This kind of shit, along with the dirtiness and high ticket prices is why I no longer go to theaters. In Colorado, 12 people were shot and killed and another 58 injured while watching Batman by a heavily armed psycho dressed in body armor. He blocked the exit and used gas grenades to cause confusion while shooting people with an AR-15 assault rifle. The psycho was a former neuroscience doctoral student who became obsessed with Batman, and had apparently died his hair red and started calling himself "The Joker." He also rigged his apartment with explosives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/20/us/colorado-theater-scene/index.html
I read that one of the young women who died survived a similar event in Toronto a few weeks ago. Poor cow didn't have any luck.
European style gun laws would be great if we had implemented them decades ago. The problem is that it's really too late for them to do any good. Guns are now everywhere, and even if you outlawed them, people would have no issues getting a hold of them. We're pretty much fucked. You can't even make a compelling argument that private gun owners could have stopped this guy as he was wearing head to toe body armor. He even had Kevlar protecting his neck and legs and a Kevlar helmet. You could unload an entire pistol magazine into a guy like that and he would have been fine. Nothing short of an assault rifle loaded with FMJ rounds could have stopped him, or maybe something like an FN Five-seveN with the illegal SS190 AP rounds; in other words, military hardware no civilian would be carrying.
Yeah this has been pointed out to me before and it's a very good point. Can't argue with it. I guess America shot itself in the foot with that shortsighted law eh? Too tsunami?
It's in our constitution from 200+ years ago. The right to have weapons is as fundamental as the right to life and the right to free speech here. Guns are such an integral part of American culture, I don't think you could ever take them away. Our revolution was actually started by private gun owners who turned on the British. Since we're fucked anyway, maybe we should legalize the armor piercing rounds for the FN 57 and H&K UCP? Psychos are apparently now wearing body armor.
Police apparently had to blow up his apartment in a controlled detonation because they couldn't figure out how to diffuse the bombs. The sick fuck.
For this particular situation, the guy appears to have bought the weapons legally and all within a few months of carrying out the attack. You could make a good argument that he wouldn't have had the AR-15 and specialized ammo clip for it if they were banned. He was just buying what he could get from stores legally. That's the type of situation where bans would have some effect in terms of limiting firepower.
This guy would have gone on a killing spree regardless of the gun laws. He was the typical psychotic loner type with no connection to society. Tighter guns law might have reduced the number of people he killed, but I'm still convinced he would have gone on a rampage and killed someone. The real solution to the psycho problem is getting them help from the mental health community before they snap and kill someone. Apparently this guy's own parents said they weren't surprised this happened. Why the fuck didn't they get him some help?
Yes, gun laws aren't going to have an effect on individual sanity, but saving some lives or lowering the potential for carnage is still a positive outcome.
True. After these things happen, it always seems like we hear from everyone who knew the shooter how creepy and weird and scary they were. Which really begs the question, why don't people do something beforehand in these situations? If this guy had been involuntarily committed, he never could have legally bought the guns, and he would have been under close psychiatric supervision. Is there really still so much of a stigma against mental health that people would rather allow a massacre to happen than admit that someone they know needs help?
I can imagine monkey running around tagging people on the forehead with a huge [POTENTIAL CRAZY] rubber stamp.
so i hear those classy Westboro Baptist Church people are going to do their thing tomorrow at the aurora victims' memorial.
Why couldn't "the joker" have done his thing at the Westboro Baptist Church instead of a crowded movie theater full of innocent people?