There must be something in the air in Colorado that makes bright young men turn to fantasy and then to murder.
Not since 1999 had this scenic state in general and the greater Denver area in particular seen the kind of kid-provoked carnage as what happened early last Friday morning in Aurora when that fellow with the dark clothing, the body armor, the groin and throat protectors, and the gas mask set off a smoke bomb in a movie house and started shooting people -- using a 40 caliber handgun, an assault rifle and a shotgun. Good thing he was wearing the armor. You never know when one of those infants will pull out a gun and start firing back. It is, after all, the wild west.
“Boom, boom, boom,” exclaimed a woman theater-goer describing what she heard before she managed to duck. She still was cut and burned by flying shards and bullet casings.
The smirking mugshot of James Holmes, PhD candidate in neuroscience shines out at us from TV and computer screens and the daily paper. He looks like a guy who has some neurological short circuits.
Babies, out for a midnight movie with their parents, parents out for a midnight look at Batman with their babies, and others... dead or injured.
And there’s smirky, out in back of the movie house, standing at his little white Hyundai with at least one more weapon inside. You can almost see him blowing the smoke away from the tip of the assault rifle, like they do with the six shooters in old westerns.
Mr. Holmes, about to drop out of school, informed police that his third floor walkup apartment was booby trapped. So the count of death and injury didn’t rise because when police went a-visiting they brought along stuff that would protect them or disable the bombs and gas canisters.
Here’s an inventory of the White Hyundai arsenal:
--Glock pistol, .40 cal.
--Another Glock pistol, .40 cal.
--Remington shotgun, model 870, 12 gauge.
--Smith & Wesson AR-15 assault rifle, similar in appearance to the long ones in this picture.
\The base model goes for around $730. But with all the bells and whistles it can set you back almost two grand, list.
Holmes bought the weapons from two Denver-area chain stores, Gander Mountain Guns and Bass Pro Shops. Good to have a pro on your side when you’re thinking about doing some baby killing in a movie house. Bass has released a statement saying it has reviewed the paperwork for the sales and everyone in its house followed all the laws. Which says something about the laws.
Holmes also bought 6,000 rounds of ammunition using the internet, which didn’t raise any eyebrows let alone set off alarms anywhere.
Holmes is remembered as being “very smart and a little strange” by one of his classmates quoted by NBC News. Just not smart enough to save us all the trouble of hearing about his tough childhood and his probable drug abuse, his mental state and all the other smokescreens that’ll come up at his trial.
And the imbecile politicians? What ever happened to Obama’s pledge to renew the assault weapons ban? And then there’s Romney who favored gun control as governor of Massachusetts now has (oh, what a surprise) reversed his position?
There are good uses for all those legally acquired things that don’t kill people, it’s just that there are too many of the wrong ones in the hands of people like the guy with the body armor, the groin protector and the “Joker” hairdo at a Batman movie.
(Coming Wednesday 7/25/12: The final full length post in the Penn State scandal, this one about the downing of the Paterno statue and the NCAA penalties. Any added stuff will be in the form of shrapnel, familiar to both movie goers in Aurora and rational evaluators of America’s foremost sort-of state university.)
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
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