10 dead, 35+ wounded at Batman premiere shooting

[General Zod]

I don't think I'm ever going to a midnight screening after this. That said I cannot wait to get the fuck out of this shithole of a city next month.

[Col. Crackpot]

Last week, 2 people were killed and 15 wounded at a block party in Toronto, due to gang violence. This made the international news, and there was much hand-wringing and cries of "where has society gone wrong?"

The same week, 1 person was killed and 8 people injured in a hit-and-run crash on the highway, a short distance down the road. No one cared. The story was buried in the back pages of the paper. Many others were killed in smaller accidents. Certainly not front-page news.

That's the crucial word there. Accidents and intentional attacks on other human beings are not really comparable. Even if you're statistically likelier to die in an automobile crash, very few people get in a car with the express purpose of running someone over.

Someone choosing to drive when shit drunk and killing someone is hardly an 'accident'. At best it is willful disregard for human life.

[JLTucker]

I don't think I'm ever going to a midnight screening after this. That said I cannot wait to get the fuck out of this shithole of a city next month.

Irrational much? What on earth makes you so scared? Is this kind of an event prevalent enough to warrant such fear?

[General Zod]

I don't think I'm ever going to a midnight screening after this. That said I cannot wait to get the fuck out of this shithole of a city next month.

Irrational much? What on earth makes you so scared? Is this kind of an event prevalent enough to warrant such fear?

I hated going to theaters before this already, it's just another reason for me to hate it.

[JLTucker]

I don't think I'm ever going to a midnight screening after this. That said I cannot wait to get the fuck out of this shithole of a city next month.

Irrational much? What on earth makes you so scared? Is this kind of an event prevalent enough to warrant such fear?

I hated going to theaters before this already, it's just another reason for me to hate it.

It's not a reason for you to hate it more. If these are rare occurrences, there's no need to be scared. Twitter is abuzz with people saying "I'm no longer going to a theater at midnight." Why not? Are the crime rates in your area high? What about these types of shootings? Instead of thinking about this event logically and what could possibly come of it, people have a knee jerk reaction to fear. I mean, shit, some fool on Facebook said the government will now place TSA-level security on theaters. Really? What the hell? This appears to be a freak occurrence (if someone has data to refute this, please let me know) and people are drowning in that goddamned 24-hour news pool that is fear.

[Jim Raynor]

Might as well say that you'll never go to school, college, or a political event anymore, since that's where a bunch of recent mass shootings have occurred.

Stuff like this is the exception to the rule. Violent crime rates have declined in recent decades. It's just that when something happens now, it gets internet and 24/7 news coverage.

[Col. Crackpot]

Our culture wasn't saturated with homicidal violence as entertainment back then. Now it's fucking everywhere. Add easy access to weapons and an unstable nutbag and boom. Just like fire... heat, oxygen and fuel.

I am not an expert on 19th century American culture, but I am somewhat skeptical about that. The media of that day -based on what I read - still liked to write about Indian massacres etc, nevermind the whole circus shows which did feature violence etc.

Granted, but how often was the average person exposed to that sort of thing and how intense could it have been? There is a hell of a difference between say reading about a massacre and watching the cgi image of axes rripping through skulls and disembowlments.

[Sea Skimmer]

What I'm curious about is why we didn't seem to have this sort of whacko mass shootings before the latter half of the 20th Century. If anything, there was less gun control in the past. I'm not sure it's merely a matter of better reporting. So... why the rise in violence and crazy gun shit?

What gun control? Before the 1934 national firearms act basically nothing existed, and was in fact introduced because the mob began getting too power. You could simply buy artillery and machine guns, and indeed such weapons were bought and used by striking miners in several instances. Before 1960 you could still buy handguns through the mail and children could buy anti tank rifles no problem though the mail, my dad and friends had a Lahti L-39 as teenagers. It was also perfectly normal for them to take random rifles, openly carried, on the local buses to go shooting.

Stuff however did happen back in the day. One of the worst terrorist bombings in US history for example was the Bath school attack in which a crazy guy blew up an entire school building with dynamite in 1927, and the bombing of Wall Street in 1920 using a horse cart bomb. Shootings of more then a few people were not common no, but I think this may have been because society still had a more direct connection to violence from the Civil War. Everyone had a veteran or ten they knew, and that all happened in America. The idea that shooting someone you didn't have a problem with and who wasn't a uniformed enemy had just not taken hold in society, let alone been repeated by the media endlessly. Other then that, it sure isn't the weapons since highly functional repeating firearms have been around since the 1860s.

Also one must observe, this is yet another mass shooting that targeted victims in a zone that bans guns. Personally I remain vastly more afraid of being mugged and murdered on a random Philly street corner.

[Sea Skimmer]

Death toll is now given as 12, and the shooter has some kind of explosive device in his apartment

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/ ... orado?lite
12 shot dead at 'Dark Knight Rises' screening in Aurora, Colorado
By NBC News' Pete Williams and NBC News staff
July 20, 2012, 8:36 am
NBCNews.com
Updated at 11:11 a.m. ET: Twelve people were killed and at least 50 others wounded early Friday when a gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opened fire during a midnight premier screening of the latest Batman movie near Denver, authorities and witnesses said.

The apartment of the suspect in custody, named as 24-year-old James Holmes, had been booby-trapped with what police described as sophisticated explosives or flammable material and officers were trying to determine how to defuse the device or devices, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said. The area had been evacuated, and police were expected to remain on the scene "for hours or days," he said.

The victims of the cinema shooting were being treated in at least six hospitals included a 6-year-old. The youngest person treated was a 4-month-old baby, who has been released. The oldest reported patient is 45.

Authorities said the gunman had appeared at the front of the theater during the film and released a canister of tear gas. Witnesses told reporters that the gunfire erupted during a shootout scene in "The Dark Knight Rises."

"It was mass chaos," witness Jennifer Seeger told TODAY. The gunman shot the ceiling and then "he threw in the gas can, and then I knew it was real."

"I told my friend, 'We've got to get out of here,' but then he shot people trying to go out the exits," she recalled. She said the shooter made his way up the aisle, shooting as he went, saying nothing.

Oates initially told journalists that 14 people had been killed but the figure was later lowered to 12.

The shooting occurred in the Century 16 Movie Theaters at the Aurora Town Center. Aurora is a suburb less than 10 miles east of downtown Denver.

NBC station KUSA-Denver cited a witness as seeing a black-clad 6-foot-tall man wearing a riot helmet, goggles and bullet-proof vest.

However, many people attended the film dressed in Batman-related costumes.

Watch live video from KUSA

Witnesses said the gunman entered the theater through an emergency exit door.

The suspect was found in possession of a gas mask, Oates said. Ammunition was found in the suspect's car, police said.

The shooter had three weapons -- an assault-type rifle and two handguns, officials told NBC News. Holmes' car has Tennessee plates but authorities said he lived locally.

Police name alleged gunman in Colorado theater shooting

Police said there was no evidence of additional suspects.

"We're pretty confident he acted alone," officer Frank Fania told TODAY.

An FBI official told NBC News that the agency was working with local authorities on the investigation, but that there was no early indication of a link to terrorism. Holmes was not on any federal law-enforcement watch lists, authorities told NBC News.

President Barack Obama cut short a campaign visit to Florida to return to Washington ahead of schedule.

He called for reflection after the attack. "There are going to be other days for politics," Obama said during an abbreviated appearance in Fort Myers, where he led a moment of silence on behalf of the victims and their families.

'Get us some damn gas masks'
Police raiding the theater in the hunt for the suspect had to ask for gas masks.

"Get us some damn gas masks for theater 9, we can't get in it," one officer radioed back to emergency dispatch during the operation, according to an excerpt aired on KUSA.

Moviegoers described scenes of chaos and terror inside the movie theater.

Seeger told TODAY there were "a lot of children" in the theater.

"When I ... tried to escape, there was a little girl, 12 or 13, just laying lifeless on the stairs," she said.

"I got terrified. I didn't know what to do, like a deer in the headlights. I jumped into the aisle and curled up into a little ball waiting for him to go away," she told TODAY.

"I have never been more scared then the moments where we were all trapped in the theater, helpless. Unable to get out at all," another moviegoer, Rachel Fedeli, posted on Twitter.




Karl Gehring / The Denver Post Aurora Police respond to the shooting at the Century 16 Movie Theater early Friday.
More on this story from breakingnews.com

Tanner Coon, who was in the theater with a friend and the friend's 12-year-old brother when the shooter came in, said he told them to "get down" when he heard the gunshots.

The shooter fired off about 20 rounds and there was then a pause and a "period of quietness when everybody started running out," Coon said.

"I slipped on some blood and landed on a lady. I shook her and said we need to go. There was no response so I presume she was dead," Coon said.

Another eyewitness, Alex Milano, told KUSA that he "saw at least four, maybe five people limping, slightly wounded. ... I saw one girl covered in blood.

"I don't know whose little girl that was, but my heart goes out to them. ... A cop came walking through the front door ... holding a little girl in his arms and she wasn't moving, she wasn't moving," the young man, whose voiced cracked as he spoke, told KUSA.

Colorado shooting survivor: 'He pointed the gun right at me'

'I thought it was pretty much the end of the world'
Roland Jones, 28, said he first thought the smoke and sounds of gunshots were all part of the film's special effects.

"I thought it was pretty much the end of the world," Roberts told the Denver Post.

Tammi Stevens, who son was inside the cinema when the shooting started, told the Post he saw a man walk into the theater wearing body armor.

"You let your kids go to a late night movie ... you never think something like this would happen," Stevens told the newspaper.

The injured were being transported to several local hospitals, police told NBC.

Natalie Goldstein, of Children's Hospital Colorado, said the facility was treating six patients from the shooting, ranging in age from 6 to 31.

PhotoBlog: More images from the scene of the shooting in Aurora

Justin Bentzinger, a house supervisor at the Swedish Medical Center, told NBC News they were treating three patients. Two were in critical condition, the third was in fair condition.

Kalena Wilkinson, a public information officer for Denver Health, said six patients were taken to that hospital, with one in critical condition and the other five in "fair" conditions.

Tracy Weise, of the public relations department at Aurora Medical Center, told NBC News they had treated 15 patients, four of whom have been released. Of those still being treated, four remain in critical condition, Weise said.

Further local coverage from KUSA

Jacque Montgomery, a spokesperson for University of Colorado Hospital, told NBC News that they were treating 20 patients from the shooting.

At least three people had been treated for chemical exposure, KUSA reported.

Hundreds of witnesses who have not been injured have been taken to Gateway High School for a debriefing, local media reported.

Friday's incident was the worst mass shooting in the United States since the 2007 shooting on the Virginia Tech campus, in which 33 people, including the gunman, died.

It was the deadliest mass shooting in Colorado since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999. Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at the school in the Denver suburb of Littleton, about 15 miles west of Aurora, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school's library.

Paris premiere canceled
"The Dark Knight Rises," starring Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway, is the latest in the popular Batman action movie franchise. Theatres around the world began showing it at 12:01 a.m. on Friday.

Warner Bros. canceled the Paris premiere of the film, which was scheduled for Friday evening.

"Warner Bros. and the filmmakers are deeply saddened to learn about this shocking incident. We extend our sincere sympathies to the families and loved ones of the victims at this tragic time," the studio said in a statement.

NBC News' David Wyllie, Daniel Strieff, Ian Johnston, F. Brinley Bruton, NBC station KUSA, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

[Zaune]

Lots of people are wondering if the shooting was politically motivated somehow. On some level I kind of hope so, because the thought of the perpetrator's motives boiling down to "it seemed like a good idea at the time" is even more fucking depressing.

[Losonti Tokash]

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck- ... --nhl.html

Jessica Redfield, who just barely missed getting shot in Toronto last month, was one of the people killed.

[Luke Skywalker]

I had actually considered watching the movie for my birthday today; however illogical this may be, I think I've changed my mind.

Nitpick: the Today show cites "at least" 14 fatalities, while the New York Daily News claims 12. Any consensus on the exact casualty rate?

[Simon_Jester]

They attacked the theater with gas and masks, and fired into the crowd. There may or may not have been an explosion. What pisses me off is the news anchors are talking about Columbine and that this may be a result of the dark imagery of the movie.

Especially since the attacker was literally the only person in the room who wasn't there to watch the movie...

Our culture wasn't saturated with homicidal violence as entertainment back then. Now it's fucking everywhere. Add easy access to weapons and an unstable nutbag and boom. Just like fire... heat, oxygen and fuel.

Ever read the Iliad?

So? What difference does that make to someone has been killed or maimed, or to their families?

People might feel differently about things someone did to them on purpose?

Suppose two people step heavily on your foot. One of them was carrying a big package, blundered around a corner, and probably didn't even see you. The other guy looked you in the eye, walked up to you, and stomped on your foot.

Which of those two people do you feel more need to do something about?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

2 words that will unfortunately incur the wrath of foaming at the mouth fuckwits: Gun Control. Seriousely. How many mass shootings does this make, THIS YEAR?

According to the news, Colorado has the most lax gun laws in the US- no ban on assault rifles or high capacity magazines, no background checks and no restriction on how many guns you can own.

[General Zod]

no background checks

I'm not sure if you misread that or your news doesn't know what they're talking about, but Colorado requires a background check for all purchases.

[Mr Bean]

According to the news, Colorado has the most lax gun laws in the US- no ban on assault rifles or high capacity magazines, no background checks and no restriction on how many guns you can own.

This is bullshit, the most gun friendly state in the Union is Indiana where it is still legal to own a fully functional tank and any kind of weapon you can think of, enforcement is almost non-existent and what federal laws that exists are almost never enforced. People talk up the gun show loopholes of Virgina, but in Indiana as long as you don't look crazy you can get a gun quickly, nor do you have to register or license much of anything and collectors licenses let you get fully automatic assault rifles and machine guns (Even if Federal laws prevent you from making your own or modifying existing ones). Inside of a week assuming I have the cash I can buy six guns, get a conceal carry permit for all of them and ten thousand rounds of ammunition for each and I'll be congratulated by state officials as a thrifty shopper not a possible anarchist or separatist (The feds might give me the once over but they won't hear about me from state officials beyond what they are required to share by law)

Remember Indiana is a state set up for farmers who leave their farms twice a year which is why paperwork is almost non-existent and license plates can last for ten years.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

no background checks

I'm not sure if you misread that or your news doesn't know what they're talking about, but Colorado requires a background check for all purchases.

It was the TV news that was on while I was typing that, some reporter talking about the gun laws there, so it's probably a combination of both

[Meest]

This always ends up in a gun control type argument, to that I say where are all the concealed carry people stopping this guy? Would be interesting if there were any kind of stats showing how many people in these situations were actually armed. Guessing most people would go for cover and try to get their family/friends out of there instead of returning fire. Would maybe say all concealable weapons should be banned from public, but then this guy gets into a theater apparently with even rifle sized weapons, how the hell did he not look suspicious on a summer midnight, so what's the point if this can be done with bigger weapons that can still be hidden.

[ZGundam]

I had actually considered watching the movie for my birthday today; however illogical this may be, I think I've changed my mind.

Nitpick: the Today show cites "at least" 14 fatalities, while the New York Daily News claims 12. Any consensus on the exact casualty rate?

It was confirmed today the number of dead is 12.

I live just one block away from those theaters and several of my friends would have gone to that showing, but one of them had a 10AM job interview the next day.

[Coop D'etat]

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck- ... --nhl.html

Jessica Redfield, who just barely missed getting shot in Toronto last month, was one of the people killed.

I didn't know her but I'm acquainted with a number of people who did through her work as a hockey writer. That the last thing she wrote on her blog is about the Eaton center shooting seems like an especially cruel joke. http://jessicaredfield.wordpress.com/

RIP Jessica

[eion]

this guy gets into a theater apparently with even rifle sized weapons, how the hell did he not look suspicious on a summer midnight, so what's the point if this can be done with bigger weapons that can still be hidden.

Reports indicate he entered the theater unarmed as a patron, went out through an emergency exit in the theater, propping it open. Then armed himself at his car and came back through the emergency exit and began killing. Every theater I've been in, the staff check the emergency exits regularly. Admittedly mostly to prevent people sneaking in, but also I suppose for this very important security issue. Perhaps theaters should install remote alarms so they know when a door has been opened, or propped open, immediately.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

This always ends up in a gun control type argument, to that I say where are all the concealed carry people stopping this guy? Would be interesting if there were any kind of stats showing how many people in these situations were actually armed. Guessing most people would go for cover and try to get their family/friends out of there instead of returning fire. Would maybe say all concealable weapons should be banned from public, but then this guy gets into a theater apparently with even rifle sized weapons, how the hell did he not look suspicious on a summer midnight, so what's the point if this can be done with bigger weapons that can still be hidden.

Actually the first thing I thought when I heard about this was whether anyone else in the theater was armed and what they'd do if they were- if their first reaction on seeing the gunman would be to hide or fire back.

[Darth Wong]

So? What difference does that make to someone has been killed or maimed, or to their families?

People might feel differently about things someone did to them on purpose?

Suppose two people step heavily on your foot. One of them was carrying a big package, blundered around a corner, and probably didn't even see you. The other guy looked you in the eye, walked up to you, and stomped on your foot.

Which of those two people do you feel more need to do something about?

First, you are quite obviously appealing to emotion rather than logic, thus you are not refuting my point about peoples' irrationality at all.

Second, your analogy is grossly false, since I was talking about a huge preponderance of incidents. If you wanted to make it at least vaguely relevant to the point I was making, you would have to make the "accidental" foot injuries happen far more frequently than the intentional ones.

[Darth Wong]

Now that we're learning more about the shooter, let everyone commence using him to justify their pre-conceived prejudices and socio-economic or political theories!

[General Zod]

This always ends up in a gun control type argument, to that I say where are all the concealed carry people stopping this guy? Would be interesting if there were any kind of stats showing how many people in these situations were actually armed. Guessing most people would go for cover and try to get their family/friends out of there instead of returning fire. Would maybe say all concealable weapons should be banned from public, but then this guy gets into a theater apparently with even rifle sized weapons, how the hell did he not look suspicious on a summer midnight, so what's the point if this can be done with bigger weapons that can still be hidden.

Actually the first thing I thought when I heard about this was whether anyone else in the theater was armed and what they'd do if they were- if their first reaction on seeing the gunman would be to hide or fire back.

Firing back would have been a great way to make the situation worse, especially since the shooter dropped a bunch of smoke into the theater obscuring everyone's vision and was wearing body armor. Just because someone has a license to carry doesn't mean they've been trained at all to deal with the stress of this type of situation.