So Much For the “Insanity Defense”
Not that we believe for one solitary second that whichever scumsucking, lowlife attorney defending the Aurora beast won’t try it, because that’s what they are and it’s what they do. Everything within their power to set animals loose back in the wild to commit more mayhem.
But it may be an uphill battle to make it work in court:
According to police sources, the same suspect who would not tell police a motive for the shooting did tell them that if they went to his apartment they might find explosives. Holmes didn’t mention it was a trap.
…
Investigators now believe that Holmes used a timer to set off loud techno music at the apartment just before midnight. It was meant to spur a noise complaint to police. The ruse theoretically would have drawn them into the apartment building, detonating a firebomb and then drawing all available police and rescue units to the other side of town before the shooting at the theater started. That would have allowed him more time to kill more people and left a much smaller police response to the theater shootings.
Yep, that sure sounds to us like a spur-of-the-moment psychotic meltdown brought about by cold toilet seats, Republican elementary school teachers and insufficient “access” to free healthcare. Not.
For all that planning, all that thinking about how to kill and all those questions that have been raised, police said Holmes isn’t talking.
Not trying to tell you how to do your jobs here, but that’s just because you’re not asking him the right way, if you get our drift. You do, after all, have a booby-trapped apartment on your hands in dire need of being disarmed, and we’re ever so sure that the smirking little devil would be more than happy to provide you with the information you need if he were just — motivated properly.
Drop us a note if you need a few pointers. We’d be happy to help. And in reply to your question before you even ask it: We’d sleep just fine afterwards, thank you very much.
Thatisall.
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Look at my post on this. Sure, spur of the moment went batshit.
LC cmblake6, Imperial Black Ops Technician recently posted..Never allow a crisis to go to waste?
I think he is the proper person to disarm the bomb. If he does it he can stand trial, if not……….
Rep. Allen West would get all the info needed in less than ten seconds.
I’d gladly lend him my XD-40 for the job.
(so long as I got to kneecap the sorry bitch twice)
I know that it might appear like that to you, but then, heaven forbid if YOU are ever arrested for something, you can only hope that some attorney is looking out for YOU.
This guy’s actions don’t really fit the profile of someone who is insane though — and even that isn’t enough. A person would have to not have any understanding or comprehension of right and wrong or the charges against him — and judging from the degree of planning he took, there isn’t an attorney in the world who could ever pull that off. Besides, people don’t “get off” on a finding of insanity any more, they simply get their case deferred until such time they are deemed sane enough to go through court. John Hinckley case had a lot to do with the changes in the insanity defense.
I just listened to the presser with the Aurora police chief (you could hear the emotion in his voice) and he said he would not comment on whether there had been a stated motive or what that would be. In fact, the prosecution has already gone to court to secure a lid on the case and the cops won’t even release a booking photo. I am guessing the state is probably trying to preserve the case for a major run towards the death penalty on this one — and I hope the skids are greased all the way to hell.
I was hoping to hear what they were planning on doing with the drums of explosives in the apartment. From what I’ve heard, they still aren’t sure as to what the chemicals are or how to go about defusing it. CBS was reporting that they might decide to explode them tomorrow morning and have the fire department standing by to put it all out. Since there is military personnel nearby, I am sure they are probably being at least consulted about IUD explosives.
From what I’ve been hearing, there was a HUGE amount of planning that went in on this. First the weapons buy and the 6000 rounds of ammo purchased over the internet. Then the rigging of the explosive devices to be set off by a neighbor checking out a loud stereo that had been set on a timer to go off at midnight thereby distracting emergency response when the building blew up. That would have theoretically left the theater without a lot of police and emergency crews to respond to.
So “insane”? No. Evil? Of course. The good thing is, they don’t offer defenses for being evil.
DJ Allyn recently posted..No.1 Against the Rush ~ Liars
DJ Allyn @ # 4: I knew you weren’t a total loss.
LC cmblake6, Imperial Black Ops Technician recently posted..Wait just a damn minute!
DJ Allyn says:
If I were as obviously guilty as the scumbag in this case, then I would refuse to be in the same room as anybody vile enough to offer his counsel to me.
Emperor Misha I recently posted..So Much For the “Insanity Defense”
Emperor Misha I says:
Well, that is the funny thing about our legal system. A defendant may give off every stench of being guilty as the hottest recesses of hell, but SOCIETY demands that he at least has a fair trial before he is ejected there. Why? Because sometimes there are people who may appear to be guilty but are actually and factually innocent.
As I said in another comment here though, sometimes there ARE some people who are so fucking and obviously evil that any and all pretenses to treating them as human enough to warrant a trial is pointless. This guy appears to be one of those.
DJ Allyn recently posted..No.1 Against the Rush ~ Liars
DJ, you mean the Aurora police are trying to try this one in the courtroom rather than in the media as is being done in Florida? What a concept!
And yes, I agree with you about the torture. I mean, I survived the waterboard in SERE school, but I’ll give up the name and address of everybody in the United States before I’ll get back on it.
The more I hear about this (non-agenda-driven, unlike some news), the more I’m certain the guy is just plain nuts. My advice with that, don’t try to understand crazy, you’ll just drive yourself crazy too, and that’s NOT a good thing.
DJ Allyn, just a minor thing, but you’re probably thinking of IEDs (improvise explosive devices), not IUDs! Don’t go using explosives down there, unless you’ve got problems that penicillin won’t fix!
Mattexian recently posted..National Ammo Day, 2011!
We shouldn’t be having this conversation. We should be talking about the CHL holder that put two in this maniac’s temple about seven seconds after it started. Colorado is a state that actually allows licensed concealed carry, but the theater is a ‘gun-free zone’, and the only one armed was the assailant.
Anyone ever wonder why these kinds of things never happen at a shooting range? Or why the gun crime rate in Sweden is so low it cannot be reliably measured?
This is a perfect example of why I carry everywhere, at all times, and I ignore “no guns” signs. No one will know I have unless I need it, and if I need it I don’t care if anyone gets upset that I have it.
DJ Allyn says:
I would think that IUD explosives would be more the expertise of Planned Parenthood, though it still sounds pretty drastic.
rickn8or says:
And gull-durn it, that is what SHOULD happen. If given a choice, I would LOVE to see the criminal justice system adopt a complete blackout on ALL major crime arrests until the case has gone to trial. That means no leaked “evidence”, no side trying the case in the media, and all witnesses being barred from talking to the media.
Take the fuckwad that shot Giffords. Do we hear ANYTHING about him? Nope — and that’s the way it should be. Wait until the trial, televise that if you want, and if convicted, NEVER bring the fuckwad’s name or case up again.
I have absolutely zero problem with the way the Aurora PD has handled this up until now. We learn the basic details, and beyond that, keep it to themselves until such time as there is a trial.
The Zimmerman case should be the same thing. Once arrested and charged, NEITHER party should be out in the news media — friendly or otherwise. Save it all for trial. I don’t think that the media has a “right” to evidence being released just so they can have something to report on. Wait until the trial.
Mattexian says:
Well, perhaps his MOTHER should have had an IUD way back when…
single stack says:
The question I have about that is what exactly could you have done? Yeah, I know, take the guy out. But think about this for a minute. It is dark in the theater. What if there were several of you with guns, each thinking they were going to take out the threat of someone with a gun. How do you determine which is the friendly and which isn’t? And do you think everyone is as trained in tactics as you might be?
I’m not asking the question to be an asshole, I just wonder whether having MORE guns in a situation like that might actually make matters worse.
DJ Allyn recently posted..DJ’s New-Fangled Jukebox
Deej (and no, I am not angry with you, mate, just furious at yet another of these incidents where no one seems to have learned anything from the last time, and the time before that)….more than one report from survivors stated they saw him stop and reload.
Another was literally in front of him, two others BEHIND him as this went on.Point blank range.
They could not have missed. Literally.All it would have taken was ONE person with a weapon and this would have been over.. Another woman says she ran, locked herself behind a door and he banged on it several times.
Lift gun, BANG BANG BANG through door.
Dead psycho.
He kept shooting, and for fucks sake stopped to reload. All it would have taken was ONE armed person and that bastard would be dead dead dead. He was standing still, gun in hand, changing magazines!!!!
FFS two rounds and done. One shot:
Hell, even me, and I aint that good, could have put lead between his eyes or centre mass.
All it ever takes is ONE man or woman, but NOOOOOO we have to have gun free zones, that fucking cinema orders people to not carry their legally permitted concealed weapons with them…the survivors ought to sue those imbeciles for criminal neglect.
As it is, what can be done after this obscenity, is to boycott that fucking chain and take your money elsewhere. Either they let you legally carry or you go somewhere else. Hit them where it fucking hurts.
Every single fucking kill spree like this is in a gun free zone. Each and every one. Hell you even had another in Canada a few days ago, didnt help much with those gun laws now did it?
One man or woman.
That’s all it would have taken.
Just one.
Colorado has CC laws, and permits the carrying of a weapon for your protection and those of others. I am ashamed to admit this, as I tend to have more faith in my fellow beings than I should, but in spite of having a CC, I rarely carry, because the laws here are conflicting and obtuse. Ferinstance, you can’t carry a gun into a mall. But, a perp all hell-bent on taking people out will. This means I have to lock it in my car, and heaven help me if something happens and I can’t get to my gun.
You have to ask yourself what the point of CC is if you aren’t allowed to CARRY.
OK, I imagine I could perhaps take him out under the circumstances even unarmed–though I might be carrying some handy little blade. Anyhow, his gear would seem to significantly limit visibility. Smoke could be a problem, but he can’t see through it either. He’s intent on shooting fleeing people, not expecting someone to approach.
I have more of a plan, but it may depend too much on chance. I haven’t studied the incident in depth (as if I wanted to). So I’ll keep the rest secret still. Probably never get the chance to try any of it.
One more factor I should mention: I don’t see myself as standing to lose much.
LCBrendan @ #:
Yep. What Brendan said.
Nobody here, at least nobody sane, is suggesting that a good ol’ boy with a .45 would have stopped it right on the spot with nobody but the shitstain achieving ambient temperature.
Could have, yes, but highly unlikely. Even the most prepared of CHL holders have to get over the first part where they’re behind in their OODA loop due to the sheer surprise of the atrocity, but it is quite obvious from witness accounts that nobody was in any doubts as to who the Bad Guy was.
They’d have found their target. Not to mention that CHL holders, though not exactly SEAL Team 6 members, still have some training in knowing their target before they squeeze the trigger. If not, then why not just do away entirely with the training requirements for a CHL?
So to say that having a bunch of law-abiding armed citizens present might as well have made things worse is disingenuous beyond my wildest imaginations. What’s worse than mass murder and mayhem? Did you even note the fact that the moment he faced armed opposition, he folded and surrendered, being the dickless coward that he is?
And his body armor doesn’t enter into it. A .45 ashtray, although easily stopped by body armor, still puts your target down for long enough to administer a head shot.
And that’s the true tragedy here; that he was apprehended by law enforcement who are bound by different rules and thus had to accept his surrender. A Citizen Soldier like myself wouldn’t have had that problem. I would most likely have been unable to hear his “I surrender” cries. What, with all of the noise and cordite in the air. If it’s still twitching within reach of a weapon, it’s a mortal threat and must be treated accordingly.
Double tap.
Just think how that would “bend the cost curve” of litigation
And, quite frankly, in all of these cases which have ALL taken place in “gun-free-zones”… You’d have to be a very special kind of idiot to NOT recognize a pattern there.
Call us when you have a shooting spree at a gun range or a gun show.
Emperor Misha I recently posted..Money talks
From the reports I’ve read it was pretty obvious who the BG was. My target would have been the guy with the rifle advancing into a crowd of screaming, panicking people.
Taking friendly fire is always a risk. So is cowering helplessly as a madman murders the people around you. I don’t think that having several people trying to take out a mass murderer could possibly make things any worse than they were. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die fighting.
Ok, who kidnapped our DJ and replaced him with a semi-conservative?? Where are the whines of “He had a abusive father” , “he was a latch key child”, “He was a product of his environment” or better yet , “He was a Tea Party member”?????????????
Talk about effective contraception! Perhaps Sandra Fluke ought to be outfitted with IUD explosives, thus negating the “necessity” for the taxpayers to fund her $3000/year contraception bill.
DJ, I am sure you meant IEDs?
Aw, man! Rurik, et al beat me to it!
After reading about the IUD explosives, I skipped the rest fo the comments to enter mine. GMTA?
Call me an Alex Jones conspiracy moron but this does have the cowinkydink factor here: 1) Obongo the Kenyan Klingon Fucker™ is a floating turd in the polls right now and needs to talk about something else and, 2) the UN Gun Ban treaty is due to be signed by Hillary the Gorgon.
single stack:
Indeed. Reminds me of another thought from last night. An old Chinese military writer (either Master Sun or one of his commentators) said that the one who goes into battle determined to save his life will get killed, while the guy who goes in prepared to die will come out alive.
This goob set those traps. He should be forced to disarm them. If he refuses, then it will have to be done the hard way. Pour Tobasco on a rat tail file. Shove it up his little pecker. And throw him into his apartment through his back window.
LCBrendan says:
In a perfect world, and only one other person in the theater with a gun, and in the right place at the right time, I can see a good outcome. But things aren’t usually quite so perfect.
Imagine for a moment there are several of you armed and in the theater. You don’t know each other, and it is dark. You also don’t know how many other perps are in this theater. This guy is shooting at anything that moves towards an exit.
He stops shooting to reload. That is when EVERYONE is trying to make a break for the doors. You start shooting at the perp and so do the others — except they see YOU shooting a gun and it appears you might be shooting at the people trying to leave also. So they start shooting at you and each other because you don’t know who is who.
Not only that, there are also cops starting to stream into the building who really don’t fully know what is going on other than there are an unknown number of people shooting guns.
Do you see the problem? It isn’t as cut and dried as being in say, a bank robbery and you can see the entire landscape before you. This is a dark, crowded theater among fifteen adjacent theaters where there may or may not be other gunmen. Theater #8 right next door had bullets flying through the walls and someone was wounded there also.
But sure, if you are in a position where you could take him out, by all means, do it. If you can do it without drawing fire from others, then you are golden.
All I am saying is that there are other factors that have to be taken into consideration here and that a simplistic answer doesn’t always fit the scenario. Does that mean you shouldn’t be allowed to carry inside of a theater? I think that is up to the owners of that theater — after all, there are liability issues to consider also. But certainly the government shouldn’t be making that decision.
Maybe we should outlaw movie theaters. After all, they are proven places where nutjobs go to kill people.
Over the next few days and weeks, we are going to hear the usual people talk about “gun control” and “security” and everything else that you can connect to this thing. It is natural, and healthy to talk about it. It is much like an after-action evaluation. I really wouldn’t read all that much into it. I just see it as another reason to raise money for all of the different groups ranging from the gun control groups to the NRA. At the end of the day, there will not be any legislation and this will all fade away — until the next time.
LC Gladiator says:
You really haven’t been paying attention, have you? You make this assumption that when we disagree on a couple of things, that we disagree on everything. I can’t name ONE person that I can agree or disagree with one hundred percent of the time. Not even fifty percent of the time. I keep saying that ALL of us here probably agree with each other on many more things than we disagree on. We just get blinded by the few things where we have differences. It is why you are able to drive down the freeway or walk through a mall without killing each other.
I think you would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people who wouldn’t blink an eyelash if this guy were to have an accident falling down several flights of stairs in the jail — several times. Maybe even get shot trying to “escape”.
LC Light29ID says:
1) So Obama did this? As far as his “floating turd” polls? Not so much.
2) You probably should a) read the treaty where it excludes the US and b) it still would have to be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate before it would reach the president’s desk for a signature. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the Senate can’t even agree to do anything without a filibuster, and most of the time they can’t even get sixty votes to have a vote. That means sixty-seven votes is a HUGE order to fill.
Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957) was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the United States Senate. According to the decision, “this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty,” although the case itself was with regard to an executive agreement, not a “treaty” in the U.S. legal sense, and the agreement itself has never been ruled unconstitutional.
There is more here Ironically, Obama has gotten grades of “F” from both the NRA and the Brady Center. I am not quite sure why the NRA is upset with him — he hasn’t lifted a finger to ban guns, in fact he has even signed laws that allows people to carry guns in Yellowstone and carry guns in their checked bags on Amtrak.
DJ Allyn recently posted..DJ’s New-Fangled Jukebox
Yes. The problem is that you’re saying that since conditions aren’t perfect that people should simply cower in fear, doing nothing to stop a mass murder.
Fighting evil is risky and messy and things rarely ever turn out the way you want them to. You might even get killed doing it. That doesn’t mean the fight should not be joined. If good men do nothing evil triumphs, as this atrocity so poignantly illustrates. Are we as a country so dissipated that cowardice has become our standard?
Someday I’ll die. Hopefully that day is a long time off. When it does come I’ll die on my feet. You can live on your knees if you want to. I refuse to join you.
single stack says:
No, actually I am saying that NONE of us were there. Making a blanket statement that if only other people had guns would have had a rosy outcome is being naive. I gave a pretty realistic idea of what things COULD have been like.
single stack says:
I know all that sounds good on a bumper sticker, but until you are in that situation pissing your pants and keeping your head down, all of that hero talk is just that — talk.
You may never be in the position to do anything. Hell, you may even be the first casualty and never have had the chance to pull your weapon out. But boy, does it sound manly to talk about the woulda, coulda, shoulda here, doesn’t it?
I hope you are NEVER in that position to have to decide what to do in that kind of situation. Wishing for such a situation is kinda fucked up, if you ask me. But if you ever do find yourself in a similar situation, I do sincerely hope you make the correct choice — and survive it.
Now what happens in your zest for heroism, you end up killing someone OTHER than the perp? Will you be able to live with yourself then? Or would you try to justify things by saying if it wasn’t you, that person would have been killed by the perp?
Shit happens. You might not know this, but I have actually been trained in these types of scenarios. I have a stake in a program that trains law enforcement in situations like this. I am not as involved with it in the past year or so, but I still own the property with a full-fledged gun range, obstacle course and buildings. I’ve been through the courses, I have also taught local, state, and federal law enforcement. None of this is as easy as you think it is. This isn’t the military where there are acceptable risks. In the civilian world, there ARE no acceptable risks.
DJ Allyn recently posted..DJ’s New-Fangled Jukebox
Deej: call me cynical: but isnt this one of the reasons why nutcases like this never attack army bases or police stations? Because the cops shoot back? I just find myself wondering what this nutter would have done had he known he was walking into a cinema with armed and ready citizens, vs a cinema full of unarmed people as this was a gun free zone.
We dont know what may happen because law abiding citizens disarm when asked to by “the management”, hence my other thread. maybe it’s about time we started kicking those idiots where it hurts, in the wallet, by saying “If I cant keep my gun, you get none of my money”
No more gun free zones.
Deej as with here as with Omaha, there were at least two instances during both of those shootings where one shot would have ended it.
In Omaha, a licensed CHL carrier, disarmed, stated how “he had the shot” and had he been armed, could have put the perp down hard, one shot one kill.
In Colorado, a wioman and a man stated how he was a clear target, stopped, reloading. One shot, one kill.
That’s all it would have taken.
DJ Allyn @ #:
My posts aren’t “hero talk”. I’ve had the kind of training you describe and I’ve used it. I know the sound bullets make when they pass by inches away. I hope I never hear it again.
Having the willingness and courage to fight back when facing death is not a “zest for heroism”. I understand the risks, both to myself and others. And yes, I could live with it if things went wrong.
As I wrote earlier,
I already know for a fact that when faced with a sudden life or death situation that I will keep my wits about me and fight, and that I can handle the consequences.
You’re advocating cowardice and I find it sickening.
I’ve refrained from adding in my $.02 worth until some more facts came out about this massacre committed by James Holmes…and I can only come to the (maybe paranoid) conclusion that a lot of things involved here don’t add up and don’t pass the smell test for me.
Questions include:
* Where did James get his bomb-making training?
Mr. Holmes was a grad student in neuroscience, so he certainly had the chemistry background to create any number of explosive devices, having said that, it’s still a far cry from having the training necessary to create what the Aurora Police Chief called “the most sophisticated booby traps he’s ever seen”. Making a device w/o injuring oneself in the learning phase is a fairly tall order.
* How did James acquire his military-style weapons and gear?
As noted above, Mr. Holmes was a grad student, just how did he acquire full body armor including a a flack helmet ? The guns were pretty standard stuff; hell most of us here are just as well, if not much better equipped
(looking straight at Crunchie and MG) BUT we all know just how much such gear costs, not to mention 6,000 + rounds of ammo ! WHERE does a grad student get that kind of scratch?!? Most of the grad students at the University where I worked had trouble getting enough money together to get a Ramen noodle party going, much less prepare for an all-out assault, and this was not a cheap State school. WHERE did he get the tear gas grenades from / They certainly aren’t available to civilians “off the shelf” ! I believe a reasonable estimate for all the gear he had, including the booby traps in his apt. certainly ran at LEAST $10-15K (Laser optical sighted AR15 is what, about $1500. to $2000. by itself?) Not to mention training to ensure proficiency, he was a meticulous planner, so that has to be taken into account.
* Why were his actions such a departure from his known personality?
By all accounts Mr. Holmes was a shy loner type, yeah, I know, “it’s always the quiet ones”, and that may be the case, but it’s unusual for someone to have nothing more than a traffic offense on his record to going full-blown homicidal w/o warning signs. Columbine, VT, Ft. Hood; the warning signs were there for anyone to see; here there was nothing, even in retrospect. (subject to new information).
* Why did he calmly surrender to police without a fight?
Mr. Holmes was well prepared for a shoot out; why did he just wait for the police to arrive and then calmly surrender? It doesn’t fit the pattern of a deranged psycho killer, most don’t stop until they run out of ammo or are taken out by swat.
* Why did he tip off the cops to the bomb booby traps at his apartment?
You would think that if Mr. Holmes was so deranged as to set up an elaborate booby trap system and set it up that someone would investigate the apartment around the same time as the incident (loud stereo set up to play by computer in a loop) that he wanted maximum damage/fatalities at that scene, yet he calmly told police that his place was a bomb set to go off by the first person in? Again, a break in pattern….
OK, here’s maybe where I am really off the deep end and into black helo conspiracy theory; It’s a FACT that the F.B.I. has set up sting operations so that they could stop them at the last minute and therefore stopping a terrorist act; what if this was one that got away from them?
Or an even scarier thought, what if this was another “Fast & Furious” type operation designed to get a hue and cry going for greater gun control…if they did it once, why not again?
* Was this part of an agenda related to the UN small arms treaty?
They are voting on the small arms treat at the U.N. in less than two weeks, what better way to gain support for passage than a massacre or two? Supposition at best, but still, it does make one pause and consider at least the possibility.
Sorry for taking up so much bandwidth, M’Liege, but I just had to get these items off my chest somewhere they might be read and considered.
Delftsman3 recently posted..Liberalism
DEEJ: I too have had that training AND have been in do or die circumstances; I’ve been shot twice and stabbed once in the line of duty. I’ve never had a “zest for heroism”, far from it, but sometimes the situation just finds you; how you react is the time when you find out what you are really made of.
I’m with Single Stack on this one. Better to fight and die than cower and let the maniac have that power over me.
Taking a life is NEVER without consequences, no matter how just the action, you either learn to live with it or go ahead and eat a bullet to end it; so far I’ve learned to live with it.
Delftsman3 recently posted..Liberalism
God let’s pray it’s not, that, I am afraid, would most certainly set off CW 2.0
Delfts:
Do not ever apologize for that use of bandwidth. Especially for a contribution such as that.
In the first place, your thoughts are valuable (not just to me, but (I’m sure) to the Emperor as well, and others here besides), and I enjoy reading them.
Secondly, if Misha has the same hosting deal I do (and I believe this to be true), then bandwidth is no longer a problem.
Thirdly – if we let Subotai get away with it…
I utterly reject that notion. There most definitely are acceptable risks.
By your logic no one should ever carry a weapon or defend themselves or others because there is always an element of risk.
If the choice is to cower helplessly while I or the people around me are murdered, doing nothing to try to stop it, or risk my own life or the lives of innocents to stop a madman, I’ll take that chance.
I would find the death of a bystander while stopping a mass murder easier to live with than the knowledge that I was a coward who did nothing, and by my inaction allowed the carnage to continue..
LCBrendan says:
I’m guessing that he would have done it anyways. Or worse, he could have simply rigged the place like he did with his apartment. Besides, wasn’t he suited up?
That’s all it would have taken. Quite possible. But I think you missed the other dimension here — and that’s the OTHER armed people. Sure, you probably could have put the guy down — but because nobody else knows who YOU are, YOU then become a target for them. Think about this for a moment. There is a guy shooting in a dark theater. Nobody can see all that well to begin with. You have no idea how many shooters there are — one at least, and maybe more. THIS guy stopped shooting, and suddenly YOU start to shoot. What is going to stop one of the other armed people from assuming that you are not with this guy? In the dark you are just another unknown with a gun. There is also the chaos added to the mix where once the shooting stopped, it was elbows and assholes trying to get out of there. That was how it was described.
All I am saying is that sure, having armed people there MAY have killed the guy. It also may have killed even more — including yourself, at the hands of someone else who had good intentions. It really is silly for any of us to be sitting here doing the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” thing without having actually been there.
Delftsman3 @ #31:
I haven’t, but I know a lot of cops who have. I know some who have laid low for the right time because they made the calculation that making a rush at a particular time may put even more people in danger.
single stack says:
That is a lot of people that you get to make decisions for, simply by virtue of you having a gun. They might be “acceptable risks” to you if you accidentally shot one of them while trying to get the perp, but how do you think THEY would have felt?
single stack says:
No sir, you are putting words in my mouth. What I am saying is that there are a LOT of factors to take into consideration here, and the bull-in-the-china-shop approach that I hear a lot of people use has the potential to make matters even worse.
If you are armed, and IF you can take out the threat without causing more problems, then by all means do so. But I am more concerned about those people who have concealed carry permits with no actual training other than they can hit a target on a range, suddenly thinking they can become tactical heroes and then turn the theater into a hail of bullets coming from several different directions.
Delftsman3 says:
Apparently, the University of Colorado is looking into whether the shooter used his position as a graduate student to order a lot of this stuff. He was getting deliveries to both the school and his apartment for four months. I wonder if the materials were billed to the UofC also. As far as sophistication? I’m thinking that anyone with a penchant for puzzles can come up with some pretty elaborate and sophisticated devices. With all the movies and television series there are a LARGE source of ideas available.
But what is “sophistication” on something like this? A Rube Goldberg contraption? Something with the famous blue wire that you are supposed to cut first? (or was that the red wire?)
One thing that has been sticking in my mind since that first morning…
The cops had not only identified the shooter, ABC News contacted his mother in San Diego, who only told them “You have the right person.”
What did she mean by that? Did SHE know or suspect something?
If I risk taking friendly fire while trying to take out a bad guy, that’s a risk I am willing to take.
Darth V, there a lot of wordy bastards that post and/or comment here.
VonZorch Imperial Researcher says:
Would you risk killing a innocent bystander in order to try and take a bad guy out?
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Mattexian @ #:
You beat me to it on the IUD explosives. Damn you!
DJ Allyn says:
Doubtful. I’ve never known of any grad student who had the authorization to bill anything to the school they were attending. Even as an employee at my university, I have to have my boss sign off on anything that I order, and then it has to be approved by someone further up the food chain.
I know they’re supposed to have cut back on this sort of thing, but when I was going to college, the credit card companies were practically giving their cards away! I personally got at least three different cards in one semester… some of them I’ve finally paid off! I’ve read elsewhere that the suspect may have ordered a bunch of this stuff in the last few months.
Mattexian recently posted..National Ammo Day, 2011!
LC Grammar Czar, G.L.O.R. says:
Well, he is from a fairly affluent family. I wonder how his graduate schooling was being funded. Perhaps he diverted funds that way?
SOMEthing happened. By all accounts, the guy was bright, studious, likable, and appeared to have a lot of good things going for him. At first I really didn’t CARE why he did what he did, but I am curious now.
I don’t want an excuse or justification — there really isn’t any — but I am wondering what the hell changed in his life that would have made him go from a person with more potential than most, to a complete and utter monster.
Or was he always like this?
I still wonder how much his mother knew, because she gave a real strange answer to ABC News when initially questioned. It was almost as if she expected this to happen, or she wasn’t surprised to hear that it happened.
He tried to join a gun club about a month ago. He applied online and when they tried to call him, they were disturbed by his voice mail greeting. So much so that they decided they were going to turn him down for membership. What kind of friends or acquaintances did he have? Were any of them put off by his voice mail greeting?
Was there nobody in his sphere of contact that didn’t notice this guy was a bit off lately? The evidence reported shows the guy had planned this for at LEAST four months. What happened in January or February that might have pushed him in this direction? These things don’t happen in a vacuum. People don’t go from sane to insane at the flip of a switch. Someone, somewhere noticed the change coming on, or they noticed that something wasn’t quite “right”.
DJ Allyn recently posted..No.1 Against the Rush ~ Liars
It’s possible that he is schizophrenic, which doesn’t usually manifest itself until around the early-to-mid 20s. It’s possible that he was a bit “off” but not enough to warrant therapy or meds. My cousin was known as “weird Mike” for most of his childhood, but he didn’t DO anything until he was in his mid 20s. That’s when his schizophrenia hit.
My schizophrenic grandmother used to see conspiracies around every corner, and one night, her mother awoke to see my grandmother standing over her with a knife in her hand.
I’m not buying into the conspiracy theories that D-man posits. I don’t want our side going nuts over this like the left did with Bush and the WTC attack.
DJ Allyn says:
Let’s run this through the decision making process.
If I do not act it is certain that the scumbag will kill more innocents.
If I act it is possible that I may hurt an innocent or I may either by killing said scumbag or suppressing him by counter fire, stop further killing.
Clearly the most beneficial course is to act.
And from a selfish point, if I do act I will improve my chances of surviving to worry about the consequences. I happen to be a large target and unable to run, when it comes to the fight or flight reaction, I do not have the flight option, it’s fight or die.
Lemme take this in reverse:
VonZorch Imperial Researcher @ #43:
I realize that most people here are speaking from the subjective — how THEY feel they can react. But we all know that there are quite a few people out there with little or no training whatsovever, and who only feel invincible because they have a gun.
I am guessing that MOST people here are trained or at least have a modicum of common sense. It is you people I am not really all that worried about. The ones I worry about are the people who buy a gun and carry it for courage. They bought their gun at the sporting goods store, applied for the conceal carry permit, and clipped the damn thing on their belt and that was it. They might have gone to a range at some time, but maybe not.
These are the idiots who keep the gun in full access to their children who find the gun and take it to school to play with.
We know there ARE those people, and THEY are the ones who make it dangerous for everyone else. Those are the people who I think of in these situations.
LC Grammar Czar, G.L.O.R. says:
I’ve dealt with schizophrenic people on a professional level. It isn’t something that suddenly presents itself. People do notice.
I suspect that you are correct, and that it is one or more of the following psychotic breaks: schizophrenia, schizophreniform, schizoaffective, or delusional disorders. It is impossible to make a diagnosis over a computer using only news media reports, and I am certainly not going to try.
Or he is just an evil mother fucker, which the DSM-IV doesn’t really have a classification for.
DJ Allyn recently posted..No.1 Against the Rush ~ Liars
Deej,
Of course I speak from the subjective. It should be obvious to even the dimmest that I do not know, nor am I responsible for, what others may choose to do. My decisions are mine alone, your decisions are yours.
I don’t think so, at least not at the current time. The conspiracy required for this to be more than a flash in the pan is just too damn complicated to be likely. Likely, I say. Nothing’s ever impossible, but I like to have something more to pin something on before I start seriously entertaining the thought as something worth investigating.
Old habit, I guess. When 95% of the stuff you get is static, you tend to gravitate towards the likely and you tend to be quite brutal when you sift out the less likely stuff. Doesn’t mean you don’t keep notes, but still. You can’t possibly find enough time to thoroughly go down every possible avenue.
Timing? Well, yes, there is a Senate ratification vote coming up for the UN “disarm America” treaty, but that treaty never had a snowball’s chance in Hell of being ratified anyway, so it would be an exercise in futility to try and change that. Ratifying that treaty would basically nullify the Second Amendment, and even John “Old Yellowstain” Roberts wouldn’t have the nerve to try to creatively uphold that when it was challenged in court, as it would be inevitably, no matter how much the thought of Obunghole saying mean things about him terrifies the living shit out of him, and it obviously terrifies him a whole lot more than the thought of violating his oath as a Supreme Court Justice.
Furthermore, even IF the treaty was ratified and Ruth Bader-Meinhof Ginsburg, John “Diaper” Roberts and the Usual Suspects upheld it against challenge, it still wouldn’t accomplish anything but the final extinction of the liberal species in America after the inevitable civil war, and you can’t blame liberals for having courage. They wouldn’t know what it was if it jumped up on the table and sipped all of their Jamba Juice without as much as a “by your leave.”
Then there’s the “somebody’s going to blab” angle which always bugs even the most elaborate of conspiracies, and for this to be a deliberate “Fast and Furious” like conspiracy, that would be a huge factor, especially after Fast and Furious blew up so spectacularly in the faces of Ogabe/Holder. Once burned, twice shy, because every single member of your conspiracy is a potential threat, and nowhere is this more true than in this country.
I’ve said it before, and I really don’t care if it pisses people off, but if you’re going to run a conspiracy, the very last nation you want to try it in is this country, because nobody seems to be able to keep their yaps shut. There’s a reason that foreign intelligence agencies in allied nations are extremely reluctant to share anything at all with their U.S. colleagues unless they positively have to, because people over here obviously care more about getting a good book deal than protecting their nation’s interests.
I should know. You don’t tell an American agency anything unless you have to, because it will be on the front page of the New York Slime before you’ve even finished the conversation. On the upside, it does mean that you have the perfect outlet if you’re launching a false flag operation. Just tell it to a U.S. agent and do make sure to emphasize that it’s top secret, and you’ll be sure to have it in the news within seconds “according to unconfirmed but reliable sources.” Tell the CIA that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow and make it clear that this, should it reach anybody’s ears before tomorrow, would result in catastrophe, and you’ll be watching a Hollywood documentary about it before you hang up the phone.
Needless to say, in such an environment it would be extremely unhealthy to try a load of bull like “the government funded the Aurora Shooter to help ratify a treaty that will never be ratified if G-d Himself told us to and this is all being kept secret from us.”
I’m not saying that it’s impossible that Comrade Ogabe might be stupid enough to try such a thing, L-rd knows he’s not exactly known for his intellect outside of OgabeMedia circles, it’s just unlikely.
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DJ Sez:
Apparently this was another ABC misinformation “mistake” ala “He MAY of been a member of the Tea Party.
The mother was caught unaware of the events and when asked if she was the maggots mother she responded with “you got the right person”, just another example of the LSM’s way of slanting the news to fit their narrative.
Delftsman3 recently posted..Liberalism
Delftsman3 says:
Oh bullshit, Delfts. Next you’re going to say something clearly insane like “the MSM is biased” when we all clearly know that every single media outlet in the world is owned by the Koch Brothers. Silly man.
Emperor Misha I recently posted..Another Heart Warming Story… Not
I guess my perspective is a bit smaller than the rest. I don’t really give a shit about saving the lives of everyone in a theater in which an armed maniac starts blasting away. All I care about is protecting my wife. If the guy points a gun in her direction, I’ll kill him if I can. I don’t much care about “gun free zones.” If I can get her out, I’ll cover here while she’s leaving. If there’s a threat to her, there are no limits as to what I’ll do to protect her. If I have to draw fire away so she can get away, I’ll do that. I’m not there to protect the world. But since I’m a responsible CCW holder, I practice regularly. In a previous life, I was in gunfights, toe-to-toe and otherwise. I don’t give a shit about him wearing body armor. If I hit him center-mass, I’ll at least get his attention. I know how hard it is to engage someone who is coming after you, firing a weapon right at you. Maybe he’ll turn and run or maybe he’ll freeze. All I have to do is be active long enough for my wife to get away and a bit longer than he is. Everything else is simply gravy.
Emperor Misha I @ #46:
Occam’s Razor. I never really have been one for the conspiracies because they end up having more assumptions than facts — or answers.
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Having read Emperor’s well reasoned argument against a conspiracy theory; I think I probably let my paranoid side run away with me, it’s just in the wake of Fast & Furious, it’s becoming all too easy to credit the gov. with such operations…
That’s a great piece of logic, BUT F&F DID go on for almost two years before it blew up in their faces; and had it not been for Brian Terry’s death, it just may have STILL been going on behind the curtain….
I should have let the 48 hr rule extend a little bit too; seems the rifle he was using was an AR15-22; so the cost of the ammo wasn’t nearly as much as it would have been otherwise, and the “tactical” gear he was wearing wasn’t all that much tactical as just scary looking…I still wonder where the hell he got tear gas canisters though…
Let me wipe the egg off my face and I’ll take this as a good lesson not to emulate the ‘journalists’ by jumping the gun before more facts emerge before opening my pie hole.
Delftsman3 recently posted..Liberalism