Thought It Was Part of the Movie

The NRA won the gun control debate in this country long ago, and this is the price we pay. Already the HuffPo has rep. Louis Gohmert blaming “attacks on Christianity” and the fact that not enough of the teenage moviegoers were armed.

@Serolf Divad:
Yeah… like you wrote today. Panic + guns + a lot more than 14 dead.

Gohmert says a lot of stupid base charging bullshit. If it was a fucking war on Xtians, there are a lot more better targets than a Batman movie

After the Virginia Tech massacre, some scientists studied human reaction times and found that no one–neither experienced gun owners nor amateurs–can respond quickly enough to defend themselves when someone walks into a room with guns blazing. The only hope for survival is that the shooter pauses, runs out of bullets, or the people are able to escape. I think it was featured on ABC’s 20/20.

@¡Andrew!:

Not only that: we’re learning that the shooter in this case was wearing full body armor. Trying to take him down with your concealed .38 Special would basically have been about as wise and effective throwing up your hands and waving at him while shouting: “Hey, Asshole… shoot me next.”

The fantasy that we just need more guns floating around in public to fix our gun crime epidemic is just absurd and makes about as much sense as lowering the national debt by cutting taxes.

My impression from evening news shows is that they are going to make more money covering this than anything else in the news. They have all set up some sort of name for their individual programs. Does this bother anyone else besides me? The names specifically. They just rub me in a bad way and I wished that they did not use them.

@DElurker:
If it bleeds it leads.

@DElurker: Roger Ebert makes your very point:

I’m not sure there is an easy link between movies and gun violence. I think the link is between the violence and the publicity. Those like James Holmes, who feel the need to arm themselves, may also feel a deep, inchoate insecurity and a need for validation. Whenever a tragedy like this takes place, it is assigned catchphrases and theme music, and the same fragmentary TV footage of the shooter is cycled again and again. Somewhere in the night, among those watching, will be another angry, aggrieved loner who is uncoiling toward action. The cinematic prototype is Travis Bickle of “Taxi Driver.” I don’t know if James Holmes cared deeply about Batman. I suspect he cared deeply about seeing himself on the news.

Should this young man — whose nature was apparently so obvious to his mother that, when a ABC News reporter called, she said “You have the right person” — have been able to buy guns, ammunition and explosives? The gun lobby will say yes. And the endless gun control debate will begin again, and the lobbyists of the National Rifle Association will go to work, and the op-ed thinkers will have their usual thoughts, and the right wing will issue alarms, and nothing will change. And there will be another mass murder.

@SanFranLefty: They should name the internet after that guy, he wins it so often.

Just checked Red Box – – there are at least two movies dealing with this subject matter for rent. Coincidence? Are has it become part of the current American experience.

So I guess it remains to find out which particular militia gave him the orders to shoot up the cinema.

After all the 2nd amendment says the right to bear arms is as part of an organised militia, yes?