Some 24 year-old with Tennessee roots walked into an Aurora, Colorado movie theater with some guns, a gas mask, a bullet-proof vest, and some smoke (or, maybe, tear gas) canisters, and then opened fire on the audience. It was the midnight premiere showing of the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises.”. From what I’ve seen, the audience was also heavily black. The political finger-pointing has already begun and Chris Cillizza has already told us why no gun reforms will result from this tragedy. Even if he’s right, the timing is extremely insensitive.
At least 12 people have been killed, with many more injured. ABC News has this:
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.”
Much more information will become available throughout the day. I am not going to jump to any conclusions about the shooter’s motivation.
Update [2012-7-20 12:21:1 by BooMan]: New reporting says suspect graduated from San Diego high school.
The knee-jerk judgments only serve to make people look foolish. Let’s hope that if we’ve learned anything, it’s not to make rash conclusions based on speculation and rumors. The story will eventually come out and there will be plenty of time for people to gore their oxen of choice.
I haven’t heard much, but since the shooter isn’t Muslim, ABC actually was speculating he had Tea Party ties(according to the Twitter machine). Since I can’t stand to watch the stupid coming from any of the “news” channels, I spent most of the morning watching the British Open or F1 practice(and saw Michael Schumacher of all people wreck his car).
hate politics, and tune out people who are involved:
because those involved seem more interested in proving they are right.
We don’t know why this happened.
He apparently booby-trapped his apartment according to this report:
http://www.wkyt.com/wymt/home/headlines/Police-Suspect-home–163179126.html
This guy had been planning this for a while.
The timing might be insensitive but, sadly, gun control only seems to get any real attention at times like these.
yeah, well it’s not like a normal person’s response to this it to immediately write a column saying the American people won’t give a shit.
The comments at that site you mentioned say that if the people in the theater had been armed this the shooter would have been killed before he shot so many people.
The description of the event is that he through a smoke or tear gas canister into the crowd before shooting. I can’t imagine how the death toll would have been less if a bunch of armed people at a theater in the dark and in a smoke filled enclosed environment pulled out more weapons and began shooting.
And they call liberals retarded = their word at that website, not mine.
As I said at No More Mister Nice Blog:
Further to the “if only…” crowd, there’s this, from the CNN story:
“Oates said the man was wearing a ballistic helmet and protective gear for his legs, throat and groin, black gloves and a gas mask.”
No mention of a ballistic vest, but I’d be surprised if that weren’t present also. In either case, just how good a shot would a would-be savior have to be, in the darkness and gas cloud amid screaming panicked people, to get in a stopping round that took out the gunman without hurting anyone else? Don’t forget, this whole thing went down in only a handful of minutes.
Definitely part of the recent rightwing talking points ememo — Chicago = Rahm = Obama. Next week they’ll add Oakland that’s also experiencing an increased crime and murder rate to their rants.
If all you’re buying there is a newspaper, would keep going there. If not to add a little sanity to the guy’s head, then just to bug him.
Well, I had been chipping away at the climate change denial, and he actually does refrain most of the time from spouting political stuff, in fact doesn’t have the TV set on Fox but on one of the local network affiliates. I’ve chatted with him about my guns since he’s somewhat interested in joining the local fish & game club and getting into shooting, so he can’t just classify and ignore me as a typical loony leftie, eh? Which might give me some leverage to keep chipping away, at least on the edges.
The woman employee behind the counter with him was saying something like “That’s what I was saying” when I argued the 10-times factor, so there’s that to support, I suppose.
Sigh. It’s very convenient for me to shop there, but I hate to see my money, pittance though it is, go toward supporting someone with that sort of mindset.
.
From the first witness accounts I heard the majority of moviegoers belonged to the Afro-American community. The theater could be a soft target compared to the adjacent Town Center which has permanent security. We’ll find out soon enough, there were already 100 FBI agents involved. See my breaking news diary – 12 Dead in Colorado Movie Theater Shooting. There have been shooting incidents at the Town Center before with racial undertones.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."West Aurora is heavily African American – it’s the part of Aurora that spread eastward since the 80’s that is more white. I know, I used to drive a cab in Denver and my parents once owned an apartment complex in the predominately black part of Aurora.
Looking at this map the multiplex theater where the shooting occurred was in the area where a lot of African Americans live. This does not mean the shooting was racially motivated but I certainly wouldn’t exclude that possibility just yet.
Heavily black audience shot by a white kid from Tennessee with (according to some, perhaps reliable report) Tea Party connections.
Not jumping to conclusions, but I’ve got a feeling of dread (among other things) about this one. This could get really, really ugly. As though the incident itself wasn’t bad enough.
He surrendered to police in the parking lot rather than attempt to escape or kill himself. That tells me he has some “message” he wants to get out in the days ahead.
According to NBC News, it appears that the report of a Tennessee license plate on his car is incorrect.
Holmes was not on any watch list that would have alerted authorities that he was dangerous, officials said. The incident was not believed to have any connection to international terrorism, they added.
An earlier report that the car Holmes was driving had Tennessee plates turned out to be incorrect, officials said.
This is so horrific and to see the man’s mom make the comment ‘You have the right man” is damning on her and those who also recognized his potential when he crossed their path.
The reports that there were many children there just makes me angry beyond words.
Sometimes there is little you can do as a parent after your son is grown. I wouldn’t be so quick to judge her. It’s not like Zimmerman’s Dad who came to his defense and made racially insensitive remarks after all.
You’re right. I’m going to move my anger over to the Louis Goehmert comments about, “where is our faith? The Atheists are at fault while simultaneously wondering why no one in the crowd had a gun who could shoot back and stop the carnage.
Louie Goehmert is a disgrace to mankind, just like his McCarthy-ite buddy Bachmann.
yes, lay off the guy’s mom. He’s 24 and she lives in San Diego.
Ditto. You don’t think this will destroy her life?
At the risk of being overly blunt, who gives a shit about the guy’s motivations? Anyone who would walk into a theater, toss a couple of gas canisters and open fire is clearly not right in the head.
You know, we say not right in the head whenever a violent shooting incident occurs, and I wish we wouldn’t. It disparages millions of people who have mental disorders who are no more violent than the rest of the population. I’d prefer if we left out any discussion of mental illness at this point. Focus on the violence and the criminality of his murderous acts, not any alleged mental disease.
Were all the Hutus who massacred Tutsis in Rwanda suffering from mental disorders? Only if hatred is a mental disorder.
Sorry Steven, but we are going to disagree on this one. Several of my close family members also suffer from mental disorders, so I am not unfamiliar with discussions regarding the stereotypes and stigmas that come along with that.
Even within your own comment, you note that the rest of the population, including most who suffer from mental disorders, are not violent people. Thus you think, and I agree, that most people aren’t violent. It only follows that there is something clearly NOT right about someone who would walk into a theater with guns blazing.
As for disparaging other people with mental disorders, I completely disagree. I had this same disagreement with a former girlfriend of mine regarding the word ‘lame’. She thought if I said something (like a movie) was ‘lame’ it was offensive to people with physical disabilities. If I use the word in a completely unrelated context and with no association or intent regarding people with physical limitations, then I argue that the stigma is in the mind of the listener, not the speaker.
I am willing to grant that there is probably no right side to that argument, and that it is purely a matter of semantics and perception. We could discuss it until the cows come home, and end up with me thinking you’re overly sensitive and you thinking I’m kind of a dick, but we’re not going to change each other’s opinion on it.
Fair enough. I don’t really want to get into a semantic argument over this. I think we basically agree. Certainly people who indiscriminately murder others in this manner are extreme outliers in a statistical sense.
Hatred is a mental disorder, Steven. Mental, emotional, physical…they are all intertwined in the three-brained beings that we so laughingly refer to as “human.”
My own theory?
He was an alien.
Not the Hollywood/media kind. Even more alien than that. Think of all of the thousands of people that you have known to some depth during your lifetime. Family, friends, classmates, neighbors, fellow workers and so on. How many of them are capable of doing what this man did? How many are even capable of seriously considering doing it, let alone carrying the act out? I don’t know about you, but I cannot think of one, myself, and I have lived a long and many-leveled life in this country. I have known big-time criminals, junkies of all persuasions, radicals of all persuasions as well, country bumpkins and city hustlers who would kill in a fit of anger or for profit if need, soldiers and cops who would follow orders to kil and so on. But someone who would walk into a movie theater full of strangers and spray it with bullets in an obviously pre-planned manner? No. I suspect that most people have never really known someone like this. It is “alien” to the human experience. So is the thoughtless lust for power that produces Cheneys, Kissingers, Hitlers and the rest of the murdering crew who have led societies into mass murder, and so is the level of hostile greed that fuels big-time thieves like the majority of those who run the financial system of our country at the present moment. Most of us could not sleep at night knowing what we had done. Kissinger? A sound sleeper, I’ll bet. Maybe awakened by thoughts of new hustles, but guilt? Naaaaahhhh…
This man is an alien. He is alien to almost the entire human experience.
Mentally ill?
Oh yes!!! Ill in every ounce of his being.
Bet on it.
AG
But not legally insane. He planned this mass murder meticulously, even to the point of booby-trapping his apartment.
So he knew what he was doing and knew that others would consider it a crime.
“Legally” insane, eh?
In an obvously insane legal system, who is sane and who is not?
Damned if I know anymore.
I do not not even know what the term “legality” means. and on the evidence of the astounding wealth of the legal profession, neither does anyone else.
You are “legal” if you win a trial. That’s it. The undoubted serial rapist Dominique Strauss-Kahn is “legal” because he has a lot of money and can thus buy/bribe his freedom, but horny ol’ Joe Blow the molester is not because he can’t buy his way out of trouble.
Same same up and down the entire spectrum of so-called “justice” in the empire.
Bet on it.
AG
“Think of all of the thousands of people that you have known to some depth during your lifetime. Family, friends, classmates, neighbors, fellow workers and so on. How many of them are capable of doing what this man did? “
Unfortunately, from what I know about people I would have to say that most are capable of this. Few are driven to it.
Men are predators by nature. It doesn’t take that much to convince them (eg a few weeks of basic training) that killing other humans is OK in various circumstances.
But not untrained…unbrainwashed, so to speak. And not in a situation like this.
AG
Is the fact that he had Tennessee roots really relevant yet? Or the color of his hair? Or his color preference in Kevlar vests?
I am amazed that the world in the US seems to have completely stopped over this event. Have the networks started pre-empting shows for wall-to-wall coverage? Are people going to stay away from movie theaters, especially ones that are showing Dark Knight?
Is seems so ambulance-chasing to me.
Thank you THD! The almost instantaneous finger pointing at “the other side” (whatever or whoever that is) , and the rush to try and link this to someone people want to demonize shows just how fractured we are as a nation. It really is pretty disgusting.
.
This is a part of my breaking news diary – 12 Dead in Colorado Movie Theater Shooting. I put this information up in my diary in the very early hours after the incident. Most news and details were still lacking.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Per Kos front page:
From San Diego, PhD candidate in neuroscience, graduated in neuroscience in 2010 from UC Riverside.
Slightly OT and I know that at times like these I know there is no “political etiquette”, but was is inappropriate for Romney to give an on camera statement rather than a written one. Obama was on camera, but he was supposed to be at a rally, and he is the POTUS. I was just wondering about that.
The “Rove rule” in politics is to exploit any serendipitous opportunity to the max. Normal standards of human decency don’t apply to their team. Getting the Mittster out there on camera this week to make a statement about anything other than his shady business practices and refusal to release his tax returns is like political gold.
Plus, most Romney supporters don’t accept that Obama is POTUS and therefore, the guy that in their twisted minds is soon to become a real POTUS is supposed to speak for them on all major events.
Is it time for us to discuss Terrorism ala Timothy McVeigh?
Will never be time for discussing white mass killers, regardless of the skin color of their victims. Those are accepted as aberrations. The job of law enforcement is to focus on those that can be labeled as career criminals who just happen to have darker skin color and/or practice a non-Christian religion than those in the population as a whole.
No shit. I was just in a local convenience store, whose TV was tuned to news coverage of the massacre. I commented on how awful it was and the store owner replied “Did you know the murder rate in Chicago is ten per day?”
My incredulous responses got him to back off to maybe, yeh, that might not be correct; but he never could give me any good reason why “they” weren’t telling us the murder rate in Chicago, or why that had any relevance whatsoever to the Colorado massacre.
Well, not any “good” reason he was willing to say out loud.
Not that it will help, but next time you see the guy, you could inform him in that his number were off by a factor of ten — and that’s the 20102Chicago surge murder rate that’s getting so much media attention.
Incredibly high numbers of dreadful and likely senseless murders, but none of those murderers inflicted the death and injury toll in a single rampage that the Aurora murderer did.
Ha! As a matter of fact, that WAS my response, at least the factor of 10 thing; he grumbled a halfhearted “Well, okay, maybe” to that. But he kept coming back to why doesn’t the media tell us about the murder rate in Chicago? And hand-waving away my point that violence is as old as human civilization; back again to the Chicago thing. That must be one of the RW talking points that’s currently being spread.
Man, I’ve been patronizing that store to get my morning newspaper for many years, since before the current owner had it; I may have to stop shopping there. I already knew the guy was a climate-change denier, and now this. It just pisses me off.
.
Appears to be a loner and very similar to the case of the Arizona shooting of Senator Giffords and in The Netherlands a mall shooting in 2011, nephew of a retired Army General. All perpetrators had mental problems, nevertheless were licensed to possess arms and recently dropped out of school. Also an issue with their religious rearing played a role.
Cross-posted from my diary – 12 Dead in Colorado Movie Theater Shooting.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I don’t think it’s very similar. Everyone basically thought Loughner was mentally messed up before.
Have to go with MNPundit on this one. Loughner was more obviously unhinged — more shunned than loner by desire, but interestingly enough was mentally organized enough to select a target that fit his paranoia and purchase the ammo on the day the target would be available.
Holmes appears to have been shy and possibly alone much of his time, but if that’s the criteria for “loner” with all of its negative stereotypes, then he has a lot of company. Many people simply don’t need constant interactions with others to confirm that they exist.
calvin received an e-mail this AM from a Winger who relayed information from their echo chamber: The alleged perpetrator may have been a registered Democrat.
So, now we know the motivation for the mass murder. A registered Democrat did it. (Maybe) You know that registered Democrats are known to have arsenals in their basements just waiting for the signal to rise up.
And, we all know where that signal is gonna come from.