The immediate aftermath of any American tragedy offers a heady potential for vile ideas. Details are scant, speculation is still wide open, motive is easily assigned—and in the rush to scoop other outlets, journalists don't have as much time to investigate claims, arguments or citations.
Up-and-coming stand-up comedian Caleb Medley was out on date with his pregnant wife Katie to celebrate their impending parenthood when a gunman burst into the Aurora movie theater where the two were sat and shot Caleb along with 70 others.
Given that James Holmes is responsible for a massacre, calling his behavior "erratic" feels like an awful understatement.
The Dark Knight Rises star Christian Bale popped by the Medical Center of Aurora on Tuesday afternoon, more or less unannounced, to visit with victims of Friday's movie-theater shooting. Above, via TheDenverChannel.com, Bale with Carey Rottman; below, via KUSA, Bale in the hallway.
Torrence Brown, Jr., who was in attendance at the Aurora midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, has filed a lawsuit against Century 16 Theater, alleging that they are partly to blame for the outcome of Friday's shooting which resulted in the death of 12 patrons.
"It's been insane," Rocky Mountain Guns and Ammo employee Jake Meyers told the Denver Post in reference to the marked increase in gun sales across Colorado observed in the wake of Friday's deadly shooting in Aurora.
Here's something that almost all the mass killers of the last fifteen years or so have in common: they've been called "nerds." James Holmes, who allegedly murdered 12 people in a crowded Colorado movie theater on Friday morning, was described as a "nerd" by his uncle within hours of the shooting. Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is, in the Telegraph, a "puffy-faced computer game nerd." Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were "innocuous nerds," the Los Angeles Times claimed in 1999.
Though it would not say exactly how much it planned to donate, Warner Bros. is expected to contribute a "substantial" sum, according to sources.
While some choose to debate about gun control or the state of healthcare for the mentally ill, other stalwart truthseekers have made it their mission to get to the bottom of James Holmes' massacre at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises.
A 49-year-old Maine man named Timothy Courtois was arrested Sunday morning and charged with carrying a concealed weapon and criminal speeding. He was driving 112 miles per hour on the Maine Turnpike, and he had an AK-47 assault rifle, four handguns, and multiple boxes of ammunition in his Mustang.
On his blog, Denver pastor Brad Strait recounts a rather remarkable "miracle story" involving 22-year-old Petra Anderson, a congregant at his church and one of the 71 people shot last Friday at a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado.
Following the Dark Knight Rises shooting in Aurora, certain gestures were made to pay tribute to victims of the attack. There was the collective decision from the studios to withhold but not really withhold box-office weekend results. There were countless opinion pieces about why the shooting happened and how it could have been prevented and what we, as a country, should be doing differently to ensure that it never happens again. There was a campaign determined to get Christian Bale to visit Aurora.
By contrasting the ease with which Aurora shooter James Holmes ordered guns and ammunition online with the rapid FBI response when a Muslim would-be terrorist in Aurora sent a single suspicious email a few years ago, Denver Post columnist Chuck Murphy states the obvious in his column today: this mass shooting might have turned out very differently if James Holmes had been named Ibrahim or Mohammed.
A fight that broke out during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in West Homestead, Pennsylvania, resulted in several moviegoers nearly getting trampled underfoot after falling in the aisles while rushing to exit the theater.
Holmes, 24, is in court this morning for his advisement:
The homemade explosives, incendiary liquid containers, and jugs full of bullets inside James Holmes booby-trapped apartment "show the intensity and focus" of the 24-year-old suspected of perpetrating the largest mass shooting in American history.
Officially, there are no box-office numbers this weekend. Nothing to see here. Move on.
Appearing on CNN's State of the Union to discuss the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado governor John Hickenlooper said that "act[s] of evil" are not necessarily preventable with stricter gun control laws.
As families of the Aurora shooting victims have been notified, some of the victims' names and stories have been released.
You can't have a national tragedy without at least one religious zealot crawling out of the woodwork and spouting off about the downfall of America. And lo, American Family Association news director Fred Jackson is up to the task.
