No, I don’t blame Hollywood, in general, for violence such as what happened in Seattle this Saturday. The blame can be spread across a much wider spectrum.
What I do blame Hollywood, specifically action movies, for is this:
From the Seattle P-I: "Killer’s taunt: ‘There’s plenty for everyone’ " Link.
It’s bad enough Huff was motivated to kill at least six people before killing himself, but Jesus H., why do these people think they have to utter witticisms in the midst of a rampage, like they were Arnold Schwarzennegger or Vin Diesel.
It makes you wonder if these twisted individuals are so divorced from reality that somewhere deep in their subconscious they think they’re playing a part in a movie and that everyone will get up when the director yells “Cut. Print.”
But people kill people in movies ergo people are compelled to kill people in real life.
I saw Bugs Bunny take one of those Acme[sup]tm[/sup] dimensional holes and place it right in front of the Wile E. Coyote. I hope no one does that to me.
Eh, never mind, Unc. I withdraw the comment. I learned early on on this board that debates over gun control are futile gestures. Just chalk it up to exasperation.
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. - William Shakespeare, As You Like It
I’m not throwing that out as a justification or anything; it just came to mind. And there’s some validity to it – hence, we get Famous Last Words. What brought that to mind was the morbid quote I once read, spoken by James French just before he was electrocuted:
That’s kind of what I’m wondering: Was this guy thinking it would be amusing if he could shoot up a bunch of people and then toss off a movielike remark.
“Dude, you know what would be funny, like if I shot the shit out of a bunch of people and I’d be all like, ‘There’s plenty for everyone.’ That’d be so cool.”
C’mon, the guy got his jollies shooting at a fiberglass moose a few years before.
As for his shotgun/rifle grip … generally not sideways.
The person responsible for all this is the actual shooter. Not the media, Not the NRA, Not raves, … just him. Hope he burns in Hell, where ol’ Scratch will cheerfully fire round after round of various rounds and shells into his sensitive regions. ‘Cos Ol’ Scratch has got plenty for everyone.
You know…I must be getting old…as in "GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU GODAMN KIDS!!! old…because I read the linked article, and in the depths of my cynical, twisted, apparently slowly-rotting brain, what pissed me off most about the article was:
What the fuck kind of parents let their 14-year old daughter go to rave parties till 3 AM?!?
/moves her rocking chair out to her porch, the better to yell at those damn kids from
Here, pull up a spot next to mine. I’ve already got my shotgun (loaded with rock salt, dontcha know!), and I’m working on wearing my pants reaaal high, just so I’ve got the Crabby Old Man™ walk thing going when I stand up to wave my cane at those damn kids and their music…
With their hippin’ and their hoppin’, and their groovin’ and their boppin’, and it gives 'em the Brain Damage, y’hear!
I was thinking in terms of the popular perception of “semi-automatic”, meaning guns capable of firing in rapid succession each time the trigger is fulled, which most revolvers seem to be these days - though I suppose technically “semi-automatic” involves ejection of a shell as well.
I had the impression the reporter used the term “semi-automatic” to imply that the handgun carried (used?) in the rampage was an unusually dangerous weapon.
My impression is that reporters typically have even less of a grasp about the operation of firearms than they do of proper use of English grammar and appropriate communication style. And given the egregious grammatical and editorial errors I found last time I read The Los Angeles Times, that’s not much.