I don't think *any* sane person would have taken a shot in that situation, based on what I've been hearing third and forth hand.
The more I read about it, the more I think that taking a shot wouldn't necessarily have been a hard thing.
Supposedly, Butthead there was wandering up and down the rows of seats shooting people at random. Which means Butthead didn't have the protection of his smokescreen for more than the first few seconds.
Admittedly, you probably couldn't have gotten a safe shot (pretty much defined as "no innocent bystanders behind the bad guy, and noone especially near you either") till most of the murders were done.
I don't consider a handful of politicians starting a (usually) futile effort to pass stricter gun control laws to be a public outcry.
Interestingly, I just read the very first editorial in the Washington Post calling for more gun control.
Note that when I referred to Democrats, I wasn't just talking politicians. The media is largely Dem, and will be all over this like white on rice....
There is almost no reason to bring up such dire straits during an election campaign, unless he knows it's coming soon.
Of course there's a reason to bring it up during a campaign!
Hint: it's because scaring the crap out of voters helps to convince them to make the "safe" choice in an election - the safe choice being the guy who is telling them "evil things are happening, but elect me, and I'll make sure they don't"....
the United States is the first one to use the weapon it pretends it needs defense against. Like nukes, ICBM's, and now "cyber warfare", in Iran with the stuxnet virus.
ICBMs??
When did the USA use an ICBM?
Or did you mean "develop the fist ICBM (the R-7)"?
Yah, that guy we had develop the R-7, Sergei Korolyov was one smart cookie, wasn't he?
What's that you say? He was Russian?
My bad...so, we didn't use an ICBM first, we didn't develop the first one, what exactly did we do "first" with an ICBM?
Hmm, use one to launch a satellite into orbit? No, that was the R-7 too...
Firearms being illegal in DC does not mean a thing since you can have all you need in Virginia, a mile away.
Just keep the above in mind when you mix in the debate over gun control.
And yet, the murder rate in Virginia is 1/3 that of DC.
Of course, Maryland is right there too. But wait, Maryland has a murder rate that is 1/2 that of DC.
It should also be noted that it is illegal to buy a firearm in a State that you are not a legal resident of.
Which means that anyone from DC buying a firearm in Virginia is a criminal, by definition.
So, why is that DC has a high murder rate compared to its neighbors? After all, if it's easy to get a gun in Virginia/Maryland to use in DC, it's even easier (and legal to boot) to get one in Virginia/Maryland to use in Virginia/Maryland....
Just keep the above in mind when you mix in the debate over gun control.
Trust me, I do keep the above in mind. So, you'll be getting back to me to explain why the murder rate in DC is higher than in Virginia and Maryland, right?
There is a strong correlation [gun-control-network.org] between gun ownership and homicide rates. Actually, everybody in the rest of the world knows that, it's only in the US that some lobby wants to spin this fairly obvious fact into another direction.
Hmm, Washington DC (low gun ownership rates, high homicide rate), Colorado, (high gun ownership rates, low homicide rates), Switzerland (extremely high gun ownership rates, low homicide rates).
I fail to see the correlation. Or perhaps you were carefully ignoring the differences among the States?
Note that the USA is an interesting test of gun ownership/homicide correlations in that we have 51 different sets of gun laws (not counting individual cites such as Chicago and New York) and one reasonably uniform culture (while US culture is in no way "uniform", we're more alike than, say, a Swiss and a Brit).
Note that in the USA, homicide rates are all over the map - high in some places, low in others.
Note that firearms ownership in the USA is all over the map - high in some places, low in others.
And some of the places with high gun ownership have low homicide rates, and some don't. However, none of the places with high gun ownership rates have homicide rates as high as DC. Or Chicago. Or New York City....
That's interesting, because all I've heard so far are a bunch of John Wayne wannabes saying that had they been in that theater with their 9mm handgun, they would have been able to kill the shooter. You know, the shooter who had them outgunned, outarmored, outpositioned, and didn't have to worry about firing around a theater full of panicking people.
The interesting thing about guns is that there is really no such thing as "outgunned" - one shot can kill a man, whether from a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, or a machinegun. And having a pistol/rifle/shotgun/machinegun doesn't actually protect you from the other guy's pistol/rifle/shotgun/machinegun.
If *I* had been there (which I wouldn't have been, even if this had happened where I live, since I never go to opening night movies - too damn crowded), and I had been carrying (which I wouldn't have been, since I see no real need to do so), I would probably not have taken a shot (darkness, smoke, the movie itself interfering with both vision and hearing, etc). But if I had had a pistol, and a clear shot, I would have used it, and he would have stopped shooting (yes, a bullet-resistant vest would have meant I couldn't kill him with a shot to center of mass, but I don't use a 9mm, and either a.40 or.45 (which I do use) would have put him on his ass).
I won't be surprised if this turns into a public outcry for stricter gun control, but I don't think it's likely.
Why not? The Democrats have used every single shooting that made national news in the last half century as an excuse for stricter gun control....
The USA and Canada are different; I wouldn't suggest that you adopt our system per se, because your circumstances aren't the same. But it seems obvious to me that sufficiently strict gun laws CAN work if they have an appropriate societal context to exist.
Yah, strict gun-control laws CAN work. And complete lack of gun-control laws CAN work too. It's not like there's a correlation between gun control laws and murder rates - Louisiana is pretty free about gun control, and has a relatively high (by US standards) murder rate, Colorado is just as free and has a relatively low (by US standards) murder rate. Washington DC and Chicago have some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and some of the highest murder rates.
And on and on and on.
For that matter, over the last couple decades, gun laws have, in most parts of the USA, been relaxed quite a lot - and the murder rate has declined steadily while this was happening.
Ultimately, the problem is cultural. Fixing the cultural problem doesn't require removing the guns.
Though it probably requires removing the Prohibition-type drug laws that seem to spark much of the gun violence (just like the real Prohibition sparked some of the worst gun violence in US history).
BLOCKQUOTE>There was recently a shooting here, and it was a big deal that TWO people were killed. 12 with 50 injured would be a national catastrophe and on the front page of every major newspaper.
Trust me, this will make (probably already has made) the front page of every major newspaper in the USA.
And every place I've ever lived would have had a banner headline if two people had been killed in the same event.
Mind you, I've never lived in Chicago, Washington DC, or New York City....
The reason you don't hear about armed self-defense on national news is that it's pretty anti-climatic. "Man shoots would-be robber" is not national newsworthy;
Even less newsworthy is the more common "man points his gun at would-be robber, robber decides that robbery is a bad idea"....
Which is one reason breaking into an occupied home is much less common here than it is in, say, the UK.
Wanting to kill people is madness. Some people will have attacks of madness, and then the attack goes away later on. If that person has a gun and ammunition handy, people get killed. If that person doesn't have gun and ammunition handy, the attack of madness may go away.
The person in question had a bullet-resistant vest, a helmet, smoke (or tear-gas, I see different accounts) grenades, and kicked in a door that normally opens outward (I've kicked in doors that open away from me, I can't actually imagine kicking in a door that opens towards me).
All of which tends to suggest that this was pretty well planned out in advance. In other words, NOT an attack of madness.
For similar reasons, a lot of the suicides in the USA are men killing themselves with guns. The same person with no gun available would have probably tried some other method, which quite possibly would have failed. That's why the USA has higher suicide rates among males than other countries; not because they are more prone to suicide, but because they are most likely to have some effective means to achieve their goal.
Hate to say this, but who really cares about people who commit suicide? If they want to end their lives, I have no real problem with it.
Unless of course they choose "suicide by cop" - take a gun downtown and start shooting till the cops blow you away....
If you cannot see the difference between a trained officer who undergoes repeated training on the job and someone who once took some training there is nothing we can gain from talking. I'm more likely to get an intelligent statement from a park bench.
What makes you think police officers get "repeated training on the job"? Most police officers never fire their guns except at annual qualification training. Most police officers go their entire career without ever firing a gun except at that same annual training.
On the other hand, my little brother spends one day every week working at a firing range as a range safety officer - not for pay, for fun. Because he gets to shoot his own guns for free when he's not being the RSO.
So he puts a couple hundred rounds a week through targets as opposed to your typical cop who might shoot fifty rounds a year....
It is time that the manufacture of guns to be covered by legislation. There is no constitutional amendment about the right to manufacture fire arms.
Can't be done legally. Quite some time back, a tax was proposed on printer's ink. Said tax was shot down by the Supremes based on its effect on the First Amendment (it would adversely impact the freedom of the press).
By the same logic, restricting or outlawing the manufacture of firearms would adversely affect the Second Amendment....
The Swiss also have an obligation to do military training, so it's not quite the same situation, as the population could easily be defined as a militia. But these kind of events might become less common in the US if their citizens had the same responsibilities to go with gun ownership.
Note that concealed carry licenses in the USA require some level of training to get (exactly how much and what kind varies by State).
Note also that "training", or being part of a "militia" in no way implies that you're less likely to wig out and shoot someone.
I don't understand, in the past there was sometimes very strict rules in bars and pubs not to carry gun there. I don't care that you carry a gun for self protection on street. Why they were made obsolete?
It should be noted that this didn't happen in a bar or pub.
It should also be noted that shooting people is illegal. If you're inclined to obey laws, then you won't shoot them, even if you have a gun. If you're not inclined to obey them, then you're going to be willing to acquire and use a gun in spite of it being illegal.
And finally, it should be noted that even including this incident, the murder rate in Colorado is lower than it is in Washington DC, where owning a firearm is essentially illegal....
Actually it should be noted that, ignoring RATE, there are more murders in Washington DC (population 600k or so) than in Colorado (population 5.1 million or so) in a typical year.
Of course the vast majority of that debt was spent while Republicans were in power and getting the US involved in very costly wars. Not all, granted, but a majority I am sure.
Sure you may be. But you're wrong.
Note, for the record, that the budget comes from Congress, not the President.
Technically, it comes from the House, but that part of the Constitution has been ignored for most of the existence of the USA, so we'll ignore that.
Now, go back and check out control of the House and Senate since the New Deal (I pick that time, since the explosion of the national debt began then, and has continued for all but one year since (the debt actually went down one year in the 1950's, it hasn't since, in spite of "Clinton balancing the budget").
One of the things you'll find is that the Democrats have controlled the House for all but about 16 years of the last 80. And they've controlled the Senate for all but about 20 years of that same 80 years.
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The more I read about it, the more I think that taking a shot wouldn't necessarily have been a hard thing.
Supposedly, Butthead there was wandering up and down the rows of seats shooting people at random. Which means Butthead didn't have the protection of his smokescreen for more than the first few seconds.
Admittedly, you probably couldn't have gotten a safe shot (pretty much defined as "no innocent bystanders behind the bad guy, and noone especially near you either") till most of the murders were done.
Interestingly, I just read the very first editorial in the Washington Post calling for more gun control.
Note that when I referred to Democrats, I wasn't just talking politicians. The media is largely Dem, and will be all over this like white on rice....
Of course there's a reason to bring it up during a campaign!
Hint: it's because scaring the crap out of voters helps to convince them to make the "safe" choice in an election - the safe choice being the guy who is telling them "evil things are happening, but elect me, and I'll make sure they don't"....
ICBMs??
When did the USA use an ICBM?
Or did you mean "develop the fist ICBM (the R-7)"?
Yah, that guy we had develop the R-7, Sergei Korolyov was one smart cookie, wasn't he?
What's that you say? He was Russian?
My bad...so, we didn't use an ICBM first, we didn't develop the first one, what exactly did we do "first" with an ICBM?
Hmm, use one to launch a satellite into orbit? No, that was the R-7 too...
10^5 is actually over 1000x what can be created in the lab, last I checked.
Or did we manage a 1000 Tesla field when I wasn't looking?
About a billion people live in Africa. Which makes it the second largest population of any continent.
Sterilizing both Africa and South America would lower human population about 20%, to a level it hasn't seen since...1990.
And I make the same mistake...replace the second "prefect" with "perfect"....
No, for "prefect". Which is a word, but not the same as "prefect", which is what OP probably meant to type.
And yet, the murder rate in Virginia is 1/3 that of DC.
Of course, Maryland is right there too. But wait, Maryland has a murder rate that is 1/2 that of DC.
It should also be noted that it is illegal to buy a firearm in a State that you are not a legal resident of.
Which means that anyone from DC buying a firearm in Virginia is a criminal, by definition.
So, why is that DC has a high murder rate compared to its neighbors? After all, if it's easy to get a gun in Virginia/Maryland to use in DC, it's even easier (and legal to boot) to get one in Virginia/Maryland to use in Virginia/Maryland....
Just keep the above in mind when you mix in the debate over gun control.
Trust me, I do keep the above in mind. So, you'll be getting back to me to explain why the murder rate in DC is higher than in Virginia and Maryland, right?
Hmm, Washington DC (low gun ownership rates, high homicide rate), Colorado, (high gun ownership rates, low homicide rates), Switzerland (extremely high gun ownership rates, low homicide rates).
I fail to see the correlation. Or perhaps you were carefully ignoring the differences among the States?
Note that the USA is an interesting test of gun ownership/homicide correlations in that we have 51 different sets of gun laws (not counting individual cites such as Chicago and New York) and one reasonably uniform culture (while US culture is in no way "uniform", we're more alike than, say, a Swiss and a Brit).
Note that in the USA, homicide rates are all over the map - high in some places, low in others.
Note that firearms ownership in the USA is all over the map - high in some places, low in others.
And some of the places with high gun ownership have low homicide rates, and some don't. However, none of the places with high gun ownership rates have homicide rates as high as DC. Or Chicago. Or New York City....
Yep.
And DC still makes it as difficult as possible to own a firearm.
There are places where it is more difficult to own a gun than DC, but not many in the USA.
The interesting thing about guns is that there is really no such thing as "outgunned" - one shot can kill a man, whether from a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, or a machinegun. And having a pistol/rifle/shotgun/machinegun doesn't actually protect you from the other guy's pistol/rifle/shotgun/machinegun.
If *I* had been there (which I wouldn't have been, even if this had happened where I live, since I never go to opening night movies - too damn crowded), and I had been carrying (which I wouldn't have been, since I see no real need to do so), I would probably not have taken a shot (darkness, smoke, the movie itself interfering with both vision and hearing, etc). But if I had had a pistol, and a clear shot, I would have used it, and he would have stopped shooting (yes, a bullet-resistant vest would have meant I couldn't kill him with a shot to center of mass, but I don't use a 9mm, and either a .40 or .45 (which I do use) would have put him on his ass).
Why not? The Democrats have used every single shooting that made national news in the last half century as an excuse for stricter gun control....
Yah, strict gun-control laws CAN work. And complete lack of gun-control laws CAN work too. It's not like there's a correlation between gun control laws and murder rates - Louisiana is pretty free about gun control, and has a relatively high (by US standards) murder rate, Colorado is just as free and has a relatively low (by US standards) murder rate. Washington DC and Chicago have some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and some of the highest murder rates.
And on and on and on.
For that matter, over the last couple decades, gun laws have, in most parts of the USA, been relaxed quite a lot - and the murder rate has declined steadily while this was happening.
Ultimately, the problem is cultural. Fixing the cultural problem doesn't require removing the guns.
Though it probably requires removing the Prohibition-type drug laws that seem to spark much of the gun violence (just like the real Prohibition sparked some of the worst gun violence in US history).
BLOCKQUOTE>There was recently a shooting here, and it was a big deal that TWO people were killed. 12 with 50 injured would be a national catastrophe and on the front page of every major newspaper.
Trust me, this will make (probably already has made) the front page of every major newspaper in the USA.
And every place I've ever lived would have had a banner headline if two people had been killed in the same event.
Mind you, I've never lived in Chicago, Washington DC, or New York City....
Even less newsworthy is the more common "man points his gun at would-be robber, robber decides that robbery is a bad idea"....
Which is one reason breaking into an occupied home is much less common here than it is in, say, the UK.
The person in question had a bullet-resistant vest, a helmet, smoke (or tear-gas, I see different accounts) grenades, and kicked in a door that normally opens outward (I've kicked in doors that open away from me, I can't actually imagine kicking in a door that opens towards me).
All of which tends to suggest that this was pretty well planned out in advance. In other words, NOT an attack of madness.
Hate to say this, but who really cares about people who commit suicide? If they want to end their lives, I have no real problem with it.
Unless of course they choose "suicide by cop" - take a gun downtown and start shooting till the cops blow you away....
What makes you think police officers get "repeated training on the job"? Most police officers never fire their guns except at annual qualification training. Most police officers go their entire career without ever firing a gun except at that same annual training.
On the other hand, my little brother spends one day every week working at a firing range as a range safety officer - not for pay, for fun. Because he gets to shoot his own guns for free when he's not being the RSO.
So he puts a couple hundred rounds a week through targets as opposed to your typical cop who might shoot fifty rounds a year....
That would probably be the Second Amendment, not the Fourth.
The Fourth is about illegal search and seizure.
Can't be done legally. Quite some time back, a tax was proposed on printer's ink. Said tax was shot down by the Supremes based on its effect on the First Amendment (it would adversely impact the freedom of the press).
By the same logic, restricting or outlawing the manufacture of firearms would adversely affect the Second Amendment....
Note that concealed carry licenses in the USA require some level of training to get (exactly how much and what kind varies by State).
Note also that "training", or being part of a "militia" in no way implies that you're less likely to wig out and shoot someone.
There are eight "nah" as the previous poster said, but none of them are between the "hey, hey, hey" and "good-bye".
Pretty sure it's "nah-nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah-nah, hey, hey, hey, good-bye"....
No. There is, however, ample evidence that gun ownership rates do NOT correlate to higher murder rates.
You said it, I didn't.
That aside, have you ever noticed that mass-shootings like this are almost invariably done by white men?
Yep. And the places they come from generally make it legal to own and carry firearms, and have lower murder rates than DC.
Most likely.
Which makes it odd that the usual response to a lunatic killing people is to scream for tighter gun laws...
It should be noted that this didn't happen in a bar or pub.
It should also be noted that shooting people is illegal. If you're inclined to obey laws, then you won't shoot them, even if you have a gun. If you're not inclined to obey them, then you're going to be willing to acquire and use a gun in spite of it being illegal.
And finally, it should be noted that even including this incident, the murder rate in Colorado is lower than it is in Washington DC, where owning a firearm is essentially illegal....
Actually it should be noted that, ignoring RATE, there are more murders in Washington DC (population 600k or so) than in Colorado (population 5.1 million or so) in a typical year.
Think of it as evolution in action....
Last I checked, birds had been moved under dinosauria, which means that the smaller, large-brained dinosaurs survived the C-T event quite nicely.
And if you bother to check, you'll notice that birds dominated the world for ten million years or so after the C-T event, not mammals...
Sure you may be. But you're wrong.
Note, for the record, that the budget comes from Congress, not the President.
Technically, it comes from the House, but that part of the Constitution has been ignored for most of the existence of the USA, so we'll ignore that.
Now, go back and check out control of the House and Senate since the New Deal (I pick that time, since the explosion of the national debt began then, and has continued for all but one year since (the debt actually went down one year in the 1950's, it hasn't since, in spite of "Clinton balancing the budget").
One of the things you'll find is that the Democrats have controlled the House for all but about 16 years of the last 80. And they've controlled the Senate for all but about 20 years of that same 80 years.