I had another post planned for today, but it hardly seems appropriate now. As I’m sure everybody knows by now, late last night, at a showing for the new Batman movie in Aurora, CO, a gunman entered a packed movie theater and opened fire:
Witnesses in the movie theater said Holmes saw smoke and heard gunshots that they thought were aprt of the movie until they saw Holmes standing in front of the screen, aftetr entering from an emergency exit. Holmes methodically stalked the aisles of the theater, shooting people at random, as panicked movie-watchers in the packed auditorium tried to escape, witnesses said.
"You just smelled smoke and you just kept hearing it, you just heard bam bam bam, non-stop. The gunman never had to reload. Shots just kept going, kept going, kept going," one witness told ABC News.
"I'm with coworkers and we're on the floor praying to God we don't get shot, and the gunshots continue on and on, and when the sound finally stopped, we started to get up and people were just bleeding," another theatergoer said.
Police said 10 victims died inside the theater, while dozens of others were taken to local hospitals, including a child as young as 6 years old.
Of course, the great mainstream media was careful to be sensitive to the nature of this story and make sure they got all their ducks in a row before reporting any “facts”. ABC’s Brian Ross did this by falsely accusing a 55 year old member of the Colorado Tea Party with the same name as being the gunman. He later apologized:
Good job, ABC. Piers Morgan was determined not to be outdone, however, and immediately attacked “America’s gun laws” on his Twitter account after the shooting. He wrote, “Horrendous details from this Colorado cinema shooting. America has got to do something about its gun laws. Now is the time.” He followed that gem up with, “More Americans will buy guns after this, to defend themselves, and so the dangerous spiral descends. When/how does it stop?”
Of course, Morgan gets it exactly backwards: If more law-abiding citizens carried guns, less of this sort of thing would happen. As far as I’m concerned, I think it’s getting crazy not to carry when you go out in public these days. If just one person in this theater had been carrying last night this could have been a completely different story. Ditto for similar incidents, like the Virginia Tech shooting a few years back.
For instance, compare last night’s incident to an armed robbery in an internet café last week in Florida.
The 71-year-old Florida man who fired his gun at two men trying to rob a crowded Internet café will not face criminal charges, an assistant state attorney general told FoxNews.com.
Bill Gladson, the attorney, said he reviewed the security video from the Palms Internet café in central Florida.
The video shows patron Samuel Williams pulling a handgun and shooting. He continues firing while the suspects fall over each other as they run out the door.
Gladson said in the memo Williams' use of force was lawful under Florida's statutes regarding individuals rights to use deadly force when resisting a forcible felony, like a robbery.
The Ocala Star-Banner reports one robber pointed a gun at customers while the other swung a baseball bat.
Williams said in a post-incident interview, that he and his wife were at the cafe to play "sweepstakes," Gladson's memo said. He heard the commotion and, when given an opportunity, fired his weapon to protect his wife and other patrons, the memo stated.
Duwayne Henderson and Davis Dawkins, both 19, were later arrested and face attempted armed robbery with a firearm and criminal mischief charges…Dawkins had a superficial wound in his left arm, but Henderson was shot in two places: his left buttock and his right hip.
Williams has a concealed weapons permit. Bill Gladson of the Marion County state attorney's office says the shooting appears justified.
In this incident, a 71 year old senior citizen was able to thwart an attack by two nineteen year old thugs because he was armed with a gun. He injured the two attackers and they are now in jail nursing injuries. If just one person in last night’s movie theater attack had been armed, last night’s story might have read completely differently this morning.
Cue the typical liberal response: “Statistically if everyone there had a gun they are more likely to have shot themselves or a loved one by the gun than to deal with a random act of violence.” This argument is just silly. For starters, one could use the same logic to make a case for outlawing automobiles. The more people own cars, the more people will die in automobile accidents.
Yet dig a little deeper and one can see how this issue highlights a major philosophical difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives wish to take upon themselves the responsibility of protecting their self and their loved ones. This will mean taking upon the burden of learning how to properly store their firearm so that later they will not be in a position of utter helplessness if they are a victim of or witness to a violent crime. Liberals wish to bypass this responsibility and rely on others (police officers, etc.) for their safety and well-being. One philosophy highlights self-reliance, another dependence.
Of course, some liberals just wish to blame Rush Limbaugh.
