Hi everyone!
I just wanted to follow up on my post of this weekend regarding the shootings last Friday at the movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado. Presumed suspect James Holmes appeared in court for the first time this morning, his hair dyed orange, looking and behaving completely out of touch with the world around him. As more comes out in the press about Mr. Holmes's background, the more disturbing this case becomes. What upsets me most is the fact that over the period of sixty days he was able to amass an arsenal that, according to today's New York Times, included 3,000 rounds of handgun ammunition, 3,000 rounds for an assault rifle, and 350 shells for a 12-gauge shotgun...all purchased legally over the Internet. This shouldn't surprise me, but it does.
What is even more alarming to me, however, is the continued arrogance of gun lobbyists who continue to spout off in the press to the effect that if Mr. Holmes hadn't been able to acquire the hardware needed to pull of Friday morning's attack, he could just as easily have built a bomb (or several bombs) that would have caused even greater loss of life. As it is, he'd rigged his apartment with tripwires and enough incendiary bombs to blow his apartment building to hell and back. Luckily, the Aurora police were skillful enough to remove the bombs without incident and explode them in an unidentified and remote location away from any population centers.
I'm sure over the weeks and months ahead we'll hear more than we will ever want to know about James Holmes. The question on everyone's minds right now is what could possibly have led a by all accounts intelligent and seemingly mild-mannered young man to plan and carry out such an act of horrific devastation. Clearly, something went wrong somewhere on his life's journey from a quiet, upscale neighborhood outside of San Diego to the Denver suburb of Aurora. What does this say about our nation's ability to detect and treat severe mental illness? How many young men like Mr. Holmes are out there in need of help but perhaps are unsure of where to get that help or are perhaps even unaware that help is needed? Who do we blame for this? Our healthcare system? Our media? Hollywood? The Second Amendment? All of the above? I don't have the answers but I would sure like someone to help me understand.
The tragic irony of all this (or perhaps not irony per se but sheer coincidence) is that the Aurora tragedy takes place just as Norway is commemorating the one-year anniversary of another horrific gun-related tragedy--Anders Behring Breivik's rampage in and around Oslo last summer that killed 77 people. In the past six years alone, it seems the world has experienced one mass shooting after another: the Toronto shopping mall shooting last month; the 2011 Tucson, AZ shooting of U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen other people; Fort Bragg; Virginia Tech; the list goes on. And this doesn't even begin to take into consideration the murder and mayhem experienced on a daily basis by innocent civilians caught in the crossfire in the world's all-too-many war zones. What have we learned from any of this? Sadly, apparently nothing.
I realize as I'm writing this that I am probably preaching to the choir and that if I can't propose answers then there is probably no point in posing questions. I'm just afraid that as a nation and as a world, we are quickly becoming desensitized, and as the memory of 7-20 slowly fades into memory and we fixate on our own individual lives, it will take another tragedy on the scale of what we just witnessed in Aurora, Colorado to shock and remind us all over again how fragile life is, how we take it for granted, and how preventable so much of this tragedy really is.
Ciao.
Showing posts with label Aurora Colorado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aurora Colorado. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2012
Saturday, July 21, 2012
"The Dark Knight" Massacre
Hi everyone!
By now we've all heard about the "The Dark Knight" massacre that took place at a midnight showing of the movie at a cineplex in Aurora, Colorado Friday morning. The latest count has twelve confirmed dead and scores wounded and being treated in local area hospitals. The killer James Holmes, a 24 year-old former med student at the University of Colorado (Denver) Anschutz Medical Campus, walked through an emergency exit at the front of the theatre just as the sell-out crowd was settling down to enjoy the movie. He allegedly announced "I am the Joker" before dispensing a canister of tear gas and beginning to shoot randomly into the crowd. Many initially thought the whole thing was some sort of publicity stunt until it became tragically apparent that it was not. Police arrested Mr. Holmes in the parking lot minutes later who warned them his apartment was booby-trapped to explode. As of this writing, Aurora police are still trying to find a way into Mr. Holmes's apartment.
This horrific event has some personal immediacy for me. Just this past week I was hired as an adjunct professor at the Community College of Aurora. I'll be teaching three classes of Basic Composition at the college Monday through Thursday evenings starting at the end of August. The school is no more than a half a mile from the theatre complex where the shootings took place. As fate would have it, I had planned to drive down to the school yesterday morning to drop off some HR forms to finalize my hiring. Friday was my deadline to do this. The campus was pretty quiet when I got there around ten-thirty. I took care of business and headed out. Before heading back out to the High Country where I've been staying, I wanted to run some errands in Cherry Creek, an upscale suburb not too far from Aurora. I didn't realize until too late that the route I'd chosen to take happened to go past the scene of the shooting. It was all roped off with police cars and press vehicles gathered as far as the eye could see. I stopped at the light and forced myself not to look out the window. I just didn't want to know.
The crazy thing was, my brother and I were supposed to attend a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" Thursday night. He'd gotten tickets earlier in the week for a viewing in Highland Ranch, another suburb of Denver on the opposite side of the city from Aurora. He didn't realize until later that the tickets he purchased were for a marathon screening of the entire trilogy, with the final installment slated to begin at 12:01am. When we discovered this, we decided not to go. The thought of sitting in a movie theatre for eight-plus hours with a bunch of costume-clad weirdos held no appeal. No, we hadn't planned to see the film in Aurora and our lives were never in danger, but in retrospect, what if we had chosen to see the movie at the Century 16 cineplex? Neither my brother nor I are the type to attend midnight showings, but what if we had been?
I realize this kind of speculation is pointless. But my point is, what makes these kinds of events so horrific is that they can happen to anyone anywhere. And as long as this country refuses to (or is prevented from) enacting tougher gun control laws, what happened Friday morning in Aurora, Colorado can (and probably will) happen again. By all accounts, Mr. Holmes purchased his guns legally at a local hunting/fishing supply store. But that's beside the point. Legally purchased or not, what the hell was he doing with an AR-15 assault rifle, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, and a .40 caliber Glock handgun? What was the clerk who sold them to him thinking? And what's worse, Friday morning's massacre took place a mere ten or so miles from Littleton, site of 1999's Columbine High School killings. Has this country (not to mention this state) learned nothing in the past thirteen years? Apparently not. The gun lobbies and Second Amendment blow-hards are too powerful.
We go to the movies to escape, to be entertained, to be moved. This is something we all share regardless of race, gender, or country of origin. Perhaps we are naive in our sense of security? After all, our multiplexes don't require us pass through metal detectors or body scans before we head over to the box office and refreshment stand. Perhaps they should? Perhaps this is just the sad state of the world we live in? I know I'm probably over-reacting but I don't know when I'll actually go to a move theatre again. I love movies but if I can watch them in the safety of my own home, at least for now, it seems like a more attractive option. And, thanks to Mr. Holmes, I probably won't see "The Dark Knight Rises" in a theatre or otherwise...at least not anytime soon. Any enjoyment I might have derived from it has been tainted by the thought that the images on screen are what was playing when Mr. Holmes decided to play the Joker and viciously end so many innocent lives.
Ciao.
By now we've all heard about the "The Dark Knight" massacre that took place at a midnight showing of the movie at a cineplex in Aurora, Colorado Friday morning. The latest count has twelve confirmed dead and scores wounded and being treated in local area hospitals. The killer James Holmes, a 24 year-old former med student at the University of Colorado (Denver) Anschutz Medical Campus, walked through an emergency exit at the front of the theatre just as the sell-out crowd was settling down to enjoy the movie. He allegedly announced "I am the Joker" before dispensing a canister of tear gas and beginning to shoot randomly into the crowd. Many initially thought the whole thing was some sort of publicity stunt until it became tragically apparent that it was not. Police arrested Mr. Holmes in the parking lot minutes later who warned them his apartment was booby-trapped to explode. As of this writing, Aurora police are still trying to find a way into Mr. Holmes's apartment.
This horrific event has some personal immediacy for me. Just this past week I was hired as an adjunct professor at the Community College of Aurora. I'll be teaching three classes of Basic Composition at the college Monday through Thursday evenings starting at the end of August. The school is no more than a half a mile from the theatre complex where the shootings took place. As fate would have it, I had planned to drive down to the school yesterday morning to drop off some HR forms to finalize my hiring. Friday was my deadline to do this. The campus was pretty quiet when I got there around ten-thirty. I took care of business and headed out. Before heading back out to the High Country where I've been staying, I wanted to run some errands in Cherry Creek, an upscale suburb not too far from Aurora. I didn't realize until too late that the route I'd chosen to take happened to go past the scene of the shooting. It was all roped off with police cars and press vehicles gathered as far as the eye could see. I stopped at the light and forced myself not to look out the window. I just didn't want to know.
The crazy thing was, my brother and I were supposed to attend a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" Thursday night. He'd gotten tickets earlier in the week for a viewing in Highland Ranch, another suburb of Denver on the opposite side of the city from Aurora. He didn't realize until later that the tickets he purchased were for a marathon screening of the entire trilogy, with the final installment slated to begin at 12:01am. When we discovered this, we decided not to go. The thought of sitting in a movie theatre for eight-plus hours with a bunch of costume-clad weirdos held no appeal. No, we hadn't planned to see the film in Aurora and our lives were never in danger, but in retrospect, what if we had chosen to see the movie at the Century 16 cineplex? Neither my brother nor I are the type to attend midnight showings, but what if we had been?
I realize this kind of speculation is pointless. But my point is, what makes these kinds of events so horrific is that they can happen to anyone anywhere. And as long as this country refuses to (or is prevented from) enacting tougher gun control laws, what happened Friday morning in Aurora, Colorado can (and probably will) happen again. By all accounts, Mr. Holmes purchased his guns legally at a local hunting/fishing supply store. But that's beside the point. Legally purchased or not, what the hell was he doing with an AR-15 assault rifle, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, and a .40 caliber Glock handgun? What was the clerk who sold them to him thinking? And what's worse, Friday morning's massacre took place a mere ten or so miles from Littleton, site of 1999's Columbine High School killings. Has this country (not to mention this state) learned nothing in the past thirteen years? Apparently not. The gun lobbies and Second Amendment blow-hards are too powerful.
We go to the movies to escape, to be entertained, to be moved. This is something we all share regardless of race, gender, or country of origin. Perhaps we are naive in our sense of security? After all, our multiplexes don't require us pass through metal detectors or body scans before we head over to the box office and refreshment stand. Perhaps they should? Perhaps this is just the sad state of the world we live in? I know I'm probably over-reacting but I don't know when I'll actually go to a move theatre again. I love movies but if I can watch them in the safety of my own home, at least for now, it seems like a more attractive option. And, thanks to Mr. Holmes, I probably won't see "The Dark Knight Rises" in a theatre or otherwise...at least not anytime soon. Any enjoyment I might have derived from it has been tainted by the thought that the images on screen are what was playing when Mr. Holmes decided to play the Joker and viciously end so many innocent lives.
Ciao.
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