Media
Midnight Movie Massacre: set up?
On Friday, July 20, 2012, the mass media yet again set aside all other reporting to report on one event. At about 12:30 a.m., in Aurora, Colorado, James Eakin Holmes walked into a crowded theater and shot seventy-one people, killing twelve. After he committed this Midnight Movie Massacre, he calmly walked outside, stood beside his car, and let the police arrest him. He even warned them not to barge into his apartment, for he had booby-trapped it.
Within those twenty-four hours, at least one media organ, and several politicians and commentators, behaved more atrociously even than did Holmes. They exploited his act for their own political agendas. But as the sun fell on the tragic scene, others started to ask questions that even the police missed. And they now suspect that Holmes did not act by accident. Someone might have set up this event, by turning James Eakin Holmes into an assassin.
Midnight Movie Massacre Media Madness
Fox News Channel covered the Midnight Movie Massacre all day, and only now seems able to talk about something else. Other television broadcast and cable stations acted the same way. But Fox, at least, played it straight. They shared clues as soon as the police shared them with them. They shared telephone numbers where anyone worried about someone at the theater could call a hospital to see whether someone had brought their loved one in. They shared the name of the suspect when the police told them the name.
In sharp and atrocious contrast, ABC-TV reporter Brian Ross accused another man, having the same first and last names but not the same middle name as the suspect, of the crime. James Michael Holmes is a Tea Party activist. How quickly did ABC-TV seek to accuse the Tea Party movement of terrorist acts! That Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, regards Tea Party activists as terrorists is neither secret nor coincidental.
ABC-TV has since taken that report back. But too many other people still believe it. Some have threatened James Michael Holmes with death. Nor was ABC the only offender.
A Google screen capture of the search “occupy Black Bloc Member James Holmes.” Note the entry from occupywallst.org. A visit to that link produces HTTP error 404: page not found.
ABC-TV and other media organs ignored the connection that James Eakin Holmes had with a truly radical group. He once belonged to the “Black Bloc” (not black as in race) of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A member of the on-line forum at the site OccupyWallSt.org posted details about Holmes, said he was an OWS Black Bloc member, and discussed his role in the Midnight Movie Massacre. The site administrators scrubbed the post, but not before the Google search engine indexed a “snippet” from it. And the OWS people could not sanitize this copy of the forum post on another site. Nor this copy.
The “Doo Doo Economics Blog” has more details about James Eakin Holmes, his background, and the kind of man he was and is. So does the San Diego News and this private investigator. (See also here.) The PI, and “Doo Doo Economics,” seem to think that Holmes did the Midnight Movie Massacre to protest Warner Brothers Pictures. Apparently the film then showing (The Dark Knight Rises) portrays an Occupy Wall Street-like group in a bad light. As further evidence, Holmes dyed his hair red and said that he was “The Joker,” a recurring villain in the Batman franchise. (Holmes was mistaken. The Joker’s hair is green, not red.)
Calls for gun control
Nor were the media the only ones to disgrace themselves. Michael Bloomberg and Rahm Emmanuel, the Mayors of New York City and Chicago, both called for more gun control. E. J. Dionne Jr. (The Washington Post) did the same, and accused “the gun lobby” of “stifling debate.” So did several other commentators. And Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) planned to re-introduce a gun-control bill that he wrote.
Their thesis: the Midnight Movie Massacre occurred despite the background checks and other measures to stop people having murderous intent from getting guns. Holmes bought his weapons lawfully, through lawful channels. His background showed nothing that would have alerted police. (He had gotten a ticket for speeding. What motorist in America doesn’t get a ticket for speeding every few years?) Thus the only way to stop a future Midnight Movie Massacre is to stop people from getting guns, or at least guns that can fire so many shots.
WND asked the right question. Colorado is a “shall-issue” State for permission to carry a gun. Why did no one at the theater stop Holmes before he squeezed off his first round? The Midnight Movie Massacre need never have been, or at least need not have been so tragic. But the owners of the Century Sixteen Multiplex have a “gun-free zone” policy at the Century, and at every other theater they own across the country.
If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
The Midnight Movie Massacre proves that yet again. Cinemark Holdings tells all patrons to leave their guns outside. James Eakin Holmes did not. (In fact, he stashed one of his guns under the seat he had picked out in advance before the showing!) So Cinemark have themselves, almost as much as Holmes, to blame for the Midnight Movie Massacre.
The real lesson of the Midnight Movie Massacre is: you can’t stop every crazy man from getting a gun. Holmes was “a quiet, unassuming man.” This was his first “crazy” act.There is a first time for everything.
Incredibly, police departments in several large cities told citizens to take responsibility for their own security. But they tell people only to look for signs of trouble. What good is looking out for trouble when you can do nothing about any trouble you find? Two years ago, a common pleas judge gave the right advice: Arm yourselves.
(Other commentators suggested that the Hollywood movies and games were at fault. They portray violent acts, and some people get ideas from them. Of course, people have criticized the theater since the Greeks invented it, and especially since William Shakespeare built one.)
Fast and Furious Episode Two?
In the middle of the posturing, several people, including Mike Adams at Natural News, asked several more questions about the Midnight Movie Massacre that the police are not asking. Among them:
- What turned a “quiet, unassuming man” into a mass murderer?
- Where did he get his weapons, and his exotic equipment? He wore a flak vest, a gas mask, and the kind of clothes that a soldier might wear in urban warfare. (They are also the clothes that a police Special Weapons and Tactical officer might wear into “battle.”) He rigged his apartment with so many explosives that, at this writing, the police are ready to trip them and take their chances. He has several jars filled with ammunition, including mortar rounds. How did he get this cache? (And how could he afford it? The weapons, ammo, bombs, and other materials must have cost $20,000. How could anyone afford that, as a full-time tuition-paying student with no job?)
- Aside from where he got the weapons, who trained him to use them? Or to rig those booby traps?
- Why did he stop shooting only because one of his guns jammed?
- Why did he surrender? He was armed for bear, and could have escaped easily.
- Why did he warn the police about the booby traps in his apartment? (He didn’t tell them how to disarm them.)
Add this to it: he was an “honor student” at a Colorado medical school. Furthermore, he was studying neuroscience, and hoped to earn a PhD. Also, every witness to the Midnight Movie Massacre describes him as moving with unflappable calm. In other words, he acted like a mail carrier delivering the mail.
Adams thinks he knows. James Eakin Holmes did not pull off the Midnight Movie Massacre by himself. Someone trained him in weapons and explosives, and bought him those munitions. Adams also pointed out: The UN Arms Trade Treaty is due for signing next week. Adams has another name for the Midnight Movie Massacre: Operation Fast and Furious, Episode Two.
Adams mentioned one more thing, though almost in passing: Holmes’ field of study.
There is already conjecture that James Holmes may have been involved in mind-altering neuroscience research and ended up becoming involved at a depth he never anticipated. His actions clearly show a strange detachment from reality, indicating he was not in his right mind. That can only typically be accomplished through drugs, hypnosis or trauma (and sometimes all three).
Adams is talking about a dissociative reaction. Someone reacting that way is literally “not himself.” In fact, Holmes will plead not guilty of the Midnight Movie Massacre by reason of temporary insanity. He will in fact argue that he had an irresistible impulse to do what he did.
Adams might be more correct than he thinks about how the Midnight Movie Massacre went down, and who might have set it up. Clinical experimenters almost never experiment on medical students and “house officers.” But professors of psychology routinely use students as subjects. Your correspondent took part in several experiments at Yale College when he took Introduction to Psychology as a sophomore. A PhD adviser might lure a student in for a far more thoroughgoing experiment.
Shortly after its founding, the Central Intelligence Agency studied hypnosis, either as a method for interrogation or to protect someone who might be subject to it. The CIA said then that one could not reliably control someone’s behavior by hypnotizing him. Or so they say. Or perhaps they never stopped trying to make it work, and once they did make it work, they kept that secret. (In fact, the CIA admitted that they hadn’t done enough experiments before saying that hypnosis would not work!) In any case, the CIA referred to several papers,with provocative titles. Here are two:
- Brenman, M. Experiments in the hypnotic production of anti-social and self-injurious behavior. Psychiatry, 1942, 5, 49-61.
- Wells, W. R. Experiments in the hypnotic production of crime. J. Psychol., 1941, 11, 63-102.
If those references sound familiar, they should. Actor Khigh Dhiegh, as Dr. Yen Lo, mentioned both in a chilling scene in The Manchurian Candidate (dir. John Frankenheimer; with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Khigh Dhiegh, James Gregory, and Angela Lansbury; Columbia Pictures, 1962). In that scene, several American Army men sit quietly on a stage in front of an audience of Russian and Chinese “brass.” Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Harvey), on orders from Yen Lo, strangles a fellow soldier to death. And not a man present resists.
The witnesses to the Midnight Movie Massacre say that Holmes acted almost exactly as Laurence Harvey acts as he portrays Raymond Shaw, the programmed assassin. He carries out a program, until something goes wrong. Then he abandons his plan, as if he can’t cope with a simple thing like a gun jamming. (Why didn’t he simply pick up another gun and keep shooting?) He walks to his car, and then gives himself up. Through it all, he acts half asleep. He warns the police about the booby traps, but won’t help them disarm them. Maybe he wants the police to give up and blow up his apartment, and his computer, diaries, and other such evidence.
Is the Midnight Movie Massacre a “false-flag operation”? We might never know. But those who make our country’s laws, and those who vote for them, would do well to take the right lessons from the Midnight Movie Massacre, not the lessons that career politicians want us to learn.
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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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eh. Interesting theory, but it lacks evidence. Luckily he survived and can undergo real psychiatric screening. it will likely be found that he is schizophrenic (he is at the right age for a schizophrenic meltdown, usually happens to people when they are under a lot of stress and in their 20s) or something else that would explain why he would do something uncharacteristic.
If he comes across as completely sane, then there is something to worry and be suspicious about.
Honestly, this is crazy in the same way that saying that someone in the Bush administration helped with 9/11. It uses very similar logic.
I am worried by the logic of people using guns as a deterrent. I can see the logic behind it, but the implications are terrycloth. It would be like some kind of cold war. I dont want to carry a gun with me, but if everyone else in the country, I would have to to feel safe. Things would quickly change from “I carry a gun to feel safe” to “I dont feel safe without my gun”. I am not pro gun control: I recognize the right to bear arms and that for many guns are important to a way of life, but there is no need for anyone to have access to assault rifles unless you are a cop or a soldier.
This event shouldnt be an argument for more or less access to guns for your every day American, but rather about better screening on mental disorder, the warning signs, and preventing unstable people from owning guns.
Boom. Compromise.
The real blessing in that case is that the local police, and the local sheriff’s deputies, have entered the apartment without having to blow it up and destroy the evidence. We now will have the most complete set of evidence of Holmes’ mens rea that we could have had.
I do not believe that his handlers, if he had any, planted evidence of “lone-wolf-ism” in his apartment. I think somebody wanted that apartment destroyed, and with it the evidence it contains. To that end, he (or someone else) set up a music program to commence, precisely at midnight and for precisely one hour, to play obnoxiously loud music in that apartment. A witness came to the door, but something (or maybe some one, i.e. an angel) held her back and told her to get the proverbial million miles away from there.
So now that the police are in there, that apartment is a treasure trove.
Now I maintain that the best defense against a lone rabid wolf is for everyone to arm himself. You have to ask yourself: do you trust yourself and your fellow citizens, as a group, to be the last line of physical defense, or do you not? Part of that is learning to regard the citizens and lawful residents of a community as a collection rather than a collective.
The idea that he had handlers is really silly. Its an interesting conspiracy theory, but a more logical one is that Disney hired him to do it to stop TDKR from beating the Avengers at the Box office. Honestly, thinking that the government did it is about as crazy as thinking the government did 9-11.
Really think hard about the implications of literally everyone arming themselves at all times. There wouldnt be small altercations anymore. Two kids have a fight at school? One of them would end up dead. Bar fights would become shoot outs. Gun crimes would go way up because people don’t always think logically, when angry we act irrationally.
And these mass murders would still happen because a lot of these people are so mentally ill that they wouldnt care. They will just find better ways to do it.
We need to instead try to treat the culture that makes people who do this. We need to better know to treat the mentally unstable. More guns, Less guns…this shit will still happen.
You’re the one who infers the wrong thing from people arming themselves. An armed society is a polite society. First of all, any right that the people retain, the people may, as a matter of natural law, reserve to adults only. You’re talking about minors.
The mass murders wouldn’t happen any more, because one of the targets would always be able to stop it cold, in the obvious way. And the serial murders would stop, because the first target would stop the series cold.
In any event, you miss the point. The Second Amendment is the reset button on the Constitution. It codifies the right of the people to defend themselves against a government that “becomes destructive of the ends” of guaranteeing the “inalienable rights” that God gives to man. The Second Amendment ensures that the people will have the power to exercise their right, under the Declaration of Independence, to “alter or abolish” a “destructive” government.
Now: I don’t pretend to know whose side you were on during the Bush years. But I remind you that Nine-eleven Trutherism started with the Democratic Party. It started with liberals who “don’t wanta study war no more” because they want to see America defeated. And since you have come onto my comment space propounding parts of the Democratic Party Package Deal, you have no moral authority to judge the sanity of myself or any of my sources who believe, and show that they have reason to believe, that James Eagin Holmes was a Raymond Shaw-like hired, programmed, trained, and equipped assassin. Any such judgment that you might presume to make is self-serving.
Terry – Interesting commentary. I would not doubt something sinister with this Obama government. Anyone who is supportive of allowing babies who survive abortion to be left alone and die (as Obama) is capable of doing adults equally dirty in other forms and fashion.
You stated in your comment:
“…..Now I maintain that the best defense against a lone rabid wolf is for everyone to arm himself…..
I couldn’t agree with you more. Whether it be home [advantage] defense or out in the streets, law abiding citizens don’t have time to call 911 and wait while they are being gunned down.
But be that as it may, my blog posting following this sad massacre episode is, as follows. I posted this on a forum and a [so-called] self proclaimed “Independent” called me a hate-monger, without substantiating his liberal opinion:
Perspective: Obama – Far Worse Than the Aurora Colorado Murderer –
link to moralmatters.org
Pastor emeritus Nathan Bickel
http://www.thechristianmessage.org
http://www.moralmatters.org
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:
More guns = less gun-related violent crime. This is simple logic.
I’m much less like to harm\maim\shoot up a theater if I know ever swinging Charlie in the area has a gun and won’t think once, let alone twice about shooting me to protect other lives.
You (people in general, no you Terry) need to realize we’re still a “by the sword” species. It’s just our swords now have a lot more range and can kill more people.
To think this guy magically went on a killing magically at the premiere of a violent movie that MAGICALLY coincides with the eve of the President committing treason by signing a UN small arms ban treaty is just happenstance, I do believe you are a completely misguided soul.
The sooner people wake up and realize that there ARE people who want to control your thoughts and moves and every sense of your being, the sooner people will start to have the questioning attitude that is required to keep liberty at large and tyranny at bay.
Proof? Ask about the JFK assassination, 9/11, the Federal Reserve, Fast and Furious, the truth behind Watergate (you know, the WHOLE story), the list goes on and on.
….then again, this is the country where Justin Bieber supposedly throwing a temper tantrum was a bigger news story than the discovery of the Higgs-Boson (I’m not getting into THAT debate here; I’m merely presenting evidence that we’re too stupid as a nation to think).
This isn’t about “liberal” vs “conservative” view. This is about taking the exact same questioning attitude that Jesus Christ himself had (or the Buddha, Mohammad, et, al) had.
You probably meant “coincidence.” But otherwise you are correct.
Fleming I, Goldfinger (London: Jonathan Cape, 1959).
“More guns = less gun-related violent crime. This is simple logic.”
Then why does the USA have both far more guns and far mre gun-related violent crime than any other industrialised country?
As has been pointed out already, by the way, having panicking and untrained civilians try to return fire in a croweded and probably darkened cinema would have been an utter disaster. The wild shooting would likely have gone on causing casualties long after Holmes had either gone down or walked away.
And no, Terry, I’m not underestimating the ability of civilians to use firearms effectively. If anything I’m being generous.
Suit yourself.
You do realize, of course, that you are being wildly inconsistent.
Unless your real point is that you have the right to keep and bear arms, because you are a combat veteran and others aren’t?
Here’s a challenge for you: One of the victims, Caleb Medley, is in hospital in a coma, at the same time as his wife has just given birth.
They don’t have medical insurance and the bills will probably bankrupt them. Explain how that situation is better than Obamacare.
How about showing that the Tea Party is more than a bunch of people determined to show that Obama is Kenyan, and organising a charity drive to cover their medical costs? Or alternatively, convincing his doctors to accept chickens as payment.
The victim of a crime is in a special category, apart from any category of patient in a hospital. A violent crime is a failure of the social contract. The management of acute trauma from said crime is an extension of the police function: to protect people from criminals. A criminal put him in the hospital; the city needs to treat him there.
And in this case, you have another complication. Cinemark, owners of the theater, forbade its patrons to bring with them the means of self-defense. Result: murder and attempted murder on a grand, or at least massive, scale. Cinemark is, at least, philosophically liable for all the deaths and injuries, and all the expenses incidental to and loss-of-earning-power attendant upon same, in addition to the damages it brought upon itself, in the form of having a theater out of action for a week or two until the investigation, and pre-trial discovery, are complete.
You do realise that in no other country in the world do people expect to take their guns with them to the cinema, right? Only in the US, where every crazy person has access to guns. What do you think the common thread is?
And I’m guessing from your answer that you aren’t interested in mobilising the troops to raise charity for this family. Question: How much money have you given to WND and Sheriff Joe?
You also haven’t said how Obamacare is worse than this family being rendered destitute.
Don’t talk to me about “every other country in the world.” Except for the British (who have had a low baseline for violence since the House of Hanover took over, and who has seen violence increase with the disarmament of the common people), the countries in the world having the most people, and the strictest gun laws, have more murders per capita than has the USA.
You were talking about government health care, anyway. You were using that victim’s case to plump for universal, government-run health care. And I pointed out something you deliberately glossed over: that the victim of a crime is a special case, and that a good case existed for a city to keep a trauma hospital.
Obamacare is worse for this key reason: it will make every family destitute.
“the countries in the world having the most people, and the strictest gun laws, have more murders per capita than has the USA.”
Really.
USA Murders per capita: 4.8
UK: 1.23
Australia: 1.16
Japan: 0.36
Italy: 0.87
Germany: 0.84
Sweden: 0.97
Denmark: 0.85
I could go on, but I think I’ve disproved your point.
“Obamacare is worse for this key reason: it will make every family destitute.”
Which just goes to show that you have no idea how it works. Care to explain, using numbers, why it would make everybody destitute.Use yourself as an example.
Whether or not the city keeps a trauma hospital is irrelevant – they obviously don’t and they aren’t paying for the care. The fact remains that they have no insurance and between his surgery and the fact that his wife has just given birth, they are going to be wiped out financially. Now you have so failed to say why this is a better situation for Obamacare, you have failed to say why the Tea Party won’t as a good gesture either raise the money to pay for it, or persuade the doctors to take chickens as payment.
And finally, given your hackneyed attempt to blame Obama for this, you don’t get to complain about me bringing up Obamacare.
No you haven’t. Try Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico.
And your other statement goes to show that you don’t want the people to have any idea how an overarching over-reaching government will bankrupt them all.
Seriously, you’re comparing the US to third world countries? With corrupt governments, police and a serious drug problem? Not to mention that Brazil’s murders come from the indigenous population being murdered when they protest the clearing of the forests. In fact the top 10 is all made up of South/Central/Caribbean countries, which speaks more as to the social conditions in those countries than gun control.
So your example doesn’t work. When comparing apples with apples, the US has a death toll almost 4x and more than that of other G7 countries, which have gun control.
And now you’re just running away from the question. I asked you to give me an example of how it will bankrupt you. This is your chance to convince me Obamacare is bad. So far you haven’t. Don’t talk about it bankrupting them – show me how it will bankrupt them. Otherwise, you’re as bad as that old lady who said that she didn’t like it, because “something” was wrong with it – but she had no idea what that something was.
If you’re going to carry on bleating about bankrupting without providing numbers, I’m going to assume you’re blindly toeing the party line, with no actual idea why, apart from “I hate Obama.”
As regards per capita murders, yes. Why not? Why should I exclude their statistics? Can you give me any good reason, other than that you’re afraid of the skew?
Well, if you want to include the US in with the same socio-political conditions as South/Central America, with corrupt police, politicians, rampant drug gangs, leaky borders, poverty, etc.
So, against your three, broken third world examples, I hold up a dozen first world countries, and you prefer to say, “See! We’re better than the broken countries!” That’s not a good thing, as much as you’d like it to be.
But once again, you are dodging the issue.
1. Why is a family being bankrupted because they have no insurance better than Obamacare.
2. Where are the numbers that show that Obamacare will bankrupt you?
Let’s see. Corrupt police, corrupt politicians, rampant drug gangs, leaky borders…well, that about describes what the United States has now become, under the man now holding office as President, Barack Hussein Obama! He is a Third World dictator masquerading as the president of a free people. (And he did not come by the office honestly; he is not a natural born citizen.) So why shouldn’t I include Brazil and Venezuela?
Furthermore, that’s beside the point. The point is that the people need a check and a balance against the government. And yes, even a violent check and balance.
Obamacare provides the prize example of a good reason. You refuse even to try to wrap your mind around the concept of a government that demands enough to bring about the total collapse of the economy.
Which, I remind you, is what Barack Hussein Obama wants. Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven advised him well.
Corrupt police? Yeah go ahead and try tossing a cop a few Benjamins to get out of a speeding ticket and see where that gets you.
Corrupt politicians? Every once in a while, we hear of one politician involved in a corruption scandal, e.g. Ted Stevens. However you may agree or disagree with the results, they are tried for the crime. In 3rd world countries, you don’t even hear about it because the problem is so commonplace.
Rampant drug gangs? Please tell me you’re not comparing drug gangs in the US to the cartels in Mexico. However bad the situation is here, it’s nowhere near the constant bloodshed you see in Mexico.
Leaky borders? Again, nowhere near as bad as (some) third-world countries.
The point is, we should be looking to other first-world countries to see how we can improve, not looking at third-world countries to justify how bad we are.
Sure, go ahead and try to mount a violent uprising against the US government. We’ll see how well your AR-15 works against a tank.
In America, we look for one thing, and that is liberty. Which you don’t appear to value. Or you would never, ever entertain anything as tyrannical as gun control.
I didn’t say that the cops routinely shook down motorists for baksheesh at speed traps. Police corruption is a lot more sophisticated. Traffic ticket fixing is small potatoes, and the cops know it. The only bribes the cops will take, are the ones worth taking.
I don’t recall mentioning gun control. Are you thinking of someone else? Also, you seem to have avoided the points I actually made, except for your bizarre last statement:
I didn’t say that the cops routinely shook down motorists for baksheesh at speed traps. Police corruption is a lot more sophisticated. Traffic ticket fixing is small potatoes, and the cops know it. The only bribes the cops will take, are the ones worth taking.
Care to fill the rest of us in exactly what you’re talking about here, preferably with sources?
You’re the one who suggested that I was mistaken in assuming that cops took bribes all that easily. You cited attempted bribery of the traffic police as an example. I merely suggested that I already knew that the traffic police would not be the place to look for the real “meat-eaters” among corrupt cops.
And when you talk about looking to other first-world countries, and do so in a thread in which gun control plays a major role, you risk my associating you with gun control advocacy. Which, by the way, you haven’t exactly denied.
I love how Yankees have this bizarre notion that they’re the only country in the world with freedom.
Do they seriously think that no other country in the world is free? Or do they equate freedom to “the ability to walk into a cinema and shoot everybody?”
It’s not too hard to understand why we Yanks might “believe we are the only country in the world with freedom.” We know that we’re the freest country on earth, and have been since our founding.
And I equate freedom to “the ability to defend myself against someone who does walk into a movie theater bent on shooting everybody.”
“The point is that the people need a check and a balance against the government. And yes, even a violent check and balance.”
Oh puh-leeze.
Thanks to George W’s Patriot Act, I could earn brownie points for mentioning this conversation to Homeland Security. Another George W creation.
That was one of George W.’s worst mistakes.
“the ability to defend myself against someone who does walk into a movie theater bent on shooting everybody.”
Which ironically equates to exactly the same thing. And unless you have trained professionals in the audience, a bunch of frightened people firing wildly will make the situation far far worse. Clearly you have never been under fire yourself,or you wouldn’t believe in the myth that people would suddenly turn into marksmen when being fired on.
“That was one of George W.’s worst mistakes.”
And yet I can’t seem to find a single word from you attacking it. Strange. Still, it’s good to see there are some things we agree on.
Maybe you’ll write something about that, after you provide some numbers on how Obamacare is going to bankrupt you.
There you go. “Leave it up to the professionals.” The tyrants, you mean. “The professionals” in many walks of life have ruined more lives than I can count. And it’s high time that people declared their independence of said “professionals.”
Your scenario is worse than incorrect. It is a recipe for more control over people’s lives. That’s what I mean when I say that a non-American cannot understand freedom.
What?! That is so far off track that GPS couldn’t pick it up. Professionals are tyrants? So… you only go to amateur doctors, dentists, mechanics, etc. Because the best of the public must be better than somebody who’s studied the field for years. You don’t want professional police, firemen, teachers, etc? Honestly, I get the impression you didn’t even think before you posted that.
You’re seriously suggesting that a bunch of frightened amateurs, opening fire in a dark, smoke-filled cinema, with innocent people running around would be a good thing.
If they did that, the death toll would be double and we’d have more than one murderer to deal with. But yay! guns, right?
As usual, you exaggerate. But let me remind you of, or maybe teach you, something you have either forgotten or never learned. Amateur literally means “one in it for the love of it.” It did not always mean “one not skilled or trained in his art.” Professional today means only “one who gets paid for it.”
And in this particular context, I was talking about the police and the military, and your imperious dismissal of the private citizen militia as not worthy of having any role whatsoever in the defense of himself or others against criminality or invasion. When you jawed on about “leaving it up to the professionals,” you revealed as much of your mind-set as Barack Hussein Obama revealed about his, when he said,
Yes, I am seriously suggesting that a bunch of amateurs, returning fire, presumably after the cinema operators had the presence of mind to stop their projector and turn on the lights, with everyone else having the presence of mind (as some of them did) to duck and cover, would be a good thing. It would defeat the enemy. And it would do it without having to wait for the coppers to arrive.
You have not shown, and therefore I dispute, that “the death toll would be double.” And when you speak of “more than one murderer,” you reveal even more of your mind-set.
To you, no person, save a law-enforcement officer or an on-duty military service member, should so much as touch a gun.
To you, the State reserves to itself the right to defend citizens and lawful residents from harm. And yet, when harm comes, the State is immune from lawsuit over that harm.
And let any citizen dare defend himself, and, to you, he is guilty of taking the law into his own hands.
That makes you a tyrant.
And a person whose character is thus marked by every thought which may define a willing slave, is unfit to associate with free people.
*I* exaggerate?? You equate professionals with tyrants, but I exaggerate? Ok, whatever.
Now, don’t put words in my mouth. I have nothing against private citizens owning a firearm… provided the necessary checks and balances are in place to ensure that a) the guns are kept in a safe place; b) the person is tested at least annually to prove they can handle a gun and are conversant with gun safety; c) Meet certain requirements before obtaining a license – such as no criminal record, passed a psychiatric evaluation, passed a shooting range and written exam; d) only have access to certain types of firearms. There is absolutely no sane reason for anybody – even a hunter – to own a semi-automatic rifle. None.
If you argue against any of those points, then I think you are as guilty as the shooter, because you are in favour of giving anybody, whatever their stat of mind, any kind of weapon – and that is irresponsible.
“Yes, I am seriously suggesting that a bunch of amateurs, returning fire, presumably after the cinema operators had the presence of mind to stop their projector and turn on the lights, with everyone else having the presence of mind (as some of them did) to duck and cover, would be a good thing. It would defeat the enemy.”
And what would your response to be the additional cinema goers who were inadvertently gunned down by these Rambos? Give one example, where this has ever worked – and don’t use the church – she was a trained security guard – one of those professionals you despise. Name one instance where civilians have taken out their guns and stopped a shooting rampage successfully, because I can’t think of any.
You exaggerate when you went off-topic. The topic was the management of force. You went on to the provision of other goods and services that have nothing to do with the management of force. Professionalism might (or might not) be good when force is not involved. When force is involved, professionalism is on a slippery slide, at the bottom of which is tyranny.
And who decides what checks and balances are necessary against private citizens? Listen and learn: in America, the people are the primary source of power. From the people flow all power in our society. At least, that is how it is supposed to work.
The only defense (yes, I know you spell it “defence”) against a criminal with a gun is: a non-criminal with a gun. Let every target harden himself, and crime will go down. In States within the United States that understand this, this is what happens.
“You are as guilty as the shooter.” There you go. Translation: “Varlet, durst thou take the law into thine own hands? Leavest thou thy defence to ye professional shire-reeve.” Shire-reeve of Nottingham, no doubt.
My response, by the way, would be that the ultimate tort-feasor in any deaths that result is the original shooter, and only the original shooter. After all, how do you think the government response when innocent bystanders die of wounds from stray shots in a gun battle between the police and a suspect or suspects? Sovereign immunity, that’s what.
For everyone else: you need not “think of any.” Just follow this link. Or this.
And here is a case that prompts me to wonder where police and military professionalism end and tyranny begin.
No, I said that there are professional people trained for this sort of thing, and you went on equate them with tyrants.
So, in your world, every lunatic can own a gun. No checks, no balances, no training, nothing. Not only that, but they can own any gun they like – a bazooka if they want. And because everybody else is armed to the teeth, the minute he pulls out a gun, a mini-world war breaks out, because panicky, untrained, unfamiliar people are suddenly blazing away.
Tell me – who sets the standards for you to drive a car safely? Or that your drinking water is safe? You are seriously saying that anybody should be given a gun, regardless of background or mental state? If you are, then I’m saying you are wildly irresponsible.
Also, news flash, the people have never been in power in the US. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. We the people in power under Reagan? Under Bush 1? Under Nixon? Under Clinton? Of course not. For you to say that indicates you are living in some fantasy world.
And sadly, the additional deaths would not be attributed to the original shooter. For you to even think that is the most bizarre thing I have come across on this site.
Still don’t have an example of where ordinary citizens have stopped a shooting spree either. You’re so adamant the system works, there must be at least one. Every shooting spree I’ve come across from the Texas Tower, to the Howard Johnsons, to Unruh, to the McDonalds shooting – everyone ended by the police and not in one instance did the general population shoot back.
So… where’s your example?
Before you bring automobile operating licensure into the debate, let me tell you right now that the government’s role in road building, a role that it has historically forced private operators out of, taints the debate. Yes, something called, over here, a Division or Commission of Motor Vehicles sets standards for how to drive a car safely. But that is for one reason, and one reason only: the government enforces a monopoly on road building, operation, and policing.
The drinking-water debate has a similar taint: the “public utility” concept has let the government get away with chasing potential private operators out of the market. That’s why water is, at best, a public-private partership, and at worst, a municipal “division.”
Now I gave you links to look up the very sort of cases you asked for. If you did not follow my links, then you are just plain lazy. Lazy, and intellectually dishonest.
No. It has nothing to do with who is building roads.
It’s got everything to do with who draws up a set of rules and procedures to make sure that you don’t kill anybody because you have no idea how a car works.
Are you suggesting that if roads were privatised you wouldn’t need a driving license… something that shows you are competent to drive a car? That it wouldn’t matter if you killed another driver?
And neither of those links you provided, show any stories about ordinary citizens stopping a shooting spree. Not only that, but Armed Citizen has been dead since Feb 2011 and the other is a forum. I’m certainly not trawling through an entire forum to find a news story. I fear in this case it you who has been both lazy and intellectually dishonest. I asked you a simple question: show me a story that backs up your theory.
You haven’t. Just like you haven’t provided any numbers showing how Obamacare would bankrupt you.
This sort of ducking and diving creates the impression that you are long on theories and very, very short on facts.
It’s time you put up or shut up.
I suggest that if roads were privatized, you’d need a driver’s license, all right. At least, you’d need one before those merchant associations and toll operators I have mentioned earlier would let you on their roads. But you’d get it from a private licensing company or group, not the government. And then your ability to understand how a car works would be the only issue. Not whether the government desires to limit your mobility.
About those shooting sprees: you deliberately obscure one salient fact. Those shooting sprees happen because the perpetrators know perfectly well that they will have no opposition. That is why they show up for things like this. They also know that they’ll be able to draw a lot of blood before your vaunted “professionals,” i.e. the police, show up.
And did you see the case about the rogue military serviceman?
And concerning Obamacare: I repeat: that program will bankrupt the whole country. Which is exactly what Barack Hussein Obama wants.
Cloward RA and Piven FF, The Weight of the Poor: Toward a Guaranteed National Income, The Nation, May 2, 1965.
Here’s a story that backs up the general theory of civilian self-defense:
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – A citizen with a gun stopped a knife wielding man as he began stabbing people Thursday evening at the downtown Salt Lake City Smith’s store.
Police say the suspect purchased a knife inside the store and then turned it into a weapon. Smith’s employee Dorothy Espinoza says, “He pulled it out and stood outside the Smiths in the foyer. And just started stabbing people and yelling you killed my people. You killed my people.”
Espinoza says, the knife wielding man seriously injured two people. “There is blood all over. One got stabbed in the stomach and got stabbed in the head and held his hands and got stabbed all over the arms.”
Then, before the suspect could find another victim – a citizen with a gun stopped the madness. “A guy pulled gun on him and told him to drop his weapon or he would shoot him. So, he dropped his weapon and the people from Smith’s grabbed him.”
“But you’d get it from a private licensing company or group”
And to use your argument – who is this private company to dictate what checks and balances are necessary against private citizens? Why should a private company have more power over an individual than a state authority?
In your model, anybody could practice medicine, because why should they apply for a license – it’s an infringement of their right to practice medicine.
And thank you for the link to the news story… although I see it was a knifeman he stopped and you know they say you shouldn’t bring a knife to a gun fight. Still haven’t seen a situation where civilians stopped a gun fight. Hell, even an unarmed person can stop somebody with a knife.
I did, however, find this – a great example of why amateur gunslingers are a bad idea:
Kenneth Roop Shoots and Kills Unarmed Salesman Nicholas Rainey
In Cape Coral, Florida, on Wednesday, Kenneth Roop was arrested for shooting and killing Nicholas Rainey, an unarmed door-to-door salesman on his property (video below).
Roop has been charged with second-degree murder, reports The News-Press.
A co-worker saw Rainey knock on Roop’s door, but receive no answer. While Rainey was walking down the drive way, Roop drove up in his pickup truck and asked why Rainey was there.
Rainey said that he was selling steak and seafood. The co-worker said Roop pulled out a handgun and shot Rainey. As Rainey lay on the ground, Roop fired another bullet into the back of his head.
link to opposingviews.com
That private company either owns the roads, or is under contract to them.
When it’s the government, that makes it inherently untrustworthy. When the government can, at a whim, stop people from traveling, it can then interfere with someone’s right to peaceably assemble.
And about medicine: the clash between conventional and alternative medicine has reached epic proportions. Of course that’s been going on since Flexner’s allopathic model, and arguably since the beginnings of medicine. Conventional medicine has such therapeutic gems as “bleeding.”
This much should be obvious to anyone who watches what passes for a debate between us. You trust the government to know all, and to do all for the public good. And I, after first asking what in Thomas Paine’s name is the public good, trust individual members of the public, and not the government, to serve my good. Governments, in my model, exist for one purpose only: to manage force, and to use it to protect the people’s rights.
Of course, from where you sit, that was a rebel manifesto, wasn’t it? Guess what? We won.
“That private company either owns the roads, or is under contract to them.”
So because they own them, they can dictate terms to you. But because the government owns then, they can’t dictate certain minimum standards to ensure they’re used safely? Why do you bow down before the temple of big business so?
And private companies can’t close roads?? Really? Does the term “private property” mean nothing to you? What if people are protesting wages against the parent company and they close the roads they own… that would also be against your right to peaceably assemble, would it not?
And given that private companies were behind the moves to squash the Wisconsin unions, for example, not to mention all the other under-handed moves done by big business, there’s no way you can argue that they won’t do that.
Not only that – why would a license issued by one private company, be valid on another company’s roads? You might have to sit – and pay for – 40 different licenses just to go on holiday. That sounds like a restriction on freedom of movement to me.
And as for alternative medicine – I have one thing to say: You know what they call alternative medicine that works?
Medicine.
Just please don’t tell me you’re into homeopathy. Wow… and in your mind medicine is bad, because they had some pretty messed up ideas 300 years ago. They also used to burn witches 300 years ago, maybe we should bring that back.
And as for you “trust individual members of the public, and not the government, to serve my good” that doesn’t happen in real life. Never has, never will. Does a random stranger come by and take your trash away, because he wants to serve your good? Does your neighbourhood club together to pay for new road markings, or street lights. Or anything? Do you know how much a mile of tarmac costs? Do you think your street could afford to have it resurfaced if all the home owners chipped in? A quarter-mile two-car driveway costs anything between $64000- $100000 (and that was in 2010) – could your street really raise that mind of money? Maybe it could if you’re living on Nob Hill, but what about the blue-collar community down the road?
You see, this is where your theories fall down. It’s all very well to live in some idyllic government-free world… until you start throwing numbers around and it all falls down.
Especially as I have yet to see you quote any figures that support your theories.
Government certainly isn’t perfect. But they have the collective resources
Because the government owns them, the government is, ipso facto, in a conflict of interest. It is the ultimate manager of force, so it uses force to set marketplace terms. For the government to thus become destructive of the ends of securing people’s rights, is all too easy.
Your screed shows your socialistic bent. You defend government services being government services, and for one reason only: they have always been that way, and that’s all you have even known, and all you wish to know. And some of the examples you give are flawed anyway. When, for instance, you quote the costs of streets (and where do you get those figures?), you imply that no person, save the very sort of rich man against whom you have passed that bill of attainder called a progressive income tax (or the ex post facto law called a retroactive tax increase), can afford to maintain a street. What, then, are my property taxes going for? Have you just admitted that they go to the feathering of certain campaign contributors’ beds? And as for that blue-collar community down the road: funny. Last time I traveled down such a street, it was pockmarked and cracked, and they hadn’t seen a resurfacing crew since anyone could remember.
But of course you never understood, and perhaps never wanted to understand, the invisible hand of the marketplace. Markets always work things out. Organizations that need someone to set standards, turn to a common standard setter. That’s why we have in this country, and have had for decades, an organization calling itself Underwriters’ Laboratories. Today they set standards for electrical appliances and a host of other items. Abolish the DMV today, and tomorrow they would explore entering the market for drivers’ licensure and road testing. (And pilots’ licensure, too. And a whole host of things.)
Don’t hand me “collective resources.” Don’t defend the indefensible. You’ll never win. My judgment is and always has been for the people, and as individuals, or at best as a collection, not a collective.
“For the government to thus become destructive of the ends of securing people’s rights, is all too easy.”
Which the government has never even threatened to do. Ever. Except offer to provide everybody with the same standard of health care. Which you see as a threat, but which you haven’t demonstrated why it’s a threat. Besides “Obama is evil!” “It’s socialised medicine”… yeah, just like your socialised police force, and army, and fire fighters. I haven’t seen one Tea Party member, or anybody on The Hill for that matter, provide any numerical reason why Obama care is bad.
Not one. Which tells me, it’s all emotional hype, driven by people with vested interests in shares and profits of the existing insurance companies.
“Your screed shows your socialistic bent. You defend government services being government services, and for one reason only: they have always been that way, and that’s all you have even known, and all you wish to know.”
Utter rubbish. Show me one company that would willingly pay the full amount to build a road and pay the full amount to maintain that road, when they can pay a fraction of that cost to the government and delegate the responsibility to them. It’s economics 101. Not only that, but companies have a notoriously bad record of putting their bottom life first, before their staff, environment, etc. So, would I want a company looking after the environment around a mine? Hell no.
There are some things that simply cannot be funded by individuals. You know why? because people are inherently selfish. Simple as that. That is why people are against health care – they’re worried it’ll bring poor people into the waiting rooms they’re used to using.
If I am a socialist, then you are an anarchist. You don’t respect the rule of law, you don’t respect the rights of other people, all you care about is yourself.
“Which the government has never threatened to do,” you say? Obama threatened just that when he said, “You didn’t build that.” He meant, “You did not earn it; I therefore have the authority to take it from you.”
In the world that I envision, taxes would come down and make the citizen ownership of the roads affordable. You assume either that taxes would remain the same, or that the government is a producer of wealth. Neither is the case. Government does not produce. It takes.
I reject the label of “anarchy.” Anarchy literally means lack of a ruler, of any sort, for any purpose. I seek to set strict limits on government. You want the government to remain unlimited.
And as to what you call “selfishness”: well, of course people are selfish. So are you. Only what you care for is power. Naked, uncontrollable force. Some of the rest of us simply want to live. Not merely exist. Live.
“He meant, “You did not earn it; I therefore have the authority to take it from you.”
You see, when you spout this kind of pure, unadulterated horse-do-do that I wonder if you actually believe what you write, or if you write it to please other people.
Nowhere did Obama say that. That is a pure fabrication in your own paranoid mind. You’ve twisted what was said to fit your “I hate Obama, everything he says is evil!” worldview.
Another good example of that is your claim that I’m after power. How exactly? Am I running a political party/ Do I have a secret lair? No, I have my own business, and for what it’s worth I didn’t even vote in our last election because there was nobody worth voting for.
It’s weird – and a little bit unsettling – that you think everybody who disagrees with you is part of some giant conspiracy that’s going to take away your guns and herd you into a gulag. People disagree – that’s what makes us human and not machines. You want to live, you say. So… tell me… how is being made impossible for you to live today, compared to 5 years ago? What’s changed? Curfews? Stop-and-search? Food rationing? What? Why can’t you “live” today?
And in your “nobody pays taxes” model government wouldn’t exist, because there would be no money for it, so therefore there would be anarchy. Or do you think a place like Somalia, that has no government, is a shining example of your world?
A Communist, a Progressive, or other fellow-traveler, never says what he means. Never. Instead, he says things that imply nothing else, and make zero sense otherwise. Like “You didn’t build that.” And earlier, “You didn’t get there on your own.”
“You didn’t build that” was a prize example of an unscripted statement. His basic, success-hating emotion broke through the restraints that his handlers have laid upon him.
Finally: you just called me a gangster. For that is what Somalia is: a vast territory that gangsters have divvied up, because no one will oppose them. You now assert that the only alternative to the overarching, over-reaching government you advocate, are gangsters.
I have said that governments exist to manage force. I have set forth three functions that are proper to a government: police, military, and law courts. The job of the police should not be to support the environmentalists, whether they call themselves Environmental Protection Agency (on my side of the pond) or Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (your side). And the function of the police definitely should not be to enforce laws that have their basis on scientific frauds like “global warming.”
Nor should the police, or the sheriff (Shire-reeve), have the function of enforcing such bills of attainder as the Obamacare tax.
If that’s anarchical, then by your definition I am indeed an anarchist. I will gladly throw that into your face any time you force me to. If you think that you win merely by altering the accepted definition of a word just to make me fit a label that sounds bad (and by the way, it doesn’t sound all that bad to everybody), then you’ve got another think coming. Words mean things. You may learn their proper meanings by examining their roots—the “atoms” or “etyms” that form them, whence “etymology.”
Which is a fancy Greek way of telling you that you do not know what you’re talking about. For you simply do not know what anarchy really means.
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