Colorado Movie Theater Shooting

[Ddrak]

I find stories of untimely death extremely distressing. Everything that person could have been erased... that's about the biggest tragedy there could ever be.

I also agree that there is a morbid fascination of death in all forms in most people. Maybe it's a reflection of our own mortality and how we deal with it?

Dd

[Garrdor]

lol @ primal male aggression

[Partha]

I'm with the Sun Times columnist - it's tempting to say none of this matters.

Gun control? Nah guh happen, even despite this. Same with ease of buying military style body armor to make shooters more lethal since they don't have to worry about being taken out easily. There were no obvious flags, nothing to trip any police to what was gonna happen. There's nothing you can realistically do to stop something like this in any public place, and the best you can do is remember to watch your surroundings. And it will happen again, and it will be the worst thing ever until the next time.

[Alluveal]

I'm with you Partha, though I do wonder why we need to sell guns that can dish out 50 rounds a minute to average Joes in America. WTF do people use those guns for if not to kill other people? Even so, this guy was so full of crazy that even if he was denied the right to buy weapons, he would have found a way to get them. Of that I'm certain.

Right now, there just seems to be a lot of saber rattling and barking about gun control. It does nothing. The gun control thing is as useful as the war on drugs. Folks need to think outside the box here. Even if we could profile this guy and implement checkpoints and background checks that WOULD HAVE stopped him, the next guy will come along with a completely different makeup, one that we can't predict or prepare for.

Our governor is getting a lot of shit now for basically saying what you did, Partha (he's a hardcore democrat, btw). He's being smart, imho, and not buying into the BS flying around right now.

[Minute]

Always so torn on the gun control issue. I personally hate them. In my perfect world they wouldn't exist at all, but knowing the world to be what it is & the desire to put personal liberty over personal opinion, I have to come down on the side of pro gun. It's such a complicated issue that I can't really fault anyone for the side they come down on this. There certainly seems to be a lot of pros & cons on both sides.

[Ddrak]

Even so, this guy was so full of crazy that even if he was denied the right to buy weapons, he would have found a way to get them. Of that I'm certain.

That's simply not true. Over here if someone tried to obtain an assault weapon they'd run a very high risk of being arrested unless they were already very familiar with the underground weapons scene and knew the right contacts (ie organised crime). The chance of a lone whacko successfully getting together a significant arsenal without raising red flags all over the place is way, way lower.

Same with Partha's statement, had there been tighter gun control then the act of purchasing this sort of weapon is an instant and obvious flag to trip police. Is it *always* going to flag? Obviously not, but "most of the time" - sure.

The reason it doesn't change the crime stats is these things are a blip in the ocean. Highly visible but 12 murders in the ocean of 10,000+? Not a factor worth considering. So, if you want to lower homicide rates then look elsewhere first. If you want to lower the number of sensational massacres then gun control is absolutely an answer.

Dd

[Garrdor]

Sometimes domesticated chimpanzees will rip their owners faces off

[Alluveal]

Ddrak, with all due respect, you don't live in this country. Don't mean that in an assish way, but not only does gun access (illegal to be specific) vary from state to state in the U.S. alone, but I don't see how you can compare different countries here.

Colorado is a swing state, meaning we have almost equal number of liberals as we do hardcore republicans. We also have a high militia presence. States like Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Idaho, are pretty thick with these white militia pockets (not to mention so called white gangs with strong militia ties).

If you asked someone in a hardcore liberal east coast state if they could get automatic/semi-automatic guns, the answer would be different. There it might be "near impossible." Here? Not so. I'm not saying this guy had ties to these whack-job groups, but if he was smart enough to booby trap his apartment and to plan this massacre (and execute it), then he's smart enough and ambitious enough to find the people who can get him guns. That's if these types of guns were illegal.

While Colorado might be the most liberal of the states mentioned, there's nobody stopping this guy from going north to Wyoming where I have no doubt he'd be able to find exactly what he was looking for if he could not find it in Colorado. The law enforcement people I work with acknowledge it as a problem. The director of the county gang unit where I live told me that it's not the MI6 gang members or the Bloods/Crips that he worries about, it's the militia and white gang members (even some motorcycle gangs around here have gotten a bit worrisome).

But, I'm with Minute, making the semi-automatic and automatic guns illegal is a start. I still don't think it would have stopped this guy. He would have made bombs, he would have gotten other weapons. He's the Joker, remember? (Or so he told the cops when they arrested him). He might have even gotten that weapon he wanted so badly if he poked around in the right places.

What other "checkpoints" would have stopped him (that wouldn't have completely trashed our privacy)? I'm not nixing the possibility of creating more checkpoints, but how? We're losing liberties and freedoms left and right over here (or so it seems whenever a TSA agent pats down a baby in the airport). I'm not arguing that there can be ways to make it harder for these people, but, I also think it's naive to assume that these will in fact stop these massacres from happening. It won't. Period.

I think we need to look closer at the cause of this type of thing, whether it's something like overmedicating our children, ignoring the mentally ill, or hell, even violent video games and movies. With the wrong person, all of that is a recipe for disaster. Most people are fine with it, but the select few who are not? How do we handle that? When the recipe for each individual crazy person can vary from one to the next? And how do we do it w/o punishing the people who are law-biding citizens?

Conversation needs to occur, studies need to occur, but our government is so fucking divided right now that I wouldn't trust them to take my order at a restaurant, let alone dive into something as complex as this. The republicans have to tow the NRA line. The liberals have to get rid of the guns and control, control, CONTROL! They can't meet in the middle, even after this incident. So, as a nation, we're stuck.

Let's say we ban all automatics and semi-automatics. We'd still have them out there. Militia groups would go apeshit and start stock-piling. The same people who are attracted to these weapons, well, I'd think that quite a few would still find a way to own one. Let's say the next crazy is a chemist and makes homemade pipe bombs and deadly gas utilizing materials found in everyday cleaning solvents like Draino and Windex? Well, let's put an end to Draino (because putting Sudafed behind the counter and requiring you to show your ID to pharmacists has done nothing to stop the meth cookers), windex too. Let's just keep crossing shit off our list until we're left with rubber bands and cock-rings and even then, get yourself a McGuyver type crazy and he might be able to turn those into something deadly.

Again, it's like the war on drugs and while some added controls are sensible, it's a little like a monkey trying to hump a football helmet. Look what the war on drugs has done to places in Mexico, Central and South America. It's fucked shit up. Finding a solution isn't just black-and-white type stuff, it requires some creativity--creativity that I don't believe our political leaders have. And it requires a certain surrender that no matter how many restrictions we put on some things, people who are crazy enough and ambitious enough will find a way to enact their violent fantasies to the detriment of safety and peace of mind.

Anyway, sorry for the long babbling post. I agree with some things you said. With other things, it's not that I disagree, it's that I believe it's too complex to treat with a one-size-fits-all bandaid.

[Alluveal]

Dd, here's an interesting article.

http://gawker.com/5928253/columnist-if- ... e-happened

Just adding to the conversation. Would this type of surveillance have helped? I do wonder, ya know? I wonder what rights/liberties I would in fact give up to stop this from happening.

[Garrdor]

Dd, here's an interesting article.

http://gawker.com/5928253/columnist-if- ... e-happened

Just adding to the conversation. Would this type of surveillance have helped? I do wonder, ya know? I wonder what rights/liberties I would in fact give up to stop this from happening.

You can't fight nature. And yes, I'm saying it's completely natural to kill for no reason. Maybe not for you or me, but I feel we have enough evidence throughout human history. Even if you let the masters add another lock to the shackles, it won't stop a motivated person from acting upon their feelings.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Agree with Garrdor. The solution to all this? Not more laws. The solution is acceptance. We live in a chaotic and dangerous world, where anyone of us could be snuffed out at any time. If not by each other, don't worry, the universe takes care of everyone eventually whether we help it along or not. Take away one danger, minimize another, and it ultimately doesn't matter because it doesn't change the simple fact that humans are fragile, and life is tenuous. We can try to mitigate the impact of that where it makes sense, but those simple facts don't change whatever we do. There is going to be plenty of danger.

If we don't all do each other in, mother nature is going to take care of us all the same. We're toast either way. A volcano doesn't care who it kills anymore than a raving psychopath. And neither can be reasoned with. You won't find a whole lot of sense (at least superficially) in either.

So .. acceptance is the key in my mind. I'm not into prayers or praying, but that Serenity Prayer (?) that addicts recite seems to encapsulate my thoughts on this tragedy. I try to change the things I can change and accept the things I cannot. And hopefully have the wisdom to know the difference. Not a lot of wisdom going on with this tragedy. Just the typical bullshit knee-jerk reactive behavior one would expect. Sorry, but humans (at least currently) are not very good long term thinkers. Long term, I see the hippie values prevailing eventually. More love, acceptance, tolerance and communication are going to advance us as a society. Not writing a bunch of rules down on pieces of paper.

Trying to prevent violence by taking away everyone's capacity for it is not going to work (just like it doesn't work for drugs), and I think most people understand this instinctively. We need long term, proactive thinking. We have to dig deep as a society. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

[Harlowe]

I completely agree Free on all counts. I think people on this board have been more level-headed and practical about this than the general populace.

[Alluveal]

I agree, Harlowe. I do think there is a need to look at this, though, and I think that can only happen when both sides (e.g. pro-guns/anti-guns) actually come together to have a dialogue, not just bark and snarl at one another. But, honestly? There are some crazy motherfucking militia type people around here who would, in no way, shape or form, be open to that conversation. All they want is guns guns guns. On the other side, there are the people who call for a ban on all guns and they are equally as pig-headed.

I think most people are somewhere in the middle, honestly, and that means that you question things like liberty in the face of these massacres, and you ask yourself a lot of uncomfortable questions (some which have no answers).

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I would like to try and make another point without touching upon religion, which I have no desire to debate. I am an engineer. My world is mostly the world of the rational, the objective, the quantifiable and verifiable. I've always had a love of science and technology, and the rational is where I would dwell 100% of the time if I could.

But as good of a tool as the rational mind is, it doesn't account for a large chunk of our daily experience. So, my problem with this tragedy is that people are trying to frame this as a rational problem. In my mind that does not compute. People think there must be a rational solution to everything. For this, in my mind, the rational approach leads us down a path that ultimately is incongruent with our values of freedom and liberty. That path leads us to a fundamental denial of free will. The less liberty we have, the safer we are. We can try our best to create a society with no sharp objects; no risk. Treat every citizen like a child. Everything is padded, and just forget about bacon. A child doesn't know what is safe and what is not, so don't worry, we'll be there to tell everyone what is safe. It's for your own protection and convenience of course. Think of the children. That's where the rational path in all this leads; basically to slavery.

So, any rational approaches sort of just short-circuit and end up being ultimately just control mechanisms. They end up being about something totally different than what we intended. Fore example, the purpose of the drug war is to secure federal funding for government agencies. The purpose of prisons is to give us the illusion of safety and simultaneously punish those that hurt us. Even when it's been shown that punishing people who do us harm just want to make them do us more harm. Don't confuse us with facts. But the rational approach is supposed to based on fact. Oops, change the subject.

My contention is that there is no rational solution, and we're total dumb-fucks for trying. The only meaning I see in this is spiritual; big picture stuff.

Here's a kind of spiritual exercise I like to do.

-- Picture the person you love the most. The most important person in the world to you. Think about how much you care about that person and how awesome that person is. That person loves you unconditionally. That person is your everything. Now, with that warm fuzzy feeling about that person still in your head, try to realize that everyone on earth is that person. It is in this other domain- whatever you want to call it- where the answers to tragedies like this dwell.

[Massterloo]

6 year old at an R rated movie, at midnight. /facepalm
more gun laws....tell me more about how criminals follow the law.

Worst of all? This pigfucker is now a star.
I can only hope the cops screw up, and that guy finds himself with other guys in lockup instead of solitary.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I read somewhere that the inmates are looking to do this guy in.

[Ddrak]

Ddrak, with all due respect, you don't live in this country. Don't mean that in an assish way, but not only does gun access (illegal to be specific) vary from state to state in the U.S. alone, but I don't see how you can compare different countries here.

Lulu, with all due respect, that's pure ad hom and wildly misinformed. I thought everyone on the board knew I spent almost a decade living in the US and I'm making the comparison from (i) living in both countries personally and (ii) crime/massacre stats which show crime is largely independent of gun laws while the number of massacres is strongly correlated with the availability of guns.

So, presuming to lecture me on a nation I called home when I'm using stats to back up my argument is somewhat boorish and silly. I'm more than familiar with the subject matter.

But, I'm with Minute, making the semi-automatic and automatic guns illegal is a start. I still don't think it would have stopped this guy. He would have made bombs, he would have gotten other weapons. He's the Joker, remember? (Or so he told the cops when they arrested him). He might have even gotten that weapon he wanted so badly if he poked around in the right places.

He more likely would have gotten caught, or just sucked into the nutjob militaristic communes that are most definitely a significant danger (as you mentioned). However, my real point what that making policy changes on low-probability incidents is pissing away money - why not work on actual problems instead of sensationalist stuff.

I'm not arguing that there can be ways to make it harder for these people, but, I also think it's naive to assume that these will in fact stop these massacres from happening. It won't. Period.

Of course it won't. You can't stop ANYTHING 100%. However, people (not you) saying that no action should be taken because you can't be sure it would have stopped him are even more wrong. Cute epitaphs like "criminals won't obey the law anyway" are just daft because the fact is criminals still obey almost all laws, and making new ones means they are overwhelmingly likely to follow the new ones - just like the old ones. It DOES make a difference.

Let's say we ban all automatics and semi-automatics. We'd still have them out there. Militia groups would go apeshit and start stock-piling. The same people who are attracted to these weapons, well, I'd think that quite a few would still find a way to own one. Let's say the next crazy is a chemist and makes homemade pipe bombs and deadly gas utilizing materials found in everyday cleaning solvents like Draino and Windex? Well, let's put an end to Draino (because putting Sudafed behind the counter and requiring you to show your ID to pharmacists has done nothing to stop the meth cookers), windex too. Let's just keep crossing shit off our list until we're left with rubber bands and cock-rings and even then, get yourself a McGuyver type crazy and he might be able to turn those into something deadly.

Slippery slope arguments aren't that useful. If we made breaking-and-entering illegal then sooner or later we'll end up with GPS trackers on everyone to make sure that no one does it, right? Like I said before, this is 12 of 10,000 in homicides - why not look at the other 99.9% for something that will make a bigger difference?

Anyway, sorry for the long babbling post. I agree with some things you said. With other things, it's not that I disagree, it's that I believe it's too complex to treat with a one-size-fits-all bandaid.

Of course it is. I'm not even convinced that this is anything worth solving when you do the risk analysis. You'll save orders of magnitude more lives by enacting a sane health care strategy.

Dd

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Any Taxious sightings since this all went down?

[Alluveal]

Lulu, with all due respect, that's pure ad hom and wildly misinformed. I thought everyone on the board knew I spent almost a decade living in the US and I'm making the comparison from (i) living in both countries personally and (ii) crime/massacre stats which show crime is largely independent of gun laws while the number of massacres is strongly correlated with the availability of guns.

So, presuming to lecture me on a nation I called home when I'm using stats to back up my argument is somewhat boorish and silly. I'm more than familiar with the subject matter.

Okay, fair enough, but you said "Well, HERE (in Australia?) X, Y and Z happens if you try to get guns like that." That's what I was referring to. Clarified now. Again, didn't mean to sound like a jerk, so the "boorish and silly" crap is a bit over the top. (spank) Just trying to have a conversation. As I stated, it's difficult to do.

He more likely would have gotten caught, or just sucked into the nutjob militaristic communes that are most definitely a significant danger (as you mentioned). However, my real point what that making policy changes on low-probability incidents is pissing away money - why not work on actual problems instead of sensationalist stuff.

I agree.

Of course it won't. You can't stop ANYTHING 100%. However, people (not you) saying that no action should be taken because you can't be sure it would have stopped him are even more wrong. Cute epitaphs like "criminals won't obey the law anyway" are just daft because the fact is criminals still obey almost all laws, and making new ones means they are overwhelmingly likely to follow the new ones - just like the old ones. It DOES make a difference.

I don't think it makes a big difference with this guy and these types of situations, no. I think people like this will always find a way. Maybe it's that the coverage just makes one feel a bit hopeless, and the more we learn about this guy, the more I keep asking myself "Why?" The only thing that I could possibly see is that it might give the crazy person a few more opportunities to get caught, but this guy seemed pretty intent on staying within his legal rights. I don't know. Maybe my opinion will change a bit once this has died down a bit.

[Massterloo]

Cute epitaphs like "criminals won't obey the law anyway" are just daft because the fact is criminals still obey almost all laws....

Except the ones they end up breaking, or intend to break. *broke.

Now, I agree AK47s, and M16s, and other type of machine gun/automatics should be outlawed. My beef is with the quote. A cute epitaph is "what doesnt kill you only makes you stronger" .....hahahahahha, that was cute. More like leaves physical scars, emotional scars, cripled, then helps kill you. Anyway, just cause some shit doesnt j walk does not mean he wont go the extra mile to rob that store, start that fire, attack that child, kill someone he intends to kill.

Criminals won't obey the law anyway.......They already broke the law.....Criminals.....past tence.