[News] Shooting at Batman Premier: Colorado

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GasBandit

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I usually don't go to premieres anyway - they're too crowded and I never get good seats.

However, I did overhear somebody at work today saying that this has prompted him to decide to get his concealed carry permit.
 
However, I did overhear somebody at work today saying that this has prompted him to decide to get his concealed carry permit.
Before I make a judgement of any kind: Is this a reliable human being who will show restraint in having a concealed weapon?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Before I make a judgement of any kind: Is this a reliable human being who will show restraint in having a concealed weapon?
This is a good ol' boy what drops more consonants an' slurs murr vaals 'n you can shake a stick at.

And he often steals my parking space.
 
Why do people care about what his reason was, as though it's something that, when you hear it, you'll go "ohhhhhh"? I mean...here's his reason:

1) Life sucks
2) I can't or am not willing to fix it
3) I'm a coward and mentally ill
4) ?????
5) Killing a bunch of people will fix this.

It really doesn't matter. He's a piece of crap. This isn't George Zimmerman or someone who there is even the slimmest shadow of a doubt that there was a good reason behind what he did. This is a crazy guy who murdered 12 random people because he wanted attention.

Dude was a coward. Screw him.
I disagree. The reason to look for someone's reason is in order to find the signs in other people and potentially prevent it from happening again. There's an antecedent to everyone's actions, whether they're known to the person or hidden deep in their psyche, and this guy is no different. Yes, it is very likely the case the mental instability, but what kind of mental instability? What could have been done to treat the mental instability, get him help, see the signs before it happens, etc?

It's not just a fascination about his reasons, but it's also a preventative measure to help see the potential signs for future shooters like him.
 
So we need to arrest anyone that is fired from his job or drops out of something important in his life? In several of these cases these are the only outward manifestation of anything going wrong.
 

Necronic

Staff member
Then you don't want his reason, you want the reason. His reason will probably involve some manifesto involving race or politics or religion or hating women or "my dog told me to" or being a Superman fan (*ahem*). The reason will involve something like paranoid schizophrenia or accute anxiety disorder or sociopathic etc along with some grudge or source of unhappiness.

It's worth looking into the mental illness or series of events in the persons life that lead up to this, but it's an academic exercise that includes case studies of all situations like this, this is just one more piece of data. And I'm not sure what can be learned from this, or other instances, because they are so few and far between and each have their own convluted data sets behind them. Trying to draw trends from incredibly rare outliers is difficult, if not impossible.

That's the spooky/creepy thing about htese kinds of things. I'm not sure what even can be learned from them. What did we learn from the Son of Sam? That dogs and catholocism make a bad combination? From John Wayne Gacey? That clowns are scary? From Dahlmer? That you can't actually dissolve a body in acid even though Breaking Bad keeps doing it? From Hitler? That we should buy crappy paintings "just in case"?

The sad thing is that there aren't always lessons. .
 
Take Charles Joseph Whitman, the University of Texas Shooter. It turned out the reason he went nuts is he had a brain tumor. There is no way to see that coming. This guy (I don't want to learn his name) just dropped out of school. Nothing sinister in that. We just can't get everyone to submit to yearly physicals and psychiatric exams.
 
Take Charles Joseph Whitman, the University of Texas Shooter. It turned out the reason he went nuts is he had a brain tumor. There is no way to see that coming. This guy (I don't want to learn his name) just dropped out of school. Nothing sinister in that. We just can't get everyone to submit to yearly physicals and psychiatric exams.
Yet! </poorobamacarejoke>
 
Totally not surprised that all of that murder equipment was purchased legally in the best nation on earth.

Also, not joking, free universal health care would have prevented the University of Texas shooting since it would have caught the brain tumor. Thanks for playing.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Also, not joking, free universal health care would have prevented the University of Texas shooting since it would have caught the brain tumor. Thanks for playing.
Actually, if there's one thing the American health care system does beat the socialized version at, it's cancer treatment.
 
Actually, if there's one thing the American health care system does beat the socialized version at, it's cancer treatment.
Actually, heck no. It's only in countries with enforced public health care and mandatory mammographies/colonoscopies/other unpleasant things doctors do, that you really see a significant decrease in mortality. Per capita, Belgium has much lower breasts cancers progressing past stage 2 than the US. Once a cancer's been diagnosed, treatment might be better in the US (though I doubt it and depending on where you live and how much money you're able to spend); early detection and risk aversion, resulting in lower costs and lower mortality rates is very firmly on the side of "organised, free and mandatory medical systems".

*edit*
Darn you admins and your ninja-like ways.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Well, according to FactCheck.org (which I use begrudgingly),

Across the board, the United States boasts a higher five-year relative survival rate than the European average, according to a 2008 study in the British medical journal Lancet. For breast cancer, for instance, the U.S. survival rate was 83.9 percent, the U.K. rate was 69.7, and the average European rate was 73.1.

The American Cancer Society found that the five-year survival rates for colorectal cancer averaged 63 percent for the privately insured but 49 percent for the uninsured. According to the Lancet study, five-year relative survival rates for colorectal cancer were 59.1 percent in the U.S. and 45.3 percent in Europe. Breast cancer survival rates among the uninsured were also similar to Europe – 85 percent survival for those with private insurance, 75 percent for the uninsured, close to the European average. Rates for people on Medicaid were similar to the uninsured.
The article then goes on to spin like a maytag to say "but that doesn't mean it's better, and we'll stop linking to data now but don't notice that!"
 
Well, according to FactCheck.org (which I use begrudgingly),



The article then goes on to spin like a maytag to say "but that doesn't mean it's better, and we'll stop linking to data now but don't notice that!"

Nice try, but the study compares global across Europe, including such great and modern countries as Slovenia. I'm not comparing the US to what was the USSR 20 years ago. The article you quote explicitly states that it was because of early detection that the USA scored higher. Not only is this an area where the good part of Europe (say, Scandinavia, the Benelux, Germany, Austria) is in advance of the US, it's also an area where you want the USA to step back because it's that damn meddling government, while the commie red bastards (I know, I'm joking) want to further it. Better cancer care = earlier detection = mandatory screenings = government meddling in your damn right to die mysteriously. You can't, at the same time, argue that health care is evil, and that because of those few measures that you have taken, your version is better.
 
Totally not surprised that all of that murder equipment was purchased legally in the best nation on earth.

Also, not joking, free universal health care would have prevented the University of Texas shooting since it would have caught the brain tumor. Thanks for playing.
Whitman sought help at the University Medical Center. So thanks for playing too.
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/20/louie-gohmert-aurora-shootings_n_1689099.html

Jesus. You know what I don't understand? Is how people hundreds of years later can take every single word men (great men, yes, fallible men, of course) made in a time completely different than that that we live in as complete and utter truths above all else.

Ben Franklin once said, blah blah blah. Fuck, they weren't Gods guys. Ben Franklin wasn't the offspring of Zeus.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)
This is where I stopped reading.
 

Necronic

Staff member
Dude quotes Ben Franklin about christianity.

Ben Franklin

Who was a deist.

Whelp.

Also quotes John Adams, a Unitarian. Who said that Christianity was being usurped by the unscrupulous to create fear.
 
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