Alvin Lee Message & Discussion Board
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I could hardly believe my eyes when I turned on the computer this past Friday morning to see the awful news of the movie theater shooting, right here in my Colorado home. It took place about 40 minutes from where I live. I'm still in a state of shock and mourning for the victims--so young with so much life ahead. It's hard to even put into words or do justice in expressing respect for the terrible losses of life, shattered families and lives changed forever. Seeing the faces of the victims in this morning's paper was heartbreaking. What madness can lead to this?!
I've been wanting to bring this up on the board the past couple of days, but something held me back. Just now posted a new thread about the London Olympics in which I also mentioned the theatre shootings, and then saw you'd started this thread while I was writing. I feel SO angry and so sad about the victims! One vivacious young woman, a cub reporter, had recently survived a mall shooting!! The whole thing is mind-boggling, but sadly, not surprising, yet leaving so many of asking: Why?????
A tragedy indeed, and it happened almost exactly a year after the terrible Oslo disaster, where another idiot killed almost 80 and wounded more than a 100, mostly young people.
It's a mad, mad world and with inspiration from egoistic leaders who put war and private richness before peace and sanity, it'll only get worse. I'd love to change the world.. 
Amen to that, B. I was just thinking about the anniversary of the Oslo shooting, and I knew it was a lot of people, but had forgotten just how many. One doesn't hear regularly about such massacres in Scandinavia, as one sadly does in the US. I'd love to change the world, too. We still need to figure out a way to get going on it so we can at least pass a brightly burning torch before we croak. No hand-held devices will be permitted at the ceremony. If we all, young and old(er), would just get off our laptops, notebooks, smartphones, etc., long enough, roll up our sleeves, look each other in the eyes, and get (back) in the game, maybe we can still get something accomplished. Then too, the above-mentioned devices can be powerful networking tools in a good cause, if people can just drag themselves away from updating their personal Facebook pages every 5 minutes!!
It's a mad, mad world and with inspiration from egoistic leaders who put war and private richness before peace and sanity, it'll only get worse. I'd love to change the world..
Wow!! I was up that morning just 2 hrs after the shooting, I was breathless, I lived in Aurora in the mid to late seventies, Built Clock Tower Square, did reno's on St Jude etc, I lived a Block from The Zans a bar club wher clint east wood filmed, I don't know the relation to the Movie location
But I loved Denver it had truly wonderful peaceful people. This just Blows my mind to have been done anywhere.WHAT a nut case
You said it, Sixy! And he was reportedly able to order thousands of rounds of ammo and some of the other murderous equipment over the Internet. It's too **** easy to acquire things with which to harm others. It's time to put the safety of the group over the "right" of the individual. Or have we come to such a pass that the right to bear arms *trumps* the right to LIFE, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of HAPPINESS??? Massacres like this aren't unfortunate side effects of the second amendment. They're an obscene blot on our country, and they should be prevented.
Although we can't make sense of it, it is hard to not ask why and try to understand. What can lead a person to do this? How do we prevent it in the future? Was it schizophrenia?
Holmes was so strange in court today. He looked out of it and almost spaced out on drugs or medicated in some way--
There was a big memorial gathering held in Aurora last night. So many people coming together.
Wow, that must have really been shocking after such a connection to Aurora and Denver. It's just so jolting when it happens so close. As I've gone to do grocery shopping, or have lunch in a restaurant the past few days, I feel like-- this is what they were feeling at the movie theater. Everything is just normal, day to day life, and then suddenly a nightmare. The people in Colorado are wonderful, peaceful and lovely. This is a great place where people love the sunshine, outdoors, health and fitness-- we are coming together, we're trying to process and begin the road to healing.
Lynn, I'm so sorry this had to happen near your home (or of course anywhere). What a shock. Sixy, I feel bad it was in a place where you have ties and memories. I keep thinking about the victims and their anguished loved ones. I would absolutely go berserk. If this James Holmes creature had harmed any of mine, I wouldn't be able to look at the guy in court without standing up and telling him off within an inch of his sorry life-- they'd probably have to drag me away! I haven't seen any TV news or online video yet of his arraignment, but the booking photo of him I saw shows some of the creepiest eyes I've ever seen. It's like wherever his soul is, it's not there. I don't believe in "the devil", but I do wonder if Holmes is a paranoid schizo, yeah. I'd wonder if he were bipolar with psychotic features on the manic end, but I suspect what's wrong with him isn't just from cyclic mood swings. He could have those AND other problems. There's evidence he'd been planning this attack for some months. Reportedly he was a brilliant medical student who dropped out of a doctorate degree program in neuroscience. What a waste of all involved!
Holmes was so strange in court today. He looked out of it and almost spaced out on drugs or medicated in some way--
There was a big memorial gathering held in Aurora last night. So many people coming together.
Eric, I agree about the bad influence on deranged and other individuals of violent, aggressive movies-- and the same goes for shoot-'em-up, blow-'em-all-to-kingdom-come video games. Yes, there's talk in Colorado about whether prosecutors would seek the death penalty in a trial, but that's only preliminary speculation. Holmes would get his chance in court to claim insanity and would undergo due process of law. He is surely already being evaluated to some extent by psychiatrists, and would continue to be so, much more extensively. He may already be medicated if he wasn't cooperating. He may well end up in a mental clinic, also, but it's not easy to be found criminally insane in this country. His apparently months-long premeditation will work against him in that regard. If a jury were to find that he knew the difference between right and wrong in committing the shootings, despite how disturbed he may otherwise have been, Holmes may very well end up sentenced to death.
I'm not sure but I believe those agressive movies like Batman and so many others give unbalanced peoples bad ideas...
Not a critisims but in Oslo they talk about putting the guy in a mental clinic.
In Colorado they talke about death penalty....
Very very sad and I feel so sorry for all family involved.
Eric, I am strongly against the death penalty for a range of reasons. It accomplishes nothing but revenge to put a person to death. The legal system should not have that kind of power over any citizenry. Further still, our legal system is not perfect and there are plenty of examples of innocent people being wrongly convicted. Even if we know for sure of one's guilt I do not believe in the death penalty. Putting someone to death is archaic. Not all people in America are for the death penalty, but sadly there are those that are.
Would a sane person commit this kind of act? This is why I think we do need to ask why and what happened. We need to try to understand the minds of criminals, psychotics and schizophrenics, not just call them evil, put them to death and stop trying to think about it. I feel it's partially through research and questionning that we may come to clearer understanding and potentially save lives in the future.
Eric, I totally agree with Lynn's post opposing the death penalty. She's already done a great job of making a case for that position, so I'll just add a few personal observations shortly in another post.
I'm also against the death penalty. It's archaic and cruel and our legal system is too imperfect - far too many innocent people have been wrongly convicted; in recent years, at least two have been put to death with questions of their guilt or innocence unresolved.
Mostly, though, it's a simple moral issue for me. I look at it this way - if I'm not willing to be the one to pull the lever or inject someone with that lethal dose of medications, then I have no right to ask the state to do it my name.
I completely agree, Toni. I could never kill someone in cold blood, or participate in their killing, unless it was the assassination of a mass-murdering tyrant like Hitler. Not that the desperation involved in such an act is really cold-blooded. It's absolutely defensive. But as part of one's job coldly to pull a lever, inject a needle, or fire a rifle, and suddenly end someone's life on a schedule, NO. The mere idea is horrific, barbaric, and I'll never understand how some people can do it. Stepping "off the cliff" into the Great Mystery Beyond before one's time is a fearsome, awesome thing. We should have a proper sense of the absolute enormity of it. I believe we should not dispatch someone to that fate without absolute necessity, which to me means genuine thou-or-I self-defense, defense or liberation of the innocent, as in a just war with those purposes, and tyrannicide. Execution of convicted criminals is nothing but revenge on people who are sometimes not actually guilty. I wouldn't want that on MY soul. Two wrongs don't make a right, and an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, as the sayings go.
Mostly, though, it's a simple moral issue for me. I look at it this way - if I'm not willing to be the one to pull the lever or inject someone with that lethal dose of medications, then I have no right to ask the state to do it my name.