I took two days off, had a great relaxing time, no internet or TV, which was awesome. The moment I got back and turned on cable I see some nutcase wearing a Kevlar vest and a gas mask walked into a Batman premiere and opened fire, killing a dozen people and injuring dozens more:
OnDeadlne — Aurora police have revised the death toll in the Colorado theater shootings to at least 12 from a gunman who opened fired early today at the premier of a Batman film. There are at least 50 victims from the shooting rampage, police say. Authorities initially put the death toll at 14. A suspect was captured at the scene. Federal officials have identified him as 24-year-old James Holmes.
So far there’s no info on the shooter other than he had one traffic ticket from local police and his family is in San Diego. One problem is the name is so common it’s hard to search. One guy with the same name on Facebook already put up a notification saying “It wasn’t me.”
Any relation to the late Long John Holmes?
Reportedly active in his church, for those who were sweating that one.
Of course, he’s still human, bipedal, white, male, intelligent and middle-class–which makes him One Of Us in any event.
We do this kind of thing all the time, you know–have mass shootings. sure, shocking each and every time, but also shocking how we forget in a few weeks and get even more shocked the next time.
How this will go is: People and Groups with a pet issue will explain how their pet issue is the cause of this. Whatever can be discovered, conjectured or invented about the shooter will be used as proof that (insert cause) is at the root of the problem and that if we would just (insert proposed action that is the same as was being proposed last week for unrealted reasons) then this would never happen again.
Also, we’re in for some security theatre. Perhaps the unemployment crisis can be averted by hiring everyone as security guards to watch everyone else.
Also, my eastern European born SO asked me if the shooter was an American.
Of course, I responded. It’s almost always us who do this kind of thing. We just blame it on the foreign enemy du jour.
Some Texas legislator already made his public statement about this being due to the ongoing “attack on judeo-christian values.” I understand that there will always be ignorant self-aggrandizing clowns in the world. What astonishes me is that people vote for them.
I’m glad I’m not in the USA. I’d hate to have to pass a security checkpoint run by the Cinema Security Administration in order to see The Hobbit.
The biggest single massacre by a single individual in the US was carried out in broad daylight and involved no firearms of any sort; the death toll was 14 times that of the Aurora incident.