Colorado movie theatre shooting

Note: Posts about the recent shooting have been merged here from the Batman and BBS threads.
------

okay, I just heared that there was shooting at the Batman premiere in Colorado. I mean what the fuck! I have no words!

Dont get it.... whats the point?

dunno, but he killed alot of people. oh, fuck. fuck. I just feel sorry for the ones involved. I can't understand the dude who did it.

what a terrible thing to do, in a place of innocent enjoyment. Gun laws must be changed surely after this?
got no words.

Anyone hear about the Dark Knight Rises shooting in Colorado? Terrible business really.

At a midnight showing of the Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, a man entered the theatre reported to be wearing black body protection. The man released a canister of tear gas and proceeded to open fire on the crowd. 12 have been reported dead at this time and at least 50 wounded. Younger victims being treated at hospitals include a 6-year old child and a 4 month old baby.

The suspect has been identified as James Holmes, a graduate from the University of San Diego, and no motive has been found yet.

Here is a link to the more complete story
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/20/12850048-mass-chaos-as-12-shot-dead-at-dark-knight-rises-screening-in-aurora-colorado?lite

Beggars belief how people get themselves into such a frame of mind where hurting, maiming and killing people you don't even know seems to solve anything.

The BBC report on the shootings includes a summary of Colarado gun law- maybe if you didnt have insane laws like these this sort of thing might not happen quite so often.


'Residents allowed to keep guns in homes, offices and vehicles, but can only carry them in public with a permit
There are no limits to how many guns can be bought a month, and the state permits sale of automatic weapons
No waiting period for buying a handgun, both state and federal state law requires criminal background checks
Since 1998 Columbine massacre, 20 miles from scene of Friday's shooting, it has become easier to buy guns in US - a national ban on assault weapons sale expired in 2004'- BBC

I heard about the shooting news this morning before leaving for the theatre and it left me rather rattled. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.

Will post my thoughts on the movie later.

Lorient Avandi wrote:Anyone hear about the Dark Knight Rises shooting in Colorado? Terrible business really.

At a midnight showing of the Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, a man entered the theatre reported to be wearing black body protection. The man released a canister of tear gas and proceeded to open fire on the crowd. 12 have been reported dead at this time and at least 50 wounded. Younger victims being treated at hospitals include a 6-year old child and a 4 month old baby.

The suspect has been identified as James Holmes, a graduate from the University of San Diego, and no motive has been found yet.

Here is a link to the more complete story
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/20/12850048-mass-chaos-as-12-shot-dead-at-dark-knight-rises-screening-in-aurora-colorado?lite

There are no words to express my grief for the loss of these precious one. Why?

Horrible indeed. I have some thoughts, some sad suspicions, but I'll keep them to myself until more is known.

I'll say this though. Revised gun laws would be only a small part of the answer. Sad, sick people can do equally horrible things with fire and bombs when guns aren't available. Always have.

Without a cure for the sickness, the evil will sadly find other ways to express itself.

I agree David, but freely available guns- and you cant convice me you need a machine gun for self defence- it just means when someone does go off on one and want to do this sort of thing its ridiculously easy to get enough arms to do this sort of damage with ease.
If they have to make their bombs, make their own stuff, that takes more planning, more time. If you can jut snap and grab a gun, sadly this is the outcome.
This sort of thing, in high schools, offices, now cinemas seems to happen remarkably often in the US. Can it be a coincidence the US is probably has one of the biggest civilian armed populations too?
How many shootings are their a day in the US?

I just did a quick check. It's about 80 shootings a day for the whole US, which works out to something like 1 in 4 million. This includes accidental shootings, suicides, police shootings. I couldn't find numbers for the UK for comparison, but that's about 1.3 times the number of shootings per capita for London. I bet if you took out the suicides they'd be even closer, just because Londoners probably choose other methods.

A sad topic though. I'm not really wanting to research it further right now.

I heard that the guy gassed the theater and shot anyone who tried to escape, and he was dressed up as one of the characters (most likely Bane). It's scary how influenced some people can get by violence in films and such.

The guy dyed his hair red and called himself "The Joker" but it doesn't appear that he was dressed as a character in particular (the Joker in the films/comics has green hair). I seriously doubt that this occurred because of any particular movie. It sounds more like a disturbed individual who seized on an opportunity to attack many people at once.

Would anyone object to splitting discussion of the attack into its own thread in the Big Bad Serious Forum and leaving discussion of Batman in this thread?

good idea Eldo.

Discussion of the shooting has been merged from the Batman thread and the Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread.

you know, this is serious and all and I do respect that, but I'm just curious. what did a four month old baby do on a batman premiere?

Norc wrote:you know, this is serious and all and I do respect that, but I'm just curious. what did a four month old baby do on a batman premiere?

The baby was almost certainly at the premiere because the parents didn't feel safe leaving their child with a babysitter Horrible, twisted irony.

The shooter's name was James Holmes, he was going for a Ph.D in neuroscience at University of Colorado- Denver, and dropped out a month ago. He came from a very nice family and apparently was very shy. The police have yet to enter his appartment do to booby traps.
I don't understand this guy. From a psychological stand point, he doesn't seem like a schizophrenic and there's no reason to believe he's had any psychological problems in the past. He played soccer and ran cross country in highschool and never had a criminal record That's why I'm skeptical about how much influence the Batman movies must have had on him. From what I can see, he seemed to idolize the Joker's desire to "watch the world burn," or cause havoc just to mess with people. He's a smart guy, and I think the reason he shot people during Batman was because the whole episode itself could have come straight out of one of Christopher Nolan's films. He didn't seem to have a motive, which makes me think he did it to frigthen the nation. No one knows if he's alone, if this will happen elsewhere, ect. It's fantastically horrible, and it makes me sick. He killed young people, completely innocent people for some personal delusional agenda of his.

I question the notion that the motivation for this attack came from the Batman films, particularly because out of everyone at the cinema, the killer was the only one not there specifically to watch a Batman movie. There are plenty of far more disturbing "inspirations" for such attacks out there, not least of which includes the media frenzy that surrounds spree-killings whenever they occur. Charlie Brooker had a good piece about people's reactions to tragedies such as this and the negative consequences of that a few years back.

Tinuviel wrote:he was going for a Ph.D in neuroscience at University of Colorado- Denver, and dropped out a month ago.

That's a lot of pressure, especially if he didn't have a fallback plan for his life.

I'm sure the investigators are plowing through every tiny detail of his personal life right now, and we'll learn all about him shortly.

I really feel sympathy for his family as well. Imagine having to try to accept that your promising son is a mass murderer, and at the same time deal with all the police and media pressure as well. I can't think of anything worse a parent could have to endure.

Very interesting video Eldo. I agree, putting murderers in the spotlight is NOT sending the right message. The same goes for suicides. That's why I hate watching CNN, or any news channel for that matter; there's never any good news. It's always about someone getting shot (especially when you live near Chicago like me) or attacked. And they have no discrestion! A friend of mine was attacked on New Years Eve this year in the city, and she was front cover news before I even knew about it. They went into way too much detail about the attack. I won't say what was said, but it was not appropriate (they quoted the attackers). The only good thing was that her identity wasn't used or revealed. I'm sorry, but I don't want to read about or see murders when I'm getting my news. It doesn't need to be front page
But I can't deny that this whole tragedy has peaked my interest. Why are we so drawn to such episodes?

I think a lot of people have a perverse curiosity about such sensational events. I'll admit to sometimes being curious about events like this myself. The more I think about it, however, the more I feel like it's better to avoid even possibly glamorizing the perpetrator by showering attention on them, no matter how negative that attention is. Let the police do their job and offer support to the victims if you can, but otherwise try to just keep moving forward, I guess.

As a Moderator, I'm half tempted to remove this Thread completely. Why give nutcases the Fame they so deeply desire? (No, I haven't read any of the posts here. I respect you guys - but no thanks).

I think when something like this happens there is nothing inherently wrong with esentially gawping. Which is what we, the news and the whole planet is doing.
But there probably is a reason for that- there is something intresting about humans when we go horribly wrong. Its hardly suprising thats of interest- it could happen to one of us if we don't understand why it happens at all.
Orwell if we all took your attitude we would have learnt nothing about the mental health, the social pressures, or possibly even gentic ones, which can lead to a tragedy like this.
There is a difference between understanding and just fillling tv space I appreciate, and there is way too much of the latter in a 24-hour news culture, but I think Orwell to dismiss any discussion of it out of hand on some trumped up moral high ground is a bit rich.