James Holmes – praag.org

Americans flock to Batman movie, regardless

The three 18-year-olds, friends since middle school, are about to go off separately to college this fall. But on Sunday, these avid fans of the Batman film franchise had no doubt where they wanted to be: Together, at the movies, watching “The Dark Knight Rises.”

“What happened in Colorado was horrible, but that guy was just a psycho,” said Sahil Agrawal, of Queens in New York City, waiting with friends David Kim and Danny Wong for an Imax showing on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “This wasn’t going to change our plans.”

The three were typical of hordes of fans who packed theaters across the country over the weekend, keeping plans to see the final installment of the phenomenally successful Batman trilogy despite Friday’s horrific shooting in Colorado. Despite the occasional jitter – reflected in the choice of a back-row seat, perhaps, or a glance to see what security was in place – the fans seemed determined to look beyond the shooting.

“I’m not going to let some nut who shoots people dictate what I’m going to do,” said Ron Bondy, 36, in Bismarck, N.D., a sentiment echoed by fans all over the country.

Not that there weren’t some evident qualms among moviegoers. At the same theater in Bismarck, Jen Jackson had insisted upon one thing to her husband: They were going to sit in the back row in case they needed to get out fast. The 29-year-old architect was also forgoing the popcorn – not as a precaution, but because nerves had stolen her appetite.

“I’ll be honest, I’m kind of scared,” said Jackson. She had hesitated to come at all. But her husband, Patrick, standing alongside her, was pragmatic: “I don’t think anything would happen in Bismarck.”

Warner Bros. and other studios banded together to withhold the usual weekend revenue reports until Monday, a day later than usual, out of respect for the victims. But industry estimates suggested the film was on track to be the third highest opening weekend ever, after “The Avengers” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.”

Katie Birkel had no intention of missing the occasion. She was at a Manhattan showing along with three friends, celebrating one of their birthdays. Birkel said she had been inspired by a statement from the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, after the tragedy, which occurred at the midnight showing in Aurora, Colo.

“He said that movies are about coming together and sharing an experience,” noted Birkel, 28. “I agree with that.”

Mike Sumner, standing a few steps behind her in a Batman T-shirt, said he was comforted by seeing the NYPD outside the theater – at least two officers were patrolling outside. “Colorado was an isolated incident,” he said. “I’m not afraid of copycats. Besides, I’m a New Yorker. We’re always vigilant.”

Police were also visible outside a theater in McAllen, Texas, near the Mexico border, where an officer firmly waved away drivers who attempted to stop in front.

Inside, Juan Carlos Rivera waited with his mother-in-law and his wife. The 38-year-old Brownsville resident said the family had been big fans of the first two movies and wouldn’t want to skip the third.

“It looks like it was an isolated incident,” Rivera said of the mass shooting. He said he’d probably sit on the aisle – not out of fear, but because his wife was pregnant and might need the restroom. “You can’t allow a random event like that to terrorize you,” he said.

Besides, many said in interviews, what was the chance that lightning would strike twice?

“I don’t think that that many people are crazy enough,” reasoned Dayna Freeman of Kansas City, Mo.

Her date, Tom Meyer, added that the theater – the Cinemark Palace at The Plaza – had excellent security. The two had bought their tickets on Sunday, but like most interviewed, they said the shooting in no way had sparked their curiosity. “No, I can’t imagine anything like that,” said Meyer.

Meyer added that he didn’t think the content of the movie had anything to do with the crime: “You can’t really attribute the actions of a nut to the movies,” he said. “Two years ago, he would have picked `Avatar.'”

Still, despite sharing that logic, some were showing nerves. In Hollywood, Fla., Steve Parenteau, 45, said he wasn’t thinking at all about the shooting. But his 13-year-old son, Noah, looked solemn, saying the Colorado tragedy was on his mind. “It’s scary,” he said. “I can picture it.”

And at a multiplex in downtown Chicago, roommates Sarah Cantor and Brittany Carter avoided a midnight showing. “I was relieved to know that we were going to a matinee,” said Cantor, 23.

Still, most moviegoers echoed the feeling that the attack could have happened anywhere, anytime.

“Things are going to happen wherever they’re going to happen, because people are nuts wherever,” said Rachel Cox, who saw the movie at Atlanta’s Midtown Arts Cinema. “Crazy travels, so I don’t really think it has anything to do with geography or the movie … crazy people are crazy.” Still, she added, she planned to sit in the back – because she likes the view from there, but also because she considered it safer, even before Colorado.

In midtown Manhattan, Randy Cordero and Megan Rivera sat on the pavement outside an AMC Loews Theater, waiting with soft drinks and a magazine for a late-afternoon show. They’d bought their tickets online Saturday, and said the shooting hadn’t affected their plans. They’d hoped for a midnight showing, but it was sold out.

“I don’t think it’ll happen to me, but it can always happen,” noted Cordero. But Rivera said there was one thing that would indeed cause her some concern: seeing someone in costume, especially as the Joker (New York’s police commissioner, Ray Kelly, said the shooter, James Holmes, had his hair painted red and said he was the Joker, but Aurora police have not confirmed that.) “I’d feel more cautious, and I’d think, `I’ve got to watch that guy,'” she said.

Waiting for an earlier show at the same theater was Devin Favors, 24, an event ticket broker from Brooklyn. He said he’d bought his ticket last week, but even if he hadn’t, nothing would have stopped him from seeing the movie.

After all, he said, “This is America. And you should be able to go where you want to go, and see what you want to see.” – AP

No use looking for mass murder motives, says US expert

Tempting as it might be, it’s futile to dwell on the motives behind a mass murder like the one at the midnight Batman screening in Colorado, a police officer turned threat assessment expert says.

Doing so means diverting critical attention from the real objective –spotting telltale behavior in an individual about to perpetrate a bloodbath, said Steve Albrecht in a telephone interview.

“We’re all shocked (but) it certainly doesn’t make people feel any better to know what the motive is,” said Albrecht, who heads the San Diego branch of the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals.

“I’d want to working on interrupting the opportunity (to commit a mass murder), to stop these guys when they exhibit those (suspicious or worrisome) behaviours early on.”

James Holmes, 24, is suspected of donning a mask and body armor, then opening fire during a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, killing at least 12 people and wounding nearly 60 others.

The bloodbath shocked Americans, even though the United States sees about 20 mass murders — defined as three or more deaths at the hands of a single perpetrator in a single uninterrupted incident — every year.

Albrecht, a former police officer in Holmes’ hometown San Diego who holds psychology and business degrees, is co-author of “Ticking Bombs: Defusing Violence in the Workplace” and advises businesses on threat assessment.

Speaking to AFP within 24 hours of Friday’s tragedy, Albrecht speculated that the Colorado gunman — who has yet to appear in court — was likely a “serial loser” in search of infamy.

Many troubled people never get beyond fantasizing about committing an act of violence, but “here’s a guy whose probably ruminated over this for weeks and months and moved from ideas to action,” he said.

“It was a lot of pre-attack preparation for a guy who’s hard to notice because he’s not part of an organized group or on a terror watch list. It’s very difficult to stop these people.”

Albrecht added: “I suspect we’re going to discover that the guy had a lot of issues that he chose to solve through this method” of raking a midnight movie audience with gunfire.

Prior to the Columbine high school massacre, in which two students cut down 12 students and a teacher in 1999 before killing themselves, law enforcement agencies concentrated on building profiles of mass killers, Albrecht explained.

But as it emerged that anyone of any age, race, gender or socio-economic background could and did commit mass murder, the focus swung towards picking out acts of behavior that would reveal a solitary killer in the making.

“Now we’re really looking at behavior and moving away from profiling,” he said, recalling how a 1998 rampage in an Arkansas school in which five died had been carried out by two boys aged just 13 and 11.

Typical questions to ask: “What were the pre-attack behaviors that this guy exhibited? What were the relationship failures, relationship problems that he had? Was he disconnected from society and disconnected from reality?”

Elaborating on an essay he wrote on the topic for Psychology Today magazine, Albrecht said people “tend to rationalize the irrational behavior of the people around us” and thus skip over signs of an individual on the verge of violence.

“My suspicion is that they’re going to learn a lot of things (about the Aurora gunman), and that people were very concerned about this guy — but didn’t know what to do.” – AFP

Obama, Romney silent on gun control after theater shooting

The shooting that killed 12 people at a Colorado movie theater sidetracked the U.S. presidential race but President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney both stayed away from the polarizing topic of gun control.

The massacre Friday obliged both candidates to cast aside the increasingly bitter tone of the race and reach for a rare moment of American harmony. Obama and Romney swiftly stripped their day of overt campaigning that surely would have seemed crass given the enormity of the tragedy.

“There are going to be other days for politics,” Obama said from one key electoral state, Florida. From another one, New Hampshire, Romney said much the same.

A man opened fire on people watching the new Batman movie in an Aurora, Colorado, theater outside Denver. Twelve people were killed and dozens more were wounded by a suspect said to be using an assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun in the attack.

“This is a time for each of us to look into our hearts and remember how much we love one another, and how much we love and how much we care for our great country,” Romney said at a podium stripped of campaign paraphernalia, in front of a large American flag.

Amid their calls for unity and prayer, neither Obama nor Romney said anything of gun control, an issue that has been all but absent from the campaign debate this year. Both men have shifted with the times, moving away from stances that favored tougher gun control laws.

The issue may rise anew.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a gun control advocate, said, “You know, soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it.”

Twenty years ago, polls showed that a substantial majority of Americans – nearly 80 percent in 1990 – supported stricter limits on guns. Now Americans appear evenly divided between those who want tougher restrictions and those who want to stick with current laws.

Gun rights groups are a powerful lobby in the United States, where easy access to guns is a way of life in many of the more conservative and rural areas. The right to bear arms is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, alongside such basic rights as free speech and freedom of religion.

During his 2008 presidential campaign, Obama called for reinstating a federal ban on assault weapons that began during the administration of former President Bill Clinton and expired under President George W. Bush. But since his election he hasn’t tried to get that done or pushed other gun control proposals, either.

The powerful National Rifle Association has attacked Obama as an anti-gun zealot nonetheless.

At the same time, the president has deeply disappointed gun-control advocates. In its most recent assessment, in 2010, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence failed Obama on seven issues it deemed important.

“As someone who has suffered the lasting impact of gun violence, and president of Brady, I can tell you that we don’t want sympathy. We want action,” Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement.

As a U.S. senator, Obama voted to leave gun makers and dealers open to civil lawsuits, and as an Illinois state lawmaker he supported a ban on all forms of semiautomatic weapons and tighter state restrictions generally on firearms.

Romney backed some gun control measures when he was governor of Massachusetts, and when he challenged Sen. Edward Kennedy in 1994 he declared, “I don’t line up with the NRA.”

This spring, competing for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney told the NRA he was a guardian of the Second Amendment of the Constitution that guarantees the right to bear arms.

Following last year’s killing of six people and the wounding of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, Obama called for a series of steps to “keep those irresponsible, law-breaking few from getting their hands on a gun in the first place.”

Among those steps was a better background check system. And White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday that system has improved.

But the administration has offered no legislation or detailed updates about how it is pursuing the president’s previous promises.

“The president believes that we need to take common-sense measures that protect Second Amendment rights of Americans, while ensuring that those who should not have guns under existing law do not get them,” Carney said.

Others, including Mayor Bloomberg, were looking for more specificity. The question is simple, he said in a radio interview: “What are they going to do about guns?” – AP

Batman shooter James Holmes was a ‘loner’

The man suspected of shooting 12 people dead at a screening of the new Batman movie in Colorado was often seen carrying guns to and from his home and was described Friday as a “loner.”

James Holmes, 24, was enrolled since June 2011 as a student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado, but was reportedly in the process of withdrawing from his PhD program.

In a photo released by the university, Holmes wore a burnt-orange T-shirt and sported a smile, but one neighbor at the apartment block where the suspect lived in Aurora recalled a subdued character.

“He was always wearing camouflage pants and a hat,” said Gabriel Macias, a Mexican who works at a meat factory and recalled seeing Holmes carrying guns and weapon cases to and from his apartment.

“We did not know him well because he talked to nobody. He was always locked up behind his door,” said Macias.

A second photo, from Holmes’s San Diego high school yearbook, showed him in a dark suit, this time flashing a toothy smile. He graduated from Westview High School in San Diego in 2006.

Melvin Evans, a security guard from a nearby building said he occasionally saw Holmes at a local bar.

“He was always by himself. Looked like a nice guy,” said Evans, 33. “I go to the bar every Sunday for Karaoke. I’ve seen him there every now and then. We would talk sometimes, the weather, you know.”

The FBI described Holmes as a white male, 6-foot-3 (1.9 meters) tall, born on December 13, 1987, with no significant criminal record and no links to terrorism.

Residents at the apartment block were removed in the wake of the shooting after it appeared that Holmes’s home had been booby-trapped.

Police in Aurora, Colorado, told reporters records showed that the shooting suspect’s only infringement in the city was a speeding ticket in 2011.

In an apartment rental application he submitted in early 2011, Holmes described himself as a “quiet and easy-going” student, the Denver Post said on its website (www.denverpost.com).

“No one knew him. No one,” it quoted a pharmacy student living in the same building — reserved for medical students, faculty and staff — in Aurora as saying.

The student, who only gave his name as Ben, said Holmes kept to himself and would not say hello or acknowledge other people in the hallway.

Ben also revealed he had called police shortly after midnight –coincidentally around the time of the massacre at a Batman premiere — to report a song blaring from inside Holmes’ apartment.

Ben could not make out the song, but it appeared to be playing on repeat.

Tom Mai, a next-door neighbor of the Holmes family in San Diego, remembered Holmes as a shy teenager who did not play or socialize with other youngsters in the neighborhood, the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper said.

“He said that he last saw him two years ago when he came home during summer recess from college,” it said on its website (www.utsandiego.com). “The family, he said, was nice and involved with a Presbyterian church.”

Holmes graduated from the University of California in Riverside in 2010 with a degree in neuroscience, said its director of communications Kris Lovekin, who added she could not release any further information about him.

Mashable.com, which monitors social media, said Holmes was “an online ghost” with no apparent presence on sites like Facebook or Twitter, although people sharing Holmes’ name found themselves suddenly bombarded with attention.

In a statement, Holmes’ family said they were cooperating with investigators.

“We are still trying to process this information and we appreciate that people will respect our privacy,” the family said, after Holmes’ mother Arlen confirmed her son was the suspected shooter. – AFP