Reality check:Unanswered questions about the Colorado massacre

[Tilar]

Screw guns. Make prostitution legal again!!!! 

     

[c00nhunterjoe]

Society is partially to blame. We are not allowed t teach our kids that in real life you don't always win. Sometimes you lose.   My sons soccor team is not allowed to keep score, both teams win.  Same thing with basketball. Everyone is awinner and all the teams get the same size trophy at the end of the season.  We teach our kids that the world is perfect and everyone is a winner and failure is a bad word that shall not be spoken. Then they graduate high school and get dumped into the real world and get depressed, do drugs, and go postal.

[stripedelete]

Society is partially to blame. We are not allowed t teach our kids that in real life you don't always win. Sometimes you lose.   My sons soccor team is not allowed to keep score, both teams win.  Same thing with basketball. Everyone is awinner and all the teams get the same size trophy at the end of the season.  We teach our kids that the world is perfect and everyone is a winner and failure is a bad word that shall not be spoken. Then they graduate high school and get dumped into the real world and get depressed, do drugs, and go postal.

I agree, kids are not developing the ability to cope and real life is terrifying them.  However, this sentence should read, "We are not teaching our kids that in real life you don't always win".  Parents absolutely have the most control over this, but, they are a big part of the problem.

I think the kids with "bad wiring" who would have been on the margins even if raised with loss, rejection, and failure are the ones that are doing the shooting.  An example would be the Virginia Tech shooter.  Which goes to your point, if they grew up before the 90's they would probably enough received enough reinforcement from parents, peers, and societal norms, that most could keep the crazy in the bottle.

I don't think the Colorado shooter was one of those kids.  I think his brain broke.  Just like a heart attack or kidney failure the brain is an organ that can fail.  My guess is he will be diagnosed with Schizophrenia, which comes on in males in the mid 20's.  The stress from school may have brought it on full blown relatively quick.  I put him in the same category with the Texas University bell tower sniper who had a tumor pressing on the part of the brain that controls violence.  Again, IMO a failed organ.

It doesn't sound like he was a Sociopath either .  That would be Dylan Klebold, Jeffrey Dahmer, and most corporate CEO's.  IMO, Sociopaths are the scariest bunch.  I believe there are far more out there than anyone thinks.  They are just not all killing and or eating people.

[Mike DC]

                 
Those Columbine kids probably did their share of failing, and they still shot up a school.  One of them might have been a sociopath but I don't think the sidekick was.  Lots of other inexplicable violent sprees like this are done by people who failed plenty.



I used to be interested in why some people do this stuff, but I not longer am.  After some reading I came to the conclusion that it just happens.  Some people do it.  

There are 300 million people in the USA.  That's a lot of opportunities to produce some loose screws.  If you roll the dice enough times then eventually you're gonna get just the right combination of factors to produce one of these killers.  

Yeah, it's more common here than in other countries.  You can probably attribute that to our culture's particular traits, which can be aggravating factors for people on the borderline of going psycho.  But so what?  No culture is perfect just like no individual is.  And even good traits have downsides.  The USA does not lose a lot of people to serial killers in the big picture.  

[ACUDANUT]

Call it what you will. These assholes who do this, DO NOT FEAR GOD. May they burn in Hell

[bull]

The conspiracy theory will only get legs if the conservatives take the ball and run with it. It rests comfortably on the idea this attack was staged to push the liberals anti-gun campaign.

The armchair commandos crack me up. The guy was armored all over but a small couple inch area of his face. The chances you would hit that area, in a dark room, gas clouds and chaos all around is slim. You would have been more likely to hit a person freaking out trying to run by. You would have just got his attention and he would have focused his automatic fire at you and everyone in the way.

This is real life. Not some video game or leisurely trip to the range. That kind of thinking is why more people should not be armed. They are ill equipped to judge a situation and are likely to create more problems than if they just took cover.

Ha ha! You're funny. Put on a bullet proof vest and have someone shoot you once in the chest with a .38 and we'll see how quickly your priorities change.

[Brock Lee]

His adrenaline levels were off the charts. It wouldn't have hurt as bad as you think.

[bull]

His adrenaline levels were off the charts. It wouldn't have hurt as bad as you think.

Maybe. But 2, 3, 4 rounds...? I imagine he would have at least been distracted and his task disrupted, maybe long enough for more people to get out of there alive.

[stripedelete]

After some reading I came to the conclusion that it just happens.  Some people do it.  

There are 300 million people in the USA.  That's a lot of opportunities to produce some loose screws.  If you roll the dice enough times then eventually you're gonna get just the right combination of factors to produce one of these killers.  

Spot on there.   Every time the population doubles so does everything else.

[Steve P.]

I think I good shot to the head would/could have at least knocked him out.. May have stopped the bullet, but sheer velocity could do it alone... Just don't miss!!! 

[bull]

Guns: Better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them.

[TK73]

Guns: Better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them.

I suppose there is the "right tool for the right job" saying too... Seems a 7.62 is not quite appropriate for a clogged drain... damn apartment maint guy is not happy AND the downstairs neighbors...

[Mytur Binsdirti]

Guns: Better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them.

How about; when seconds count, the police are minutes away.

[Cooter]

Maybe one thing we can do is figure out why some young males feel the need to massacre people when things don't go their way.

For the same reason people act so surprized when someone attempts to embarrass someone on an online forum in public, face to face, etc. and they get the third degree and someone shows up on their doorstep knocking on the door. You f*ck around some people and it's like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. You just happened to be the person that set it off. Some folks are walking around with some serious problems right as we are reading this, yet, you always have one or two that can't understand why they got shot or whatever when they picked the wrong muthaf*cka to f*ck with. The bar has been raised to include, but limited to, killin' people when they feel they have been wronged. Of course, the attention it garners helps things along as well. Some people are secure in the fact that if confronted, they can and will resolve the situtation, others will f*ckin' kill your ass.


A mind is a terrible thing to screw with, especially, if it has some wiring problems from the git-go.

Ok, but the question is why. Why can most people handle adversity while a few others freak out and go postal?

IMO, it has nothing to do with never learning to fail, it has to do with CONSTANTLY failing. Once someone has had to deal with failure their entire life, it becomes old VERY quick..If you mess with someone once, twice, maybe even three times, they will tend to blow it off....Yet, try that sh*t for about 5 years and see who's at the wrong end of a gun then. People can only take so much. Everybody has their breaking point. Some just have a shorter fuse that's all.

IMO, Arming the public is a good move towards forcing these types to control themsleves long enough to live. Death was, is, and will always be the best deterrant to doing wrong.

[HPP]

I've seen a number of different studies that said the punishment of a crime was never a consideration to criminals contemplating an act. To say tougher sentences are required, up to and including death, to be doled out, it will, imo, not make a difference. Most perps think they can get away with it. That is why they try it.

However, those same studies have often shown that getting caught in the act by someone willing to apply the same force as the perp is a cause for concern. It still won't stop them from attempting the acts, in most cases, but they do think about it.

Case in point, Florida has reasonable laws around carrying firearms. After a recent round of updates to these laws, State officials noted an immediate increase in violent acts committed against tourist, who were almost decidedly unarmed. How do the perps know this? Well, because at the time, all rental car fleets in Florida carried the same prefix on their license plates so one had only to understand the lettering sequence to pick out who the best potential targets were. Once this was discovered, the plate requirements for fleets were changed and the crimes started to drop.

Colorado has similar laws and open carry is not unusual to see. However, because of that there are many places that have enacted restrictions on the open carry permissibility. Those typically include schools, government buildings, and movie theaters. I'm not sure how this relates to concealed carry permits however.


Related more to the immediate discussion of our freak in Aurora... something that may be relevant to this discussion but not address by almost anyone anywhere, even the media and crime analysts, is the fact that the front range of Colorado - the Denver metro area, Superior, Boulder, Loveland, etc, is largely a transplanted population that has lived here for less than ten years. Depending on the source, up to 70% of this population is from somewhere else. This creates a unique situation in that there is a lack of continuity among families and residents that creates an environment that is potentially more open to suggestion because you really don't know many people and no one is around to call you out or for that matter, support you when things get rough. Now, that isn't to suggest that this is an environment that creates freaks, but, like some have suggested, when things do break down, there is a lack of the intimate human networks that create the support that we all need at some time or another. Now in Colorado, since so many people are newbies, they tend to create a network of like minded people open to a degree of support of likewise new arrivals, but it certainly does not go as deep or as intimate as longer term associations. If, like Cooter suggests, you go through years of attacks, denials, and treatment that puts you outside the norm and you move to a place where everyone is an outsider and even the outsiders put you outside, it can have some crushing consequences. This isn't to make excuses for the actions in Aurora, as certainly something in that individual is broken, but rather to point out that there is a context that this occurred in that many are not considering.

[TheGhost]

Call it what you will. These assholes who do this, DO NOT FEAR GOD. May they burn in Hell

Neither do I, and not once have I thought about doing anything remotely like this.

[Budnicks]

I think it's due to NOT getting "ANY"....

You're right, but it's a matter of not getting "any" of the right thing.

   

[mauve66]

he didn't want to die, as soon as the cops showed up he gave himself up, if there had been armed people in the theater then he would of thought twice about it

he just wants the noteriety, his name won't fade away, this trial will go on for 1 year or even 2, maybe some of you are too young to know these names but history shows that the infamous are remembered just like the famous

every country has them, just people here don't know about them cause you can't read their language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_country

of course countries with an anglo population seem to have ALOT more than others.........

especially this country, but then we have alot more people than most countries
of course china is controlled beyond belief, no weapons allowed and the people in india are mostly too poor to buy guns i'm guessing, but of course with all these call centers going in they will be raking in the dough soon enough

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

[redmist]

He was wearing NO ARMOR. He had a "tactical vest" on, and thats it.  The body armor was a media spin piece, and it worked just like they wanted it to.

[bull]

He was wearing NO ARMOR. He had a "tactical vest" on, and thats it.  The body armor was a media spin piece, and it worked just like they wanted it to.

That would not surprise me in the least. It's hard to tell though if this is due to ignorance, purposeful distortion or the fact that the truth just plain doesn't promote the kind of hype that keeps the ratings/sales up where they'd like them to be. Not sure about TV news but as a newspaper reporter at a mid-sized paper for a couple of years and I can tell you that for sure, most reporters are either a little or a lot to the left of center. There was no "liberal conspiracy" there but they didn't have to conspire since all of them (but me) believed the same or similarly on social issues. I chaulked much of it up to them having next to no life experience off concrete other than the occasional hike in the park. If/when they report on muscle cars, hunting, farming, guns, rodeos, off road motor sports, etc., they have no experience to draw on other than what little they learned the last time they reported on it. Most of them grew up in the city, got their public school education, worked part-time flipping burgers, moved on to the university for their liberal arts degree and then got a job reporting news.

[Mike DC]

 

They just say whatever sounds most sensational, no more, no less. 


If the shooter's only guns had been a pair of raggedy old Colt .22 revolvers, they would still have said he was "armed with semiautomatic weapons." 

[redmist]

[Indygenerallee]

 

[TheGhost]

I like how the actual glock is under the ak47 category.

[Charger_Fan]

That's no shit, huh?