The conspiracy crowd already has one about the Aurora shootings that I have seen several places on the Internets. Namely that this guy was unemployed, so how could he have afforded all this exotic equipment (because no one, ever, has gone on a spending binge with their Visa), or found much of it. Given that the United Nations is about to pass an Arms Trade Treaty, it’s pretty obvious that the Obama Administration staged this whole thing to create a pretext for signing the United States onto the ATT.
I’m finding it difficult to believe that this Administration would go so far as to hire a spree killer, in Denver of all places, to create a pretext to put a legally meaningless signature on a treaty whose draft doesn’t even exist yet. It’s one of the more wild-eyed conspiracies I’ve seen. Sometimes, albeit rarely, someone descends into the madness of schizophrenia in a way that they become wildly dangerous to those around them. If you look at this guy’s life before the madness consumed him, what you’re struck by is what a tragic waste of human potential this disease represents. I suspect the lure of these conspiracy theories is that they give something random and senseless some understandable and acceptable narrative. But I think it fits in the realm of what Professor Reynolds said a few days ago, “Others may blame Hollywood. In both cases, it’s a mix of opportunism and a desire not to confront the existence of evil,” and I wish our folks wouldn’t engage in it.
Further to hire a spree killer and to let him get into the hands of the cops?
Nah, he’s just crazy. The question is HOW crazy, and WHY he’s this crazy.
Very, and I don’t give a shit. If he were a pit bull he’d already have been destroyed.
Crazy means that he was incapable of understanding his actions, this guy is as sane as you or I. He is evil and a sociopath.
That’s nuthin! I heard about ANOTHER conspiracy, where the ATF either straw purchases ‘assault weapons,’ or forces border state gun stores to sell to people they normally would refuse, and then encourages known Mexican drug cartel members to walk across the border. This would cause no END to the mayhem.
Then, they could use the pretense of the mayhem to push for more gun control.
Nah… that’s too crazy. That could never happen, either.
LOL T-bolt. Honestly I wouldn’t have believed it either until I saw the evidence with my own two eyes.
This guy very well could be an Obama stunt, but I’d need to see as much evidence as I did with FaF to change my mind.
jt got it in one, Bob, maybe in your world everything is still peace and love and the .gov is your friend.
In this world I can say with pretty good authority that THIS .gov has proved over and over and over that those who are running it ARE NOT anyone’s friend except their own.
And they would/will do ANYTHING to keep themselves in power.
Matt Bracken was only missed by 12 years; John Ross by
HIt the wrong button – s/b John Ross by only 22 years…
Mental illness is affects more than 10% of the population, and paranoia is a common symptom.
Speaking of opportunism, did you see where both the left and the right ran ahead of themselves to link James Holmes to their opposition?
First ABC News mentioned that a James Holmes was a Tea Party activist in the Aurora area; later they apologized for that once they learned it wasn’t the same guy. Meanwhile the right discovered that a James Holmes had posted a video supporting OWS, on Youtube; so the shooter was quickly linked to a “radical anarchist” splinter group associated with OWS. Wrong; again, it wasn’t the Aurora shooter.
But we all know that to be thoroughly evil, someone must embrace all evil, especially the ideology of our opponents.
The funny thing is, though, I didn’t hear about the second association until just now. I’ve been listening to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and while I’ve heard them making fun of the reporter who linked the shooter to the Tea Party, I’ve mostly heard “it’s likely someone who has schizophrenea, let’s not politicise it!” from the right.
Of course, I don’t listen to or read everything on the right, so I may have missed this one…
But, in any case, you’re right: we shouldn’t be rushing to judgement trying to link any given shooter to the left or right.
I can’t speak to the conspiracies, but from what I just heard from Philly Commissioner Ramsey, Ed Renell, and Commie Joe Klein on ABC’s This Week with Geo. Stephanopolus this morning, the libs are clearly using this tragedy to pull out and dust off their tired old fallacious arguments. THEY are obviously glad this happened.
I was never more outraged in my life! (Anyone else see it?)
Respectfully, Arnie
“Ed Renell” should read “Ed Rendell”, former Gov. of Pennsylvania.
Concur, we need to just stay out of that one…
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. We got that with F&F, and I would point out that the reason we had proof is because of whistle blowers. Most people in government are not monsters, and most conspiracy theories would only work if that were true.
The conspiracy theory grows because this guy does not fit the mold. No one had any suspicions of this guy (so far as we know at this time) and he that he didn’t shoot it out with the cops and was arrested with ease.
My take is he was just a twisted individual that did not show his cards to anyone and found a way to enact his sick fantasies and become famous.
His mother, however, was reported to have no doubt the report was true.
But, yeah, this is in general a really unusual case as these go.
He was refused membership in a Colorado gun club because of his bizarre telephone answering machine message.
And maybe a bit more, this AP article (which may change by the time you read it) is unusually opaque, even for the MSM.
1% of the population has schizophrenia, another 1% is Bipolar (roughly). Multiply times 314 million people here (more if the census.gov clock doesn’t count illegals) and you get a lot of potential problems. 6.3+ million people who could be psychotic and delusional at some point in their illness. And of that group, maybe one percent are in a long term psychiatric hospital. I guess if you included some of the prison population you could account for more, but most people with chronic, serious mental illness are safe enough and “on the loose.”
The hard thing is, how many harmless mentally ill people do you hospitalize (potentially millions), depriving them of their liberty, in order to try and corral a guy like this one? Hindsight bias applies here as well. Lots of people with a screw loose, but very few events like this. I agree with Clayton Cramer, however, that the commitment criteria are too lax at the moment.
It seems like a similar risk/benefit equation applies to the mentally ill as to questions of restricting weapons. Even if you try to stop them all, some will slip through anyway.
Some will slip through anyway. A law doesn’t need to work perfectly to still be worthwhile. If you manage to prevent 1/2 of these crimes, that’s still a win, depending on the costs in civil liberties.
I would also add that committing certain people, even if they aren’t a danger to themselves or others, helps to get them off the street, where they would otherwise be wandering as homeless people.
Thus, one standard that ought to be looked into is “do they have someone watching over them? And if not, can they sustain enough of a normal lifestyle to live in an apartment?” I was going to say “to work” as well, but then I remembered that my sister is getting Social Security Disability for her schizophrenea; while I disagree with the program itself, if an individual is getting some sort of financial support, then I see no reason why “not being able to keep a job” should be reason to commit someone!
I don’t really have a problem with SSD for those who are truly disabled. The problem is that an awful lot of people who are on it are not.
I would also like to see how this pans out with NDAA in the future. Am I a potential terrorist now if I’ve ordered a weapon or chemicals online now? The Feds only need “suspicion”.
Most all conspiracy theories are predicated on great and continued secrecy.
I can’t imagine what has led anyone to the belief that anyone can keep a secret for long.
If there were real conspiracies, if you started talking about it you’d just dis
If this had really been an Administration plot the shooter would have locked himself out of the theater whilst retrieving the weapons from his car … which would have been locked with the keys inside.
Control freaks always want to base policy on what the rare exceptions do, not on what generally happens. Their yearning for safety is a fool’s errand, but it makes them feel good. Others feel even better by running the lives of people around them.
What the conspiracy folks don’t get is the fact that one person can cause a lot of damage That’s as scary as being out of control, but let’s flip this around. If one person can do much harm, one person can also do much good. I prefer that kind of world to one in which everything is determined by broad social forces.
O/T: Some weirdo that does PR for American Apparel used an online service called HARO to feed reporters nonsensical disinformation about random topics.
I bet guys like you and Sean Sorrentino could use it to provide them accurate information about 2A stuff.
Thanks for posting and saying this.
Feinstein AW-ban/magazine-ban success story! (NOT!)
Hi-Point 9mm carbine (with its 10 round magazine) which were designed to comply with the Feinstein ban, is primary weapon used in 1999 Columbine massacre. Another gun-control success story!
I don’t know about all that. I just finished 90 days on unemployment and could barely afford food let alone a box of .22 long rifle. Credit cards? I have (had) excellent credit, but don’t hae the ability to purchase 10-20K on credit and I had a real job before my lay-off. I sure wasn’t a perennial college student. How much credit can be extended to someone who has never held a real job, and probably has tons of student loans?