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[Maniac gunman in Colorado] decides that he is entitled to ruin lives & plant bombs
The Ender
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Yup. You can't even go to watch a fucking Batman movie these days, I guess.
I saw that the role call thread was unstickied; I'm hoping that means everyone here is okay. Unfortunately, 70 other people are not (12 dead, 58 injured - at least 2 injured very badly).
James Eagan Holmes walked into a midnight screening of Batman, decked-out in full body armour & carrying an AR-15 (you'll probably know it by it's common military name, the M-16), a Glock (with a second one apparently in his car) and a shotgun. A few patrons were dressed in costumes, so Holmes didn't cause an immediate panic. He planted explosives all over his apartment before embarking on his rampage, so the police have had to evacuate the entire residential compound (here's to hoping that none of these Goddamn things go off and wreck someone's home).
Some early reporting also suggests that he took a large dose of Vicodin before the shooting, though this hasn't been confirmed yet, I don't think? (if it is confirmed, I imagine it was an extra means of preparation for a gun battle with the police. In any case, Holmes had something of a change of heart after his initial shooting spree, surrendering to police while lying next to his car after they arrived).
...If people in the real world were mostly decent & rational individuals, I wouldn't have a problem with them owning assault rifles and / or multiple pistols and / or purchasing thousands of rounds of ammunition over two months for unknown purposes. But people mostly aren't, so I do have a problem with it.
Anyway, I'll update this OP with more information as it comes forward. Use this thread to discuss the ruinous effects of violence, gun control / gun rights, victim services, and other related tangents.
I saw that the role call thread was unstickied; I'm hoping that means everyone here is okay. Unfortunately, 70 other people are not (12 dead, 58 injured - at least 2 injured very badly).
James Eagan Holmes walked into a midnight screening of Batman, decked-out in full body armour & carrying an AR-15 (you'll probably know it by it's common military name, the M-16), a Glock (with a second one apparently in his car) and a shotgun. A few patrons were dressed in costumes, so Holmes didn't cause an immediate panic. He planted explosives all over his apartment before embarking on his rampage, so the police have had to evacuate the entire residential compound (here's to hoping that none of these Goddamn things go off and wreck someone's home).
Some early reporting also suggests that he took a large dose of Vicodin before the shooting, though this hasn't been confirmed yet, I don't think? (if it is confirmed, I imagine it was an extra means of preparation for a gun battle with the police. In any case, Holmes had something of a change of heart after his initial shooting spree, surrendering to police while lying next to his car after they arrived).
...If people in the real world were mostly decent & rational individuals, I wouldn't have a problem with them owning assault rifles and / or multiple pistols and / or purchasing thousands of rounds of ammunition over two months for unknown purposes. But people mostly aren't, so I do have a problem with it.
Anyway, I'll update this OP with more information as it comes forward. Use this thread to discuss the ruinous effects of violence, gun control / gun rights, victim services, and other related tangents.
With Love and Courage
The Ender on
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Also its becoming increasingly clear each time an event like this occurs that mandatory mental health screenings before a gun purchase and random screenings of current gun owners should be a federal mandate.
EDIT: Yes, the AR-15 was semi-auto. He may have converted it to fully auto, though (it would've been illegal to do so, because even U.S. gun laws aren't THAT crazy) - but that's not been discussed yet.
He also did take and pass some sort of screening tests, apparently. And he was also an undergrad neuroscience degree holder.
*shrug*
In any case, he bought 6 thousand fucking rounds of ammunition. SIX THOUSAND. In 2 months.
I mean, what kind of personal protection or hunting application does that have?
Man do I ever hate guns. I just hate them.
If people who are firearm users / fans want to talk about how they shouldn't be punished / restricted because of what guys like Holmes do, okay, whatever - but I don't think anyone here, even in that camp, thinks it's reasonable to buy that much ammunition over such a short span of time with zero oversight from the state / law enforcement?
I'm an avid fan of target shooting and the like, but even when I was in high school and going to my home range every day I didn't need six thousand rounds.
What I am most curious about is the explosives, what exactly are we talking here? Are we talking bathtub kaboom thanks to some knowledge of chemistry and a trip to home depot or did this guy have access to the good stuff. Obviously no amount of laws could stop him from rigging up some explosives, so that is not going to solve the issue. Explosives are already pretty heavily controlled.
Really though earlier tonight a friend of mine posted something and I think it really is the more important issue
There was more to it but this part I wanted to link. This guy was obviously mentally unstable yet we are more concerned with reactionary bullshit worried about how he killed a bunch of people rather than the why he did it, and whether if we were more focused on treating mental illness could have been avoided altogether. Queue several pages explaining the basics of fully auto vs semi auto, legalities of owning a fully automatic weapon, and all the associate ignorance that always happens every single time we have a gun thread.
Wait are the police counting the Glock as the explosive devices he had on his person/in his car?
The police have said they were 'sophistcated'. Whether that means that they were military grade or just 'sophisticated in terms of bath tub explosives' is anyone's guess right now.
100 rounds can go pretty quick with a semi-automatic weapon, depending on the amount of accuracy you want. People shooting into crowds generally don't need / want a lot of accuracy.
That's very often not why people buy ammunition.
For target shooting 100 bullets can go by quite quickly.
Of course not many people buy AR-15s for target shooting.
One note about the AR-15, it is not just the civilian name for the M-16. They are different weapons.
That's correct, but the designs are similar enough that most people who see an AR-15 recognize it as an M-16, in my experience. They handle & clean very similarly as well.
What if you had to keep your large quantity of ammunition at the range? Like, what if it was just mandated that you had to keep anything over [X] quantity of bullets, if you wanted that many, at a licensed shooting range, and you had to cover the cost of keeping them stored? EDIT: Maybe the government could even subsidize you on the cost of storage for being a responsible gun owner rather than a fucking maniac.
What that be reasonable to you?
Because sane people do not generally go to the movies on premier days with the premeditated intention of killing a bunch of people.
How well do you feel our very strict laws on the possession, manufacture, and use of explosives were in this case?
Right but first reply nailed the herpy derp right on the head. A fully automatic weapon was not even used in this case. Hell they are very rarely used in crimes at all. However without even a basic functional understanding of what exactly was used we already have calls for a ban on something that has already effectively been banned since 1984. Unless you are rich, because rich people can be trusted.
A theater though does make an excellent killing ground, as we saw in inglorious bastards. Generally you have four exits, two in the front, and two in the back. Which entrance you use will give you an excellent field of fire on at least two of them, and you could definitely easily discourage people from going for the last. Moreover given the cramp seating fleeing survivors are going to bottleneck each other making it a real opportunity for a bloodbath. Especially if you are using explosives. Hell it is dark, people are distracted, really from a rampage sort of view it is damn good.
We should ban theaters, or enact my plan to stage snipers above the stage to pick off talkers, cell phone users, and people going postal.
Oh yeah, I wasn't trying to argue they didn't, but it's be more accurate to say "civilian version of the M-16" is all I was saying.
It's a minor quibble.
I'm not sure.
I don't do most of my shooting on the range, and I've often had to use my rifles for reasons other than target practice (when I lived on my farm growing up, now that I live in cities I've left my guns in the country) so I'm not sure if I'm okay going that far.
But I'm sure there's a solution here.
100 rounds is nothing if you are going to the range. My Calico itself holds 100 rounds. A pistol with two spare mags could easily run though 24-30 rounds and depending on what type of drills you are doing you could burn through that pretty quick.
The vast vast majority of people who buy AR-15s do it for target shooting, with second place somewhere between impressing friends or fighting off the zombie apocalypse. What else would you buy them for? They are rarely used in crimes, so what else would you be shooting with them aside from small game?
You want to restrict guns, maybe you can do it if the statistics show it's a reasonable way to combat gun crime compared to other, non-restrictive initiatives, not because omg guns are scary. And really, relative scariness is the only reason to restrict guns instead of, say, cigarettes, considering the fact that secondhand smoke kills more people than bullets.
Whether or not he was sane, a discussion on the state of mental health facilities in the U.S. is off-topic at the moment. Holmes was not a patient of one, and while he may be in the future, that certainly had no impact on the shootings.
We'll see, I guess. If he developed the bombs in his kitchen, they probably weren't going to be very effective. If he bought them, the authorities can find the people he bought them from and charge them. So, I'd say at this point that the laws probably either forced him to make ineffective homemade bombs or forced him to acquire them illegally. That's pretty good in my book.
Nobody said anything about a ban, and the error was corrected by me. It was also an easy error to make.
I agree, though I do think tragedies like this do provide an opportunity to talk about these issues in ways we might just ignore on any other day.
I'm a gun owner, I've been around them all my life. I believe that a gun is intrinsically no more dangerous than a car, but I'm sure there are things that could be done to avoid making tragedies like this and other shootings as prevalent in our society as they are.
Though honestly, I think the answer lies in structural problems with society more than they do in the availability of guns and ammo.
When is the best time to discuss gun control?
What does this achieve? How does the government track how many bullets you have? If I go to the range do I need to gather all my brass or I cannot buy more ammo? I own 5 different guns that combined can take 7 different calibers. How many bullets for each should I be allotted? Is that just for me? What about family members? If I am married with 3 kids does that mean I can have 5x the ammo of a single guy? What about people who reload? Do they need to drop their ammo off after they make it to pick it up later? How do you ensure they get the right ammo back? How are gunstores going to sort, store, account for, and maintain such a disparate lot of ammo for at least a third of the population? If i want to have an all day range day with friends legally on BML land how will this work with your system as i would need a lot more ammo than my normal allotment? What if I am avidly into 3 gun shooting competitions, I would need more than 100 rounds to compete in a single round.
Which returns us back to what does this achieve? Do you think limiting ammunition would have in any way prevented this tragedy?
I'm not 'using' this incident to push anything. Anti-gun is my stance, certainly, and you can deal with that.
As far as statistics are concerned, guns cause the most violent crime & murder in the U.S., by an extremely large margin.
But six thousand rounds in two months seems a bit high for anyone other than a range owner.
Why not? If our mental health facilities and options were more developed who is to say this would have happened at all as he might have been able to get access to the treatment he needs.
but they did not stop him yes? Why would not the same means have been used to acquire a firearm? Why would making stricter laws on guns prevent anything, when already stricter laws on firearms did nothing in this case.
Not if you have a basic knowledge of firearms.
You make the case that since the people of the world are not decent & rational they should not be trusted with dangerous objects. Could you define decent and rational for us such that we can use your definition to decide what potentially lethal objects people should be allowed access to?
As a Canadian, I must ask, does your "right to bear arms" follow in the same manner as "Free speech" where the government is not allowed to restrict your guns, but a private business can do whatever it damn well pleases?
WoW
Dear Satan.....
'The government' doesn't track how much ammunition you have. Like most laws, a lot of it would probably be applied after a crime occurs, or during / after an inspection.
Yes, I think limiting ammunition in some meaningful way would have prevented this gunman from killing & wounding so many people.
Yeah, I mean, right after someone uses guns to murder a shitload of people would be the MOST obvious and correct time to discuss gun control.
Even if that discussion is simply "Wouldn't have helped here".
Right after an event happens is precisely when you discuss the factors that did or could have lead to said event.
This discussion is pointless on all levels. The last dozen shootings did nothing to advance gun control, the majority of Americans do not want more gun control. The odd massacre every year or two is a price most Americans are willing to pay to have guns.
I didn't 'make a case'. You'll note that it was an off-hand remark rather than a methodical argument.
I think human beings have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that enough people enough of the time are so horrifically unprepared to handle firearms with any semblance of responsibility that the public should not be trusted with them, just like we don't trust the public with quite a few things. I get it: you like target ranges, you're a responsible gun owner, you buy guns and you love guns. We occupy different universes, but whatever, that's fine. The problem is that most people aren't like you. They buy guns and do either stupid shit or outright malicious shit with them.
Just so you are aware: this is not some exclusive gun control thread.
Like I said in the OP: talk about victim services or the causal agents of violence or whatever related to this particular shooting.
Probably at a time when there hasn't just been an unthinkable tragedy so people's emotions are raw and rational thought is therefore compromised. Crafting a gun policy which will work, which carefully balances the legitimate need for people to defend themselves vs. the cultural importance of weapon rights and individual gun ownership vs. the very real right of people to not get shot, will require caution, reason, and civilized discussion. Right after some asshole who apparently thought he was the Joker shot up a theater is not the time.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Over half of American households own guns. Like 30% of those who identify as Democrats, even. What 'malicious shit' is the 'majority' of us doing, exactly?
Well first guns do not cause anything. Guns are inanimate objects. Unless my guns are sneaking out at night, but that is just snark.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=43 Sadly the spacing is terrible. Id say check the link.
The vast majority of violent crimes do not involve firearms, nor are they an extremely large margin over other weapons down there in the 22% category. Is an interesting read if a bit out of date.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/wuvc01.pdf
Now if you are talking just murders then yes small caliber handguns that hold less than 8 rounds are the most common murder weapon used.
Well, no, that would be too easy, wouldn't it? Most people don't do those things, obviously. Something like a third of Americans own guns and we get a crazy spree shooting, what, once every few years?
http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/pdf/major-shootings.pdf a few times a month
The last big massacre involving an American shooter on a rampage was that SEAL dude who murdered 16 civilians in Afghanistan.
Are there any other potentially dangerous objects you feel the public should not be trusted with? Could you provide some logical non-arbitrary way for us to differentiate potentially dangerous objects that should be kept out of peoples hands?
For instance according to parenting magazine
Where are we classifying pools on this scale?
Hell according to struckbylightening.org mythical sky dad has already killed 13 people and injured 111 alone this year. Can people not be trusted to go outside during storms?