got shall-issue concealed carry; the “young lady” you refer to was instrumental in making that happen.