A shooting in Colorado leaves 12 dead, many more wounded (including a three month old baby). Josh Bowman tries to understand how something this tragic could happen.
Last night, at the opening night of “The Dark Knight Rises”, a gas-masked gunman opened fire at a theatre full of people, killing twelve and injuring dozens more. From CBS:
The violent and chaotic scene erupted about 12:30 a.m. local time as the suspected gunman, identified as 24-year-old James Holmes, stood at the front of one of the Century 16 theaters at the Aurora Mall where the latest Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises” was playing. Witnesses reported that the gunman entered the theater through an emergency exit door and threw a gas canister before opening fire.
He reportedly had a shotgun, two pistols, an assault rifle, gas canisters, and potentially explosives in his home.
This is a horrible tragedy. Children as young as three months old were sent to the emergency room.
What I don’t understand is how it can possibly be alright for a civilian to have access to these kinds of weapons. I don’t understand how these shootings can happen over and over again, and we have state governments who seem to have their hands tied by gun lobby groups like the NRA. It is outrageous. Innocent people are being mowed down because it is incredibly easy for anybody to acquire and carry assault rifles, handguns, and even automatic weapons. In some states, anybody can walk around with a concealed weapon. In other states, you can shoot somebody if they are on your property. I live in Canada, but even here there are clearly enough guns to go around.
Did you know that the United States was recently reported to be the most armed country in the world, with 90 guns for every 100 citizens? There are 270 million firearms in the U.S. alone as of this report, which means it is almost 300 million now. I hate to use an individual tragedy to make a political point, but to me there is a direct relationship between the high volume of gun ownership and easy access to weapons, and widespread gun violence. In the U.S. in 2011, there were an astounding 12,996 murders, 8,775 of which were caused by firearms. America leads the world in school shootings.
Violent incidents like what happened in Aurora, Colorado exist within a larger cultural, legal, and social framework. If we continue to ignore that framework and the root causes of this violence, we do so at our peril. My heart goes out to the victims of this horrible incident in Colorado, I hope the perpetrator is locked up forever, and I hope that we really consider what steps we need to take to stop this violence from recurring again.
Credit: AP Photo/Ed Andrieski
About Josh Bowman
Monkey
Handguns are cheaper and more concealable that weed or cocaine. Banning alcohol in the US just made the crime world rich and powerful and ordinary people see law enforcement as more of a threat.
Guns need to be manufactured somewhere. If the U.S. began to regulate the trade and importation of guns better, they could be kept out of the hands of criminals.
There are more guns than ever in the US today and gun violence continues to decrease. Don’t believe me check w/ the FBI or CDC. Yes it is an unpopular paradox. The rash of hijackings of tourists in rental cars in FL shortly follows state easements of carry permitting.
Maybe we are simply a nation of malcontent genes who left the old country & there is something in the soup.
Maybe as someone else said in another thread we simPly choose to live in a country where access to firearms is more important than access to mental health assistance. And all of us will
own a mind at some time.
Maybe we, still, are a nation of doers- and this is what we do.
When considering the effect of loosening gun laws, it would be helpful to consider the statistics about ALL the causes of death and injury by firearms. How does the number of people killed accidentally by guns compare to the number murdered by handguns? And, how does the number of self-defense cases compare to the number of accidental cases?
I suspect that arming everyone all the time would save a few thousands lives every year. But, I suspect that would lead to about 3-4 times as many people killed accidentally.
Ultimately, it would be a decision about acceptable risk to other people. Of course the swimming pool in your backyard is 200 times more likely to kill your child than a handgun in the house, but then again your swimming pool is not likely to kill 30 people all at once when you go off the rails.
Good thing Plaxico Burress was armed when he went into that nightclub. His own leg could have attacked him, but fortunately he was able to put a bullet in it to stop a much greater calamity. I would hate to think what could have happened if he had not shot himself…..
“I suspect that arming everyone all the time would save a few thousands lives every year. But, I suspect that would lead to about 3-4 times as many people killed accidentally.”
Well, you’d be wrong about that. Shooting accidents are very well recorded, they’ve been declining as the number of guns owned by civilians in the USA has been increasing. If you control for alcohol and criminality, accidents are almost non-existent. Look up papers by John Lott, Gary Mauser, and check the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics.
Then ask yourself where your wildly incorrect notion came from in the first place. My bet is TV.
CO has some of the most liberal carry laws in the country. I’m hoping every member of the well regulated militia who didn’t draw and run towards the shooter hangs up his iron.
Colorada did not have any legal carry laws until about 15 years ago. Neither did Texas. Gun crime was higher then. Now it is lower.
Huge numbers of guns have been bought since BO became President, in some parts of the country. In none of those places has crime increased.
So, what is the point of restrictive gun laws?
I am very sympathetic to gun control advocates but we have a constitutional and cultural framework that makes gun control very difficult. Laws, particularly criminalizing actions, alone can’t fix our society. We need to change inequality and especially poverty and the cultural attitudes that lead to inequality and poverty. Most importantly, we need to change society so that it is more open, tolerant, and compassionate. We can’t heal a violent society if we don’t see our complicity in that violence.
Two things: 1) Everyone in that theater was disarmed. The theater specifically disallows firearms in the building, so no one had any guns. The place was basically a shooting gallery for the gunman. I’m just waiting for a mass shooting at a place where everyone is armed.
2) How are gun control laws going to change anything, since criminals, being criminals, don’t really obey the law anyway? Just more laws for them to break. If they want to kill, they’ll find a way.
I agree with Quadruple A – Laws alone ain’t going to do it. We need to change hearts and minds as well as the situations that make people commit acts of evil.
1) the shooter obtained all his guns legally.
2) the argument “someone could have taken him down,” specious at the best of times, simply does not work in this case. In a theater filled with tear gas and an assailant in body armor, more guns will only make the situation worse.
It doesn’t matter how he obtained his guns. If he was really intend in killing people, and it sure seems he was, he’d have found another way to do it.
His apartment was booby trapped to the degree that police thing it might have taken out that building and a few others. If he couldn’t have gotten guns, legally, he could have gotten them elsewhere (so much for laws). Failing that, what would have stopped him from rigging the theater with explosives and setting it off? He was able to plant guns there, why not bombs?
More laws aren’t going to bring back the dead, either. Best thing to do is punish him to the fullest that the law can.
And therefore because a worst case scenario could circumvent the law, we should have no law at all?
Aren’t you arguing to change the law because of a worst case scenario? Or do you feel this is a run of the mill everyday occurrence? And nice hyperbole with the “having no laws at all” bit. Laws are needed, but there comes a point when more laws aren’t worth the freedoms and liberties they would deny. Nobody is advocating for the removal of existing laws, as your hyperbole suggests, they are arguing that restricting guns further is not the answer here, and it’s not. This guy had access to explosives, which AREN”T legal, if my understanding of law is correct, and could have just as easily strapped a ton of that around his chest and taken out far more lives than he did. What’s your solution then? Make everyday household chemicals illegal too? Then when someone starts driving people down with their cars, carmageddon style, are we to ban vehicles? There comes a point when the cause needs to be addressed, not the methods. There will always be worst case scenario’s, laws should not be created around those, but rather, around the general good of the people.
Actually, some *are* arguing for getting rid of laws by suggesting that more guns would have
Resulted in someone “taking down” the attacker.
Explosives are regulated. You can’t buy TNT at your local hardware store. Even nitrogen fertilizer is regulated.
“some” maybe, but not all, or even most. Though I find it rather hypocritical of you to call me out on my absolute while pretending I didn’t point out your own hyperbole. Why is it you feel justified in claiming people who are arguing against more gun control are arguing for no laws at all? Given how often this strawman is used against anyone who opposes more gun control, it’s understandably frustrating and results in the eventual erosion of the “most” from most people aren’t advocating no gun laws. How about if you don’t want people using absolutes like nobody, you stop using them yourself?
Why did no one try to take this guy ? What a shame that the men had to lose their lives guarding their women with their bodies, rather than saving lives and perhaps still being alive if they had had guns. The shooter can be a much braver bully when he knows all the good guys likely don’t have guns. Bad guys will always be able to find guns. And some, like this article, will insist the good guys won’t…. So what should we protect ourselves with when evil arises?? Or do we just hope a nice guy will put his body over ours…. And wind up dead.
A darkened theater filled with tear gas. An assailant with body armor. How exactly could someone “take him out?”
“A darkened theater filled with tear gas. An assailant with body armor. How exactly could someone “take him out?”” Screw your pistol into his ear and pull the trigger. Works awesome. Kevlar isn’t magic, neither are guns.
“In a theater filled with tear gas and an assailant in body armor, more guns will only make the situation worse.” Dude, returning aimed fire on a killer is worse than a lunatic who is going to kill everyone in the room? The body count wasn’t higher only because his rifle jammed and he went to the 9mm pistol. He hit 50 people. It would be worse if somebody shot him in the first ten seconds? Please, use your head.
“Tell Me Why We Don’t Need Gun Control Again?” Because gun control -causes- these events, obviously. You can’t do what this guy did anywhere except a “gun free zone”, because somebody in the crowd will kill you. I thought you open-minded hipster types were supposed to be clever.
The simple fact is that no conceivable government can prevent determined people from acquiring guns, ammunition and bomb material. Communist China can’t do it, Mexico can’t, Canada can’t, Sweden can’t, even freakazoid Syria can’t. These things can be -made-, if nothing else. Depending on something so easy to circumvent as a law is utterly stupid.
We will continue to see atrocities like this occur all across Canada, the USA and Europe right up until the day the general public starts carrying guns the way we used to. And upon that day the massacres will stop. Not one day before.
Why do you over-educated little boys keep refusing to deal with the reality of this stuff?
You really think anyone could have gotten close enough to him to shoot him in the head?
It would have been wore because in that situation (again, dark theater filling with tear gas) an audience member would have been more likely to shoot another audience member, not him.
BTW, what’s with the insults?
“You really think anyone could have gotten close enough to him to shoot him in the head?”
Yes. Because being in a dark, smokey theater works -both- ways doesn’t it? You may have trouble seeing him, but he’s -really- going to have trouble seeing you. Particularly if there’s more than one man targeting him. Furthermore, HE’S STANDING UP!!! He’s the -only- person in the place standing up. And he’s standing still too, to help his aim. Because its dark, and because he’s just a jumped-up punk, not a Terminator robot. You, if you have a brain, will be firing upwards at him from the floor. So if you miss, your rounds will strike wall and ceiling, not Grandma. Duh.
The insults are because I don’t like you. You and your little friends here feel quite justified in endangering -my- life with your non-factual, un-trained, completely idiotic opinion about a policy that disarms ME. You clearly know absolutely nothing about close quarters combat, or about guns, or about body armor. You’ve probably never even seen a gun fired, and certainly not in the dark. Yet you have no hesitation whatever about insisting you are right and that the rest of us are not only wrong, but dangerously insane.
So come back and talk about this after you have a clue, or get used to being told off by people who actually know what they’re talking about.
Apparently he had a gas mask, ballistic helmet and throat protector. http://www.nwherald.com/tablet/article.xml/articles/2012/07/23/75985749/index.xml
Do you think the face plates of gas masks are all bulletproof? Do you think there’s sufficient armor on the back of the knee, the pelvis, the lower back, the arm pit, the side of the face, to turn a bullet? Do you think its impossible to get a round up under the edge of a helmet when you’re lying on the floor?
Do you think it doesn’t hurt to get shot wearing ballistic armor?
Do you think you’re not allowed to stomp on him after you stun him with half a clip to the helmet?
Have you ever even seen a real fight much less been in one?
I haven’t seen or been in many “real fights,” and none with guns. I have seen footage from war zones and other shootings and in the chaos I can’t see anyone getting a clear shot at this guy.
I agree with you here Monkey. Between the tear gas and the panicked people, turning this particular incident into a shootout likely was not in anyone’s best interest. It would seem Phantom thinks tear gas is just some kind of smoke that obscures line of sight.
That said, like I believe you suggested to me above, you can’t reasonable base your policies and decisions on worst case scenario’s.
Also add to the fact that there was a movie playing, and a the time of the shooting, there was an action scene going on. Light would be pouring from the screen. And you have one man standing, shadowed amidst a theater filled with smoke. He’s a moving target.
To boot, the man was covered head to toe with ballistic armor – except for his face. Gas masks aren’t armored. It might be tougher than normal conditions to be able to target his face, but not impossible.
Also, the man had no problem opening fire in a room full of people with no guns, but once he was outside and surrounded by people drawing a bead on him, he surrendered willingly.
Thus is the mind of a bully – hurt those that are weak and vulnerable, but don’t mess with someone on par with or more powerful than you.
If most of the people in that theater were armed, and he knew it, do you really think he’d have taken the chance?
He surrendered to cops, who knew what they were doing (and were not in the darkened theater.)
But again: the 1989 Batman shoiting was over the last bag of popcorn (and for the record both men were armed. How does more guns make us safer?
Well my military instructor hits an 4 inch diameter target at 100 meters with his custom made pistol.
Also movie theaters are usually constructed so that one could get an line of sight despite of the moving don’t shoots.
If he had also guns that have an visible muzzle flash… Great.
I won’t go into details of how to protect yourself from tear gas but it seems that he had only the lighter stuff.
Also in such an situation there are practically no rules of engagement and almost everything goes to deal with the problem.
So its not easy but neither is fending off an enemy company by yourself with only an Suomi KP/-31 or taking out tanks with only wooden sticks and molotovs.
Do you know what tear gas is? do you understand why the shooter was wearing a gas mask? Your argument is like that of a child “I shoot you”, “no, I shoot you first, so your dead and can’t shoot me”. How about you ask your military instructor if he would choose to open fire on a moving target while in the middle of a crowd and choking back teargas?
And your argument is that because you suck at killing humans so does everybody else.
Now firstly according to eyewitnesses the tear gas he used wasn’t too effective. So we can assume it was similar to types used for riot control not the military grade stuff banned by the geneva convention that may cause lethal complications and is way more effective.
Now tear gas works through breathing and you can hold your breath for an while plus holding an wet cloth in front of your mouth helps also some.
Use spit if you are out of soda.
Also CS gas is ligher than air and the bottom of the theater would likely provide an direct line of sight to the target.
And at least some of his weapons did not have proper flash hiders making him an visible target and the lights went on before the shooting was over.
If relocating to an more optimal firing position and “sniping” the target is not possible one should obiviously either tell the people to go to ground,
EVERYBODY ON THE GROUND if the threat outweights risking collateral damage or stay low and get enough close.
This assuming that there is poor visibility if there is good visibility you obiviously shoot when you get an proper sight.
Though obiviously the optimal actions depend of the situation like leaving the scene, gearing up at the car and re-entering the situation in full combat gear might be the more optimal solution.
In this case an smoke grenade would be more usefull.
Also it seem that the target was never in the middle of the crowd making it easier to get an line of sight.
And the target came in through an emergency exit with the weapons visible and an movie theater is usually not completely dark.
Your argument is based on the assumption of gun owners who have an CCW being retarded suckers.
The response from the gun nuts will always be the same: “We need MORE guns, not fewer.”
Shooting at Virginia Tech? “If only all the faculty and students were walking around armed, it wouldn’t have happened.” Shooting at a movie theater? “If only all the moviegoers had been packing, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Sure. More bullets flying around is ALWAYS the answer to the NRA…. as long as you ignore the obvious point that more guns would always result in MORE violent attacks, even if they wind up being of shorter duration. Because when you look at any instance of domestic disturbance, drunken behavior, rioting, or road rage, it’s easy to see how much better things would’ve gone if everybody involved were holding a gun.
And of course, the flipside is the leftist hippies who say “we need to eliminate all guns” and “if there were no guns available, violence would cease to exist”. “Most” people here opposed to tighter gun controls also don’t advocate for looser controls.
Copyleft, you know why the Palestinians switched from attacking Israelis with gunmen to attacking them with suicide bombers? Because their gunmen invariably got killed or pinned down in the first ten seconds of any engagement by some random bystander who just happened to be there. Then the cops or the Army would come and pick up the survivors. You can look that up, its a widely reported fact.
Oh and by the way, all the statistics that aren’t outright lies from the Brady brigade indicate that you’re wrong. When people can carry a gun legally, the number of shootings goes down by double digits. Facts are not supportive of your position. You of course won’t change your mind, but I just thought you should know you don’t have a leg to stand on and we all think you’re a dangerous idiot.
In all fairness, both the physics and the psychology of a bomb work far better than those of a bullet. If you’re not trying to take and hold territory, there’s not much point in using gun attacks.
I kind of shudder to think what happens when spree-killers start realizing that. Hopefully, the cultural inclination towards romanticizing guns will prevent that. As smart as this guy was, he could have killed a whole lot more people if he’d been less concerned with seeming like a movie-style bad @$$.
Sure, and if we didn’t live in a society that was rapidly devolving into a feudal one, I’d probably agree with you.
But it is what it is. I’m not going to live in a country on our current trajectory where only the police have guns. I’m not going to live in a country ruled by a corrupt elite, where they refuse to put anyone with money in jail, and where the police regularly get away with shooting unarmed people in the back. I’m sure as hell not going to live in a country like that that’s mired in a years-long depression, where the unemployment rate is ungodly and shows no sign of seriously coming down. Where the people with power just look for ways to accumulate more power and who send swarms of SWAT officers to beat the crap out of anyone who protests.
This is not currently a stable society. We are not on a trajectory towards greater freedom and opportunity. We’re on a trajectory that would put every banker in a castle, every politician in his court, and every working man or women in field or a brothel.
Soullite, have you seen this little gem in the Sun today?
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2012/07/20120722-171741.html
Strip clubs in Toronto want to hire more girls straight out of high school, since the supply of foreign strippers is drying up. So to speak. So you would appear to be 100% on time line with your prediction.
By the way, with the Palestinian thing, if I’m not mistaken it was no less than Yasser Arafat who complained that their gunman martyrs were being killed before they could get even one Jew, so they had to switch to suicide bombs. Which, due to the whole suicide thing, were kind of a hard sell with The Faithful. Of course it was a pretty long time ago, so it may have been that Islamic Jihad guy, or the Hezzzzzbola dude.
By the way, the reason they switched over to random rocketry is reported to be the same. The Israelis are getting really good at spotting suicide bombers and fragging them before they can explode. Apparently they get this funny look on their face right before they go off, and people notice. And then shoot them.
To this who say the real tragedy was that the theater was a “gun free zone,” there’s a reason why they don’t allow guns in theaters…
http://abcnews.go.com/US/colorado-shooting-recalls-history-theater-violence/t/story?id=16823347
Please note that in most cases these weren’t “nuts,” just “ordinary citizens” who lost their temper.
You know, Monkey, conflating the actions of ex-cons and gang bangers with those of “ordinary citizens” doesn’t help your argument at all. In fact, you’ll notice that all those things happened in places where merely possessing a firearm in a theater is a felony.
Gun control works exactly as well as Prohibition and the war on drugs, and for the same reasons. Get over it.
Only one is listed as a felon or ex-con. Care to offer some proof?
At the risk of repeating myself, RTFA you posted and understand that simple possession of a firearm at a theater in the cities listed in your article is a -felony-. Therefore by definition they were felons.
By the way, do you think the boys who shot up the Eaton’s Center this year and that party in Scarborough the other night were “ordinary citizens” who just “lost their temper”? Because that’s who shot up those theaters in the States.
So do ordinary citizens need 6000 rounds?