The U.S. Gun Show

[Sirharles]

Not that this has to do with the movie other than it was at it's midnight screening...but Jesus!..

http://www.wtop.com/209/2952932/12-dead-dozens-hurt-in-theater-shooting

[RottingCorpse]

What a fucking asshole.

Split this out into it's own thread although I wonder if anybody is going to be able to talk about TDKR without mentioning it at this point.

Anyway, the latest below. I like how the suspected shooter's own mom is like, "Uh yeah, he's your guy."

Aurora 'Dark Knight' Shooting Suspect Identified: James Holmes

 The young man who is in custody after allegedly gunning down 12 people in a mass shooting spree overnight in Aurora, Colorado has been identified as local resident James Holmes, according to federal authorities.

Law enforcement officials and witnesses told ABC News Holmes, 24, wore what appeared to be a bullet-proof vest and riot-type mask as he opened fire in a movie theater with three weapons at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises." In addition to the 12 deaths, at least 50 people were injured, according to police.

A San Diego woman who identified herself as James Holmes' mother told ABC News she had awoken unaware of the shooting and had not yet been contacted by authorities. She immediately expressed concern that her son may have been involved.

"You have the right person," she said, apparently speaking on gut instinct. "I need to call the police... I need to fly out to Colorado."

Local news reports showed aerial video of police cautiously searching Holmes' apartment, some five miles from the Century Aurora 16 theater, as the suspect reportedly told police he had explosives inside.

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Witnesses said that the man appeared at the front of the theater about 20 minutes into the movie with a rifle, handgun and gas mask. He then threw a canister that released some kind of gas, after which a hissing sound ensued, and he then opened fire on the crowd packed into the early-morning screening of the film.

"We were maybe 20 or 30 minutes into the movie and all you hear, first you smell smoke, everybody thought it was fireworks or something like that, and then you just see people dropping and the gunshots are constant," witness Christ Jones told ABC's Denver affiliate KMGH. "I heard at least 20 to 30 rounds within that minute or two."

A man who talked to a couple who was inside the theater told ABC News, "They got up and they started to run through the emergency exit, and that when she turned around, she said all she saw was the guy slowly making his way up the stairs and just firing at people, just picking random people."

"The gunshot continued to go on and on and then after we didn't hear anything," the couple told the man. "We finally got up and there was people bleeding, there was people obviously may have been actually dead or anything, and we just ran up out of there, there was chaos everywhere."

The FBI said approximately 100 of its agents are on the scene assisting with the ongoing investigation.

[nacho]

The real question is: Who brings a bunch of children and infants to a midnight showing of Dark Knight Rises?

[RottingCorpse]

I thought the same thing.

[nacho]

Well...this is a good object lesson, then.

[RottingCorpse]

I also wonder what the fuck is in the water in Colorado that makes dumb kids go on shooting rampages.

[nacho]

They're bored. They're dissatisfied. They are slowly realizing that they have been lied to. They lack leadership and discipline. This is the reaction to all that if you happen to be aware in even the slightest way but lack the intellect to carve a niche for yourself.

[RottingCorpse]

I'm not sure I buy that. It almost makes this guy sound high-minded but misguided. I think it's more ego than anything else. Every time you hear about anything like this, Columbine, the VA Tech shooter, and I'm sure this fucknut, it comes around to some kind of stupid, "I'll get them!" mentality.

If the Feds find some manifesto about cultural decay and how it's infecting our minds with crazy ideas and he was "lancing the boil of our cultural insanity by turning fictional chaos into real chaos" then I might recant what I'm saying here.

But I bet you $100 bucks it's some some of stupid "revenge" delusion mixed with mental illness.

[nacho]

Not high-minded at all. A great and terrible problem in our society that's only going to get worse. Just because I say "aware" doesn't give him any sort of value or power or reason. In the same breath, I call him an idiot. But this is the problem. We feed these people. We put guns in their hands. We tolerate them. Until they finally do this. Then we wonder why they did what they did.

[RottingCorpse]

The gun thing has always been a problem and always will be, at least in the U.S. Your implication about how we deal with the mentally ill is the bigger problem I think. Organizations who are supposed to help lead the charge on this (APA *cough*) seem to be as dysfunctional (if not more so) than the people they're supposed to be helping.

This weekend, I'm working a video gig for the World AIDS Conference. (Don't worry this is related.) We had a meeting yesterday about what the production crew is trying to capture and the lead producer went into a lot of detail about what HIV/AIDS activists are facing thirty years later. He made an interesting comment that applies here. I'm paraphrasing, but the idea was that in the U.S. we stigmatize people with disease, any disease. AIDS gets it worse than some others. So does mental illness. Rather than recognize a problem or worse yet, have to admit that someone might be dangerous to themselves or others, we'd rather brush it under the table and act like it doesn't exist than be faced with a harsh reality.

And this will follow the same pattern as VA Tech with all the same questions. "How did he get weapons?" "Why wasn't he locked up when people realized he was dangerous?" We'll throw blame on all the wrong parts of the system and everyone will say, "Yeah, it was obvious he was fucked up, but we just didn't want to deal with it." Endless cycle. Nothing wrong here. Everything's fine. Just ignore the crazy guy with the gas mask and guns who probably has no *real* idea why he did it.

Fuck it. I'm sleep-deprived.

[nacho]

This is wild... One of the people killed narrowly escaped a shooting a month or so ago. Here's her blog about that shooting:http://jessicaredfield.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/late-night-thoughts-on-the-eaton-center-shooting/ 

And today: http://denver.sbnation.com/denver-cutthroats/2012/7/20/3171913/jessica-redfield-gawhi-jay-meloff

[nacho]

In response to the above: I blame myself, and everyone else. I think we're directly responsible for not taking action because we behave and react the way you describe.

But, then, that's also what the more intellectual Nazis thought.

[nacho]

The chilling "Twitter Timeline"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/aurora-shooting-twitter-batman_n_1688821.html?1342788992&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008

[RottingCorpse]

Now I *really* want to read his manifesto. Italics mine.

FBI, police say suspect’s apartment ‘booby trapped’

Aurora police and FBI officials told 9News Friday morning that the suspect in Thursday's movie theater mass shooting has "booby-trapped" his apartment with a sophisticated set up of flammable devices that could take authorities days to disarm.

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"It's pretty sophisticated the way it's booby trapped," Aurora's police chief Dan Oates told 9News. "We could be here for hours, we could be here for days."

Five buildings around the apartment of suspect James Holmes, 24, have been evacuated while authorities try to enter. The fire department is standing by. Holmes was a Phd student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Denver, according to university spokesman Dan Meyers. He was in the process of withdrawing from the school, he said, and attended class at the medical school campus. The AP reports that Holmes had an assault rifle, shotgun, and two pistols.

[nacho]

And now they say the roof of the apartment building is lined with C4, Die Hard style.

Meanwhile, I'm having an excellent "taking Nacho Sasha too seriously" moment on FB...

http://www.facebook.com/nachosasha/posts/4351103946672?notif_t=feed_comment

At first, I was in this weird half-world of defending/continuing the joke... But then I just realized that some people really are retarded. There's this little part of me that constantly whispers: These people are arguing with an alter ego you cooked up in high school whose only claim to fame is writing a puerile parody of the Bible...