Colorado shooting rumors

[snopes]

Comment: Is James Holmes (the Colorado shooter) a muslim?

[snopes]

Comment: Snopes should start a file on the Aurora, Colorado shooting.
There are already conspiracy nutcases tossing around crap about it, Alex
Jones types. 1. Two shooters, 2. FBI warning, 3. False Flag, 4. Shooting
was too accurate. 5. Local police not allowed to touch bodies.

[snopes]

Comment: A Facebook post has gone relatively viral purporting to be a post
by the Romney campaign on its own site that says:

Our prayers go to the families of the 64 victims of the horrific shooting
last night in Colorado.

Don't let them use the horrific shooting in Colorado to take our guns
away!

Hitler disarmed Germany before the people were subjugated. Stalin did the
same in Russia as did Mao in Communist China.

"The first thing you have to do is disarm the people. A disarmed public
can't fight back" -- Adolf Hitler

It is accompanied by a picture of a gun, with the message:

Remember Colorado: Remember that 65 million legal gun owners killed zero
people yesterday.

[snopes]

Comment: Is it true that the Colorado shooter James E.Holmes was part of
Occupy San Diego or any Occupy Wallstreet protest?

[snopes]

Comment: I hear that a part of the Occupy movement , called the "Black
Bloc", is involved in the Aurora Co. shooter.
Is this true?

[snopes]

Comment: Did the FBI put out a theater warning about mass shootings? Some
are stating that the CO mass shooting was government sponsored.

[snopes]

Comment: Did the NRA really send out a fundraising letter in the aftermath
of the Colorado Batman movie shooting?

[snopes]

Comment: So you know about the Aurora Movie Theater Shooting in Colorado?
I heard that James Holmes attended Columbine High School, where a school
shooting took place in 1999. The school shooting is the fourth most
notorious school shooting. And James Holmes, the shooter of the movie
theater shooting, supposedlt attended there? I don't think it is true but
you should look into it.

[JoeBentley]

Addressing a few of these.

- The suspect, James Eagen Holmes, attended Columbine High School during the time of the shooting.

False. Holmes was born and raised in San Diego. He attended Westview High School in San Diego. He attended college at the University of California and started the PhD program the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 2011 after receiving a grant.

- The shooting was "too accurate." Holmes was firing a drum feed AR-15 into a crowd in an enclosed area. It would take little skill to produce a lot of deaths and injuries in such a scenario.

- A second shooter. The FBI is questioning an acquaintance of homes for information, but has made it clear that there is no evidence of another shooter.

[crescent]

Originally Posted by snopes

Remember Colorado: Remember that 65 million legal gun owners killed zero
people yesterday.

Do they mean that nobody at all was killed by a legal gun owner yesterday, or do they mean that the vast majority of gun owners didn't kill anyone?

If it is the former, I would like to see a cite.

[Auburn Red]

Besides for all we know, Holmes COULD have purchased the gun legally. It's what he did with it, that made it illegal.

I tend to believe the "person of interest" may have assisted him with obtaining the gear or some such than really another shooter.
As for accuracy, he wasn't aiming at anyone in particular, he was just shooting random people in a dark small room. Anyone, who could pick up a gun and fire it could probably do that.

[crescent]

Originally Posted by Auburn Red

Besides for all we know, Holmes COULD have purchased the gun legally. It's what he did with it, that made it illegal.

I thought it was pretty well established that he bought all of his guns legally.

[JoeBentley]

An AR-15 is perfectly legal and in fact very common, being nothing more then a semi-automatic civilian version of the military M-16, so a lot of shooters like it because they are familier with it from military training and parts and accessories are readily available for it.

The drum magazine he attached to it was not. A drum magazine holds around a 100 rounds. Federal Law limits magazines to 30, and many states (not Colorado) limit it to 15 or 10.

[Ariadne]

On top of everything else that has been mentioned, the Columbine shooting happened in 1999, when Holmes was 11 or 12.

[Cowboy Joe]

Originally Posted by Auburn Red

I tend to believe the "person of interest" may have assisted him with obtaining the gear or some such than really another shooter.

When I searched "where can i buy tactical body armor", many sites came up. So he could have had someone assisting him, but for a PhD candidate, he could easily have bought that type of equipment on his own. To my surprise, the equipment was not all that expensive either. For example, you can get a bullet proof vest for a few hundred or up to a few thousand dollars.

ETA: Also, within a bout 5 minutes I was able to find a 75 round drum magazine for an AR-15, so a little bit more searching probable could locate a 100 round magazine pretty easily.

[Chloe]

Just for the purposes of accuracy, he wasn't a Ph.D. Candidate. He'd been in the program less than a year, so no way could he be done with courses and exams.

[Alchemy]

Originally Posted by Chloe

Just for the purposes of accuracy, he wasn't a Ph.D. Candidate. He'd been in the program less than a year, so no way could he be done with courses and exams.

It depends. In my department a "PhD candidate" was anyone who had passed the written (qualifying/comprehensive/preliminary) exams, which were offered at the end of the first year.

This person apparently did poorly on his exams, which I take to mean he did not pass and would need to retake them, so he wouldn't be a "candidate" by that definition either.

[Mouse]

Gotta love that Muslim rumor. Because as we know there's no such thing as being Muslim and American or being Muslim and :gasp: White (which is usually synonymous with being American in the bigots' eyes) and of course, White Christians have never ever killed people; all those crimes committed by White People, the perpetrators were either sekrit Muslims or it was all rigged by the Islamofascists in order to draw attention from their plans to impose both Socialism and Sharia law on us.

I would say that the people who start these rumors have the memory span of a goldfish except that's probably an insult to goldfish everywhere.

[Auburn Red]

Somehow, I don't think the people in Oklahoma City or in Norway to name two off the top of my head and many others, share that sentiment that all terrorists have to be Muslim. I don't recall Timothy McVeigh or Anders Behring Breivik having any Muslim background whatsoever.

[rockland6674]

Originally Posted by Auburn Red

I don't recall Timothy McVeigh or Anders Behring Breivik having any Muslim background whatsoever.

[Jim Bob Bubbabreath mode on] Don't ya get it? They were them seekrit Muslims, workin' with our keerupt guv'mint under deep cover! [Jim Bob Bubbabreath mode off]