Media Criticism, Political Commentary

That Didn’t Take Long

13 Comments

It hasn’t been twelve hours since the latest massacre, and people in the media are already using it to call for gun control that would be very unlikely to have prevented it. And of course, it goes without saying that it’s Rush Limbaugh’s and the Tea Party’s fault. I predict that Sarah Palin will be fingered by the end of the day.

Idiot demagogues and rhetorical ambulance chasers.

I will say that it might be useful not to allow costumes in movie theaters, though. Something like this was inevitable.

[Update a while later]

ABC News: “Oops, sorry about that.”

Note that their first instinct is always to blame “right wingers” and (more recently) the Tea Party, whereas they always go to ridiculous lengths to downplay any possible connection to jihad. And if the guy turns out to have connections to the Occumorons, we’ll never hear about it. Most likely, though, it will just turn out to be a nut, like Jarred Loughner.

13 thoughts on “That Didn’t Take Long”

  1. I’ve seen this episode before. It’s the one where Corky waddles in breathless and blames the bête noire du jour, and his monogomous sidekick cackles with glee over dead children. It’s beyond disgusting.

  2. This may be the end of dress-up midnight screenings. As long as we don’t get saddled with (movie) Ticketing Security Administration pat-downs or some such.

    2. In the early and mid-80’s, at the height of the urban gangbanger and crack cocaine pestilence, metal detectors were a pretty common part of the moviegoing experience, at least here in L.A. Every theater in the part of town I was living in then (N. Hollywood), had them and used them. Don’t know about the rest of the country. Just noting that draconian theater security measures, should they come in Colorado or elsewhere, are not a new thing.

  3. Given that the guy broke in through an emergency exit, the only benefit to not allowing costumes would have been a few seconds earlier threat recognition, hardly enough to do anything.

    We obviously don’t know what the motive yet, but I would bet money that the strongest cause will, once again, be our unwillingness to do anything about dangerously mentally ill people until they snap. Not a whole lot different from the homeless lunatic who stabbed a random woman in New York a few days ago, except this one’s crazy ws a lot more planned.

  4. The whole idea of “mainstreaming” the seriously mentally ill is flawed. We need to return to the commitment/asylum model for those incapable of living in society.

    Please note that I am a diagnosed depressive (MDD). Fortunately, my case is responsive to therapy and I live a normal, happy life. I don’t advocate throwing people into nuthouses willy-nilly, but I do think the alternative of institutionalization should exist.

  5. The usual suspects are saying the usual things – “if a few CCW permit holders were in the audience he would have been stopped.”

    No, he wouldn’t. He came prepared, with gas mask and body armour that probably would have stopped the pistol rounds likely to be used by gun carriers. If they managed to hit him, that is, in a crowded darkened cinema.

    If this lunatic (almost certainly an accurate description) had been unable to easily obtain assorted guns then, although he might have gone amok with a machete or something, the body count would have been lower.

    1. …speaking of “the usual suspects saying the usual things”…
      Shirt bloody ehough for ya, Fletch? I’d hate to see you wave one with even a little white on it.

    2. the body count would have been lower

      False assumption. I can think of any number of ways to have a higher body count without using bullets (which are really inefficient if you take a nanosecond to think about it.)

      The real solution is thought control. I know the results would be crude at first, but the new TSA (Thought Screening Administration) would take all citizens and spend whatever time is required to analyze their brains for dangerous thoughts (tea party members don’t need screening, they’re automatically on the list.)

      For oversight we’d have a committee with an equal number of left wing radicals and RINOs to make sure everybodies rights were protected.

  6. Mr. Christian:

    No government will ever disarm me. I don’t care if some nut in a mask kills a thousand people in some theater somewhere. He is not me and I will not be denied my right because of him. Let the government pass whatever laws it wishes — it doesn’t matter in the slightest, because I will never submit to being disarmed.

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