I don't know how much famailiarity/experience you have with firearms, Tico, but I'll tell you this: I'm imagining being in that darkened theater with a pistol in my possession; there is a gas canister that just went off, polluting the air and cutting visibility to zilch; I can hear where there shots are coming from, but I can't see a damned thing. Am I going to pull out my trusty 9-mm and blast away at where I think the shooter is? Not unless I've lost all my marbles all of a sudden.
(Btw, I'm a pretty good shot. When I can see the target and have time to take aim.)
0 Replies
Cycloptichorn
2
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 06:29 pm
I just read the transcript of the police radio discussion -
The cops apparently couldn't get in, due to the gas. It's entirely likely that visibility was extremely low - a dark theater full of gas clouds? You're going to take down the dude in black ballistic armor who is shooting the place up, in such a situation?
Doubt it. Highly doubt it.
Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
Lustig Andrei
2
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 06:33 pm
@spidergal,
I've never heard of such a thing in the US as people being frisked when going in to see a movie. Our theaters don't even have metal-detectors or anything similar at the entrances. There may be exceptions in some particularly dangerous places but I've not ever heard of any.
0 Replies
BillRM
0
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 06:41 pm
@hawkeye10,
You know the weapon used it not the point the man had his whole apartment ready to blow up by news reports so he could had used bombs to destroy the whole movie theater with an even higher loss of life.
Hundred lost their lives at the Federal building in Oklahoma and no firearm was involved.in any way just a damn big home make bomb.
No big deal for example for either someone of his brain power to come up with a home make weapon that would be even more deadly then the firearms he did use such as a homemake flame thrower that would be at least as deadly as the WW2 models and the death toll would be greater then it was.
Hell one guy got piss and came up with a homemake tank that he then used to destroy a large part of his town. All the police could do is watch him doing it as none of their weapons could touch him.
If memory serve me correctly many many decades ago a man kill hundreds in an after hour club in NYC only using a five gallon can of gasoline.
See video to tank that destroy town
Home make flame thrower
To sum up it is not firearms that are deadly it is people who are deadly with or without firearms.
I take the same position on child sexual abuse..let's figure out why people decide they want to abuse kidS, then maybe we will have a shot at leasrning how to not grow people who desire or are willing to abuse kids. Punishment after the fact works only to a point, and only after the harm has been done. All too often punishment is done to make the collective feel better after we have failed to do our jobs. I want solutions, not to promote feeling good about failing.
The problem is that we have a leadership that wish to claim that they can solve the problem of random mass murders by doing something simple like banning large magazines for rifles/handguns or baning some one class of weapons.
If a person of even average intelligent wish to preform as act of mass murder he or she will find a way even if all the hundreds of millions of firearms would disappear tomorrow in the US.
You are right Hawkeye we need to look at the people who do these acts in a search for even a beginning of a solution.
I think something about white suburban culture allows people to go quietly batshit-crazy without anyone noticing.
No one was of the opinion that the unabomber was sane before he was found out and neither that Timothy James McVeigh head was tightly screw down on his head as he went from one gun show to the next selling the racist book The Turner Diaries that contain the blueprint for his attack.
0 Replies
rosborne979
2
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 08:03 pm
@Lustig Andrei,
Lustig Andrei wrote:
Good observation, ros. I have long suspected the same thing.
It can't be a genetic behavior, it's gotta be cultural. Either that or a statistical anomaly (but I think the statistics on mass murders and serial killers are pretty strongly weighted toward white suburban "quiet neighborhood" males).
I suspect it's linked closely to isolation in various forms.
I can't think of anything good to say about guns in cities. Hunting for needed food, I understand. Guns in the city, I don't understand.
It is because of our Constitutional right to carry handguns for self defense. Americans who live in cities have rights too.
0 Replies
oralloy
-1
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 08:10 pm
@panzade,
panzade wrote:
We need less assault rifles out in the street. Period.
An assault weapon is just a gun with certain harmless cosmetic features that the anti-gun crowd likes to demonize.
Given that there is no legitimate reason for banning harmless cosmetic features, doing so violates the Constitution (strict scrutiny, or even mere intermediate scrutiny).
Now if someone wanted to limit ammo capacity *without* banning harmless cosmetic features, perhaps that would pass muster with the Constitution. I couldn't guarantee it, but it would at least avoid the blatant violation of the Constitution that I outlined above.
Such a limit should not be so draconian as to prevent a gun from having utility for self defense however. And law enforcement should be required to comply with the same gun laws as the rest of us (what's good for the goose is good for the gander).
And by the way, I am anti-gun, but it's not irrational and it's not fear-based. We just don't need them.
Americans are free people. We don't have to need them. We can have guns just because we choose to do so.
Mame wrote:
People are killed by people who are armed. If you're unarmed, there'd be a lot less deaths. That's not irrational, it's a fact.
Actually, no. That isn't a fact. Gun availability has little impact on homicide rates.
0 Replies
thack45
1
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 08:48 pm
@rosborne979,
you can take the beast out of the wild...
0 Replies
xxxx
1
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 08:59 pm
@oralloy,
When the police arrested himself and called himself the "Joker" I wonder why no one suspected anything when he bought 4 guns and 6,000 rounds of ammunition
0 Replies
panzade
4
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 10:36 pm
@oralloy,
oralloy wrote
Quote:
An assault weapon is just a gun with certain harmless cosmetic features that the anti-gun crowd likes to demonize.
You call a clip that holds 100 rounds a "certain harmless cosmetic feature"?
You know the interesting thing is the guy was working on his PHD. But as they said he was currently unenrolling from his school and was not currently employed. I wonder if any of these details played any role in his motive. It is such a strange case. I bet we will probably never know what the reasoning was and only hear speculation and critisism from anti-gun people.
0 Replies
Ticomaya
1
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 10:42 pm
@panzade,
I don't believe that's what he said, pan.
0 Replies
OmSigDAVID
-1
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 10:58 pm
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
DAmn, Im all on pins and needles cause my nephew and his wife moved to Auraura in May
and hes always been a superhero movie and Comic book fan.
Ive heard nothing from his ma (my wifes sister) and Im sick of the whole gun nut scene here in our country.
Your emotions & your sickness have NO EFFECT
on the Constitutional limits upon the jurisdiction of government.
In order to justify gun control, there 'd have to be a Constitutional amendment
revoking everyone 's natural right and his Constitutional right
to defensive gun possession, so that violent predators can have a monopoly of power over their prey.
The odds r pretty GOOD that your nephew remains intact.
David
0 Replies
OmSigDAVID
-1
Reply
Fri 20 Jul, 2012 11:03 pm
@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
Since I posted that my wifes sister called and said that her son and wife WERE gonna go to the premier but decided to skip it (shes pregnant)
Big sighs of relief ensued, but we are greatly saddened by the reports of the mass killing now that our kin lucked out because of discomfort.
Im not certain that there is only one multiplex theater in Auraura.
If the audiences in those theaters are better armed than the other one, then thay 'll be a lot safer.
That 's what guns are FOR.
I 'll just leave everyone to his own discretion
qua wearing gas masks; I see none of them in my future.
