14 dead and 50 injured in mass shooting in Colorado.

Post Reply New Topic

People who buy guns for the good, or to defend themselves buy them legally.
People who buy guns for evil, buy them legally or illegally.

So if someone wants to do something evil and shoot everyone with illegally acquired guns.
Then there might not be someone there with a legally acquired gun to stop that person. Sometimes there is a person in the crowd, who carries a gun, for defense.

So he apparently liked a song called "soldiers of misfortune" by a band called Sacrifice. I don't care about the genre but the lyrics may point to something for himself personally.
And here is a video which shows him talking about something in a science camp.

Exactly. It might even be easier for people to get guns. And anyway, guns don't kill people. People kill people.

But isn't this something us on the spectrum are all prone to? Just imagine, for instance, Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. What if he hadn't had the friends he did, or the supportive mother? I could see him doing something like this, if he became misunderstood enough. Of course, that show is a comedy, so they would never let this happen.

And isn't it bad enough that anyone with high intelligence be labeled "useless"? I have empathy for nearly all disgruntled intellectuals, everywhere. That doesn't mean that I'm happy about the way he chose to handle it, which ruined the lives of many innocent people and endangered the lives of even more. But I can't help but think that our society is becoming ill-equipped to handle those it considers "too smart for their own good".

The point is not to draw a line between those disgruntled intellectuals who snap and those who don't, and then villainizing the ones who do, while praising those who don't as examples of restraint yet still not really trying to empathize with them emotionally either. The point is that yes, remaining ethical even when disgruntled is important, but the real issue is why people get disgruntled to begin with.

Back when that video was taken at summer camp, he could have been myself, or probably many on this board. He obviously was very smart, yet also very needing of a fantasy life and possibly socially undeveloped/immature. Focusing too much on him, over the countless others who had those beginnings yet followed less famous/infamous paths, is contributing to the exact problem that would make someone see infamy as a "solution" to being different.

I don't know I am not an intellectual narcissist, but I am sure having aspergers does not make one immune to being one.

I know it's speculation but it would not surprise me if there was some kind of disagreement between James Holmes and somebody involved in the University of Colorado program and because of privacy laws or it being possible evidence in a trial, its being kept quiet.

Maybe, he didn't like batman. B[

I'm not sure we have the same idea of what an "intellectual narcissist" is, but by my understanding, I'm surprised that it's not like 90% of aspies who are intellectual narcissists. I certainly often feel that I am one.

The way I see it, if one is very different from others, there are two ways of going about things--believing in yourself and that others are wrong (or at least, that the mainstream is no more right than you, and should accept you), or believing that your only worth is in your ability to conform. If you define narcissists as those who have intrinsic desire to harm others, then most of those who take that first path are not included. But if you include those who merely feel special/gifted, and fight back against those who would try and put them down for non-conformity, then I'd think that would be very common among aspies.

Would you consider Benoit Mandelbrot an "intellectual narcissist"? No shooting up theaters by him, certainly, but clearly there were some tensions between him and others over his uniqueness.

I thought narcissists were more full of themselves, and had a tendency to feel superior to others, being gifted and believing in yourself is not the same thing as narcissism as far as I know. But yeah I personally don't think i really have any special gifts and if I did it wouldn't make me more important or better than anyone. I don't think shooting a bunch of people in the movie theater is getting back at those who would put one down for non-conformity. Also what uniqueness..as far as I've heard the guy was pretty normal and didn't fit that whole loner stereotype.

In that part of the country, having 6000 rounds is normal even without militia ties and the same is true of deliveries of similar size wouldn't look odd. Bulk deals are sometimes available and for some people, that much ammo would last them a weekend.

Not from what I've been reading--everyone described him as nice, but also very isolated and not engaging in "normal" social behavior. From that video of him at the summer camp, it seems he was into the intersection between science and philosophy or the supernatural. People who combine science and mysticism are often not taken seriously by either side (sometimes they have cult followings, but that's a different story).

It seems that socially inept people who were always exceptionally bright students, and who derived their primary identity from this, are at particular risk for depression when their intellectual dominance is threatened. This is at least partly because they have trouble getting sympathy both from "normal" people because of their awkwardness, and from other outsiders who are jealous that they never were on that pedestal in the first place to be able to be fall from it.

If these people "fall through the cracks" and become disgruntled, they may not have the coping skills to deal with changes in their social status, because they never needed those skills growing up as asocial boy/girl geniuses. Others in their lives, including their families, may have been so much in awe of their brilliance that they overlooked the need to teach those skills.

When a person figures out in graduate school that he or she is mentally (over)developed, but not fully formed as a human being, it can be difficult to grow in that environment. People are all stressed out and often competitive, which means they won't go the extra mile to take care of someone who has emotional issues. Once in a lab in grad school, I overheard two women talking about how they would often go home and cry because of how bad their days went.

I certainly am not happy that Holmes resorted to violence, but at least we know he must have made a strong effort to lead an honest and constructive life, to get to where he was. The fact that he clearly became violent only after he "snapped", in my moral code, puts him above a career criminal who intentionally chooses a violent way of life over a nonviolent one.

I quoted Heritage and a Wikipedia Article with the citation for the statistic used at the bottom. Sorry you don't know how to use Wikipedia.

Pretty sad that gun control advocates are willing to sell guns illegally to Mexican Drug Cartels, who then use them to kill Border Patrol Agents. Then these same gun control advocates use this to justify gun control.

Oh, and by the way this shooting happened in a "gun-free zone". Because homicidal maniacs are going to care about a nice sign asking them not to carry a gun in the theater.

Totally off topic, but I thought it would amuse you to know that when I was in school we did at least 1 re-barrel job on a .22-250 that someone had literally shot out in 1 day of prairie dog shooting. I guess the guy only had the one gun and was trying to keep up with some friends who were rotating to let their barrels cool down, and he just let the thing get hot enough that he wore the rifling right out of the barrel. We were dubiously impressed, especially since it was a bolt gun.

I find it irrational to be fearful of going to a specific movie at a random theater because of a shooting. That's like saying, "I will never study engineering because of the Virginia Tech shooting."

This was tragic, to be sure, and that guy better have something horribly wrong with him if he plans on pleading innocent after the explosives in his apartment.

From what I've heard I guess I will look more into it, this is all speculation and there is also evidence he did lead a pretty normal life. Also with the bombs or whatever in the aparment including getting the supplies and the gun probably took months. So I don't buy that he just snapped under the pressure due to having some over-intelligence. I mean I have gotten pretty fed up with the way things are and that I have intelligence I cannot seem to use for anything but I'm not planning a mass murder. But anyways I think if he had just snapped he would not have had months to plan it out.......it would have been more of an impulsive thing not something he was planning for months.

I think I'd feel safest going to the one it happened at, if it's open yet...because typically they don't happen in the same place more than once. But yeah there is a reason I always sit in the back of the movie theater that way I can see most everything and so if I see anything suspicious I can leave.