On what ignorant basis do you think that’s what I was saying?
:smack: I’ll try to go slower, given that you are clearly in desperate need of it:
If a babysitter doesn’t show up, try to find someone else. Can’t? DON’T GO OUT. The answer isn’t drag your 3 month old baby to a theater, at midnight no less. Thankfully, most people have at least enough functioning brain cells to get this…but sadly it only takes one to ruin it for everyone else…
In your strange little world I’m sure there was some workable logic in there somewhere. Whatever. Enjoy.
lol
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Your idiocy here is so extreme it’s gone from annoying to entertaining. Thx! Who needs a movie?
Yknow I’ll grant you this, it was no guarantee to have stopped him cold, true, but it would have at least had people on alert and exiting the theater. At the least it would have minimized his chances for mayhem or the degree of success.
Already did that some years back but thx for suggesting anyway.
What do you mean, “assault weapon”?
The military definition is a semi or automatic rifle that is light in weight and uses light weight ammunition so that a soldier can carry more cartridges.
The political definition is rifles that have a bayonet lug or a large magazine.
I don’t know that his weapons met any of those definitions.
He had an AR-15 assault rifle. Bought legally here, but not legal everywhere, e.g., California. I don’t know if he jimmied it or anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
What would help is not having non-emergency exits in a theater, so you can’t smuggle something in that way, and to not have emergency exits that can be propped open. Heck, I don’t think I’ve seen one of those in my life–at least, not any that wouldn’t also sound an alarm and result in you getting banned from the establishment if you used one unnecessarily.
The problem in this case is that he was able to smuggle in all his gear. That shouldn’t be possible.
This was a terrible thing. My heart goes out to everyone involved. But…as to the gun question…does anyone know about the Bath School Disaster? Here’s the wiki link. The only gun used was when the killer blew up his car and ended his life.
Crazy people are crazy. They don’t need guns to kill people. My mentally ill friend isn’t allowed to own guns, but he is able to buy the ingredients to make bombs.
Tony is a clear and present danger to himself and others when he’s off his meds. What should happen to him? Should we just kill him now, because its possible that he might do something like this?
Should we lock him up and throw away the key to keep society safe?
Should someone go to his home and hold him down to be sure that he takes his meds? That person won’t be me, I don’t want to die.
I think its not the guns that make this sort of thing happen. Yes, guns do make it easier…but it also makes it more personal. The shooter in this case was in one part of the theater. It would have been much worse if he had taken a page out of Kehoe’s book.
Copied from my post in the Pit.
This is an honest question…what should be done about Tony? He has the means to blow up the local county office. He is crazy enough to do it if he gets really upset over taxes or something. The man is mentally ill, its well known and well documentated. Should we treat him like a rabid dog and take him out and shoot him?
The issue here is the terminology “assault rifle” versus “assault weapon.” If the guy had an AR-15, as the news is reporting, then it was an “assault weapon” under the now-defunct 1994 federal law, and under the current California law. It was not an “assault rifle” under the military’s definition.
The US military doesn’t, as far as i know, define an “assault weapon”; it defines an “assault rifle.” According to US Army/Defense Intelligence Agency documents like the one here:
A key requirement of the military definition is that an assault rifle have selective fire capability. You have to be able to select automatic, rather just semi-auto, for it to qualify.
In American lawmaking however, in the 1994 Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, and in some state laws like those of California, an “assault weapon” is defined in a different way. It refers to a semi-automatic weapon that (often) looks like an assault rifle, and that might possess some characteristics of an assault rifle, but is not a selective fire weapon (i.e., can’t fire auto) and therefore is not an assault rifle under the military definition.
In fact, the Bill creating the “assault weapons” ban specifically banned the possession of a “semiautomatic assault weapon,” and then went on to define such weapon by specifically naming a whole bunch of semi-auto rifles, including the AR-15. You can download the full text of the law here (PDF).
So, while an AR-15 is an “assault weapon” under the definition created by that particular law, it is not an “assault rifle” under the military definition.
It’s worth noting, too, that the 1994 federal law borrowed heavily from the 1989 law passed in California, including listing many of the same weapons by name, and adding the same sorts of criteria for banning other non-named weapons.
It makes the job significantly easier, though. Tell me. How would our friend at the cinema rack up this death toll with anything else but guns? Gardening tools?
Because of that whole ‘terrorism’ thing (you might have heard of it) folks are doing the best they can to limit access to such chemicals.
Also, making bombs takes time, brains, and planning. Using a gun? Not so much. I don’t know many people (let alone those with psychological issues) who would be able to build a bomb. I know plenty who can pull a trigger.
Nobody ever suggested that. It might be a good idea to limit his access to tools designed for killin’, though.
Nuts will do nutty things. But for this level of carnage, guns are the easiest and best tools at hand.
Well, explosives, if he could get the ingredients together. From what I understand, it’s relatively easy to make them if you know how. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to explain the process here.
Of course, if you don’t know what you’re doing, I’m told that trying to make your own explosives is an excellent way to blow yourself up on accident, so don’t do that if you know you shouldn’t.
As far as a previous poster’s reference to the “deafening silence of the anti-gun-control community”… hoo boy you don’t hang out in the same places I do, online or offline. I can only assume you don’t tend to associate with folks who are vocally in favor of private firearms ownership, which may simply be due to you befriending folks with similar viewpoints, a normal thing to do.
After the Ford Hood shootings, many of my co-workers were saying that this could have been prevented if everybody on Fort Hood were willing to be armed on a regular basis, or to carry their private weapons on duty. I simply pointed out that this would make a situation where instead of one uniformed man running around shooting people, you’d have multiple armed men running around looking for an armed man running around shooting people. Perfect recipe for a blue on blue scenario, in my unprofessional opinion (I’m a clerk), and that would be with military personnel not dealing with a guy in body armor with tear gas floating around.
You don’t need an arsenal to kill, just be a bit crazy. How many pedestrians could one kill or injure downtown at lunch with an average car? This guy wasn’t even trying and killed 9 and injured 54. But a 4x4 would probably work better, so we really need 4x4 control.
You don’t ban 4x4’s because they are used for… driving. Guns were designed for what again?
Again, you can kill with plenty of things. Guns are still the easiest way. I think there are some logistical problems with driving into a movie theater and running over 70 people.
Sorry my point wasn’t clear: It is really easy to kill people and the tools to do so surround us. We could play a sick game with Home Depot items estimating kills vs. the simplicity of the plan vs. cost, but I’m not in the mood and cars are ubiquitous enough to demonstrate the point. I’m glad this guy just used guns rather than more effective means–he sounds like he’s pretty smart so I’m relieved that his apt didn’t blow, that CU didn’t find a bunch of stuff on campus, he didn’t flee, etc.
I do take comfort in the condolences expressed by those around the world. I grew up in the neighborhood and know someone whose life has been forever changed. My discussion with her friend last night did not go very well–there is a lot of anger going around. I’d like to see that anger directed toward positive changes. Restricting the freedoms of those of us who aren’t crazy isn’t a positive change. Labeling someone ‘crazy’ probably isn’t either…
I remember my Father’s advice before I attended my first funeral: express your condolences, let them know you are there, and then shut up. I’m usually pretty good at the shutting up part and will do that now.
While taking the kid out at midnight is far from ideal I don’t see what’s so terrible about the concept. What terrible thing (other than a rare homicidal madman) is going to happen to a baby out with his/her parents? Or are you proposing we should keep kids locked in the house until they’re 18?
Right. They would have exited right into a hail of bullets from his gun. That improves things… how?
Bombs.
In this case we have ample reason to believe this guy had the time, brains, and planning capability – he left behind a death-trap of an apartment.