tbf, a hospital is a fairly appropriate place for throat cancer batman to go.

It's too bad Heath Ledger is dead. If people are capable of coming up with ideas this good, I'm sure we would have suggested he go visit people as the Joker while wearing the nurse's uniform, talking about how he's going to blow up the hospital...

Maybe they could get the Batman who already visits kids in the hospital.

Don't try to force people to visit your crappy facebook page for "likes" and people won't "crusade" against you and it.


Because it's completely tactless and tasteless? They just lost their friends and family. Why the hell would you want to see ANYTHING related to it? The mere act of asking would dredge up memories that many people would rather forget.

I wasn't aware that Make-A-Wish foundation covered gun-shot victims.

post starts with "hey facebook," your argument is invalid

I use the terms "decency" and "blaze of glory" with all due sarcasm. However, as someone pointed out, if the shooter had died somehow in all of this, it would make the aftermath a lot simpler.

Honestly what other possible tone could you have read my post in but a sarcastic tone?

When somebody goes into mourning, s/he tends to care very little about the immediate (similar to life 'flashing before one's eyes'). The focus is solely on the personal memories of the deceased, so conflating the advent of death with anything else like batman would just be distracting and actually pretty insulting/inconsiderate. I mean if these victims were Batman's comrades or co-workers, it would be okay. I guess a soldier could be the only type of individual where it could be okay to (at least partially) conflate her/his entire life significance with the circumstances of death (e.g., was a war hero, served country, etc.).

Also applies to deities.

Estelore conveys that if you've gotta send someone from the movie to see the victims, at least have the decency to send Alfred.

I'm so glad I'm not the only person who thinks about it in this way. After I read about what happened, I poured over the blog of one of the victims, a 25yo girl (and a promising journalist) who'd already survived a shooting in a Toronto mall due to trusting "a funny feeling," only to be gunned down less than two months later - after surviving the Toronto shooting, she was talking about what a new appreciation she had for life, how fragile it really was, and how often she had taken these moments for granted. I couldn't stop crying - the event was tragic, yes, the lives lost and the families permanently affected (even though the media will be moving on very shortly), but perhaps the greater tragedy is our appalling cultural response. Everyone is so quick to state their opinion and give their arm-chair advice and talk about how things like this should be handled and utter bravado nonsense like "I would have shot the ******* myself" (horse****, this isn't a ****ing FPS, and you either need some massive cojones or a few screws loose to shoot someone dead point blank - also, last I checked, even US Marines don't go to midnight premieres with their desert eagle locked and loaded, chilling in their cup holder!) Sometimes people don't need advice, they just need a hug.

And its these same people bandying the word "tragedy" around with such nonchalance, before disappearing back into their iPhones or a dark corner of YouTube...ughh, it makes me sick, actually. Where's the love? Or more specifically, the understanding and the compassion? Everyone's busy pointing fingers, because they seem to derive greater pleasure from *****ing anonymously rather than actually ****ing *doing* something in the real world. "Do what?" you might ask? Well, perhaps the cruelest irony of all comes straight out of TDKR - something as simple as "putting a blanket around a small boy who's just lost the ones he loved." I always seem to tear up at Nolan's films, and Alfred made me cry almost every time he appeared on screen - I love the characters so much because they are the kind of people I *aspire* to be, flawed and human (yes), but also capable of "superhero" acts of bravery and altruism, even when there's nothing in it for them and, possibly, death. Movies are ecapism, but for me, they're also my dreams - stories like this give me hope for the goodness in people, the ability to accomplish the seemingly impossible, but that illusion soon comes crashing down upon exiting the theatre...

How we react to an event like this really shows our true colors, the kind of petty attempts at moral superiority which (I'm terrified to point out) Bane so easily exposes as pathetic self-righteousness among many of Gotham's citizens.

The real tragedy about a shooting like this (which is becoming *frighteningly* commonplace) is not so much the bloodshed as a fresh reminder of our culture's tremendous apathy and shallowness. I almost wish Empathy could be traded on the stock market, maybe then people would value it more highly.

I honestly think that Bruce Wayne sits around and thinks of ambiguous ways to reveal to people that he's Batman. He always has to reference some obscure thing that he said, or the other person said, or that one of them did.

That aside, I agree with what you're getting at here. It's insane that we sit around saying how we would have done this or that in the situation, or how it could have been prevented if more people carried guns. There are people who are dead because a mentally unstable guy was able to buy four guns over a period of six months, one of them being a god damned assault rifle which he then equipped with a 100 round drum magazine. If you think we really need to be able to buy that sort of thing, then there's something wrong with you. If you want to use an assault rifle, join the Army or the Marines. You won't even have to buy it. If you want to carry a gun around so you can stop criminals from doing wrong, become a police officer. I cannot understand our crazy obsession with violence and the desire to own guns. It's sad, to me, the kind of attitude people have toward the mentally unstable and their right to own guns.

A few weeks before my dad killed himself, we had the police at our house. My mother and father were fighting, and as always, my father was saying that he was going to kill himself if he didn't get his way. This was a fairly standard thing. He had said earlier that day that he had loaded five bullets into a gun while he was at home alone, and that he was sitting around waiting for the rest of us to get home (there are five of us, total, by the way). So the police ended up being called, eventually. They came to the house, and we told them what was going on. I explained to them that my father constantly threatened to kill himself, and talked about killing other people all the time. I said that it didn't really even bother us that much anymore, because he's always been like that. I told them that I've seen him stand with a knife to his throat, threatening to cut it open. They decided to confiscate all of our guns for a while, in order to give him time to "cool down". Once they left, he said that it wouldn't make any difference, because if he wanted to kill anyone, he could still just use a knife or a blunt object. He spent the next few weeks talking about how he was going to hang himself, or cut his wrists. My mother called the cops and told them that he was saying this sort of thing, but they said that they would only come back to the house if he actually became violent with anyone. He went over to the sheriff's office and picked up his guns without any problems, even though we had told them that he was still talking about killing himself and others. He brought them home, and a few days later he shot himself in the head.

This is why I feel that people and their precious 2nd Amendment rights can go straight to hell. We need some kind of more effective gun control. Most people should not be able to own guns. Guns make it really, really easy to kill people. You can say that if you take guns away, people will still be violent, and you might be right. All I know is that my father waited until he got his guns back, because it's a lot quicker and easier to end someone's life with a gun than it is using just about any other method.

Everyone is all for ownership of guns until someone you love is dead due to our insane obsession with firearms. The problem is, half the morons in this country respond to gun violence by buying and carrying a gun. It's like being upset because you dropped a chicken wing on your new carpet and left a stain on it, so you respond my eating nothing but chicken wings over your new carpet because you just don't have enough practice in hanging onto them. Stop eating the god damned wings and you won't stain your carpet.

Stop with the guns, and people will stop being killed with guns. More guns won't equal fewer deaths.

The problem is that tighter gun control won't exactly make it better. However, it wont exactly make things worse. I'm not saying the idea of gun control, or the laxing thereof, is a good idea. I'm just saying that there's a ton of factors that would go into this. It's not as simple as "he was a psychopath, was messed up, went to gunz-r-us, and shot up a mall."

As one who formerly studied psychology, I can say that things like this don't just happen. A person, no matter how disturbed, doesn't just wake up and say, "I'm going to kill everyone I see." Hell, violent cases tend to use sharp objects, usually things easily obtained. Suicides by females are usually attempted in the most presentable, pain-free way, usually by attempting overdose, thus lower success rate. Suicides by males tend to be done by the quickest way possible, usually be firearms. Very little planning happens, either way. A lot of events like this, however, have some degree of planning done beforehand. For example, if he just wanted to violently lash out, he would have gotten the easiest gun he could have gotten his hands on. But then again, he could have, since I obviously don't know what the gun laws are like in that state. I do know that here, there are some hoops to jump through just for the guns he had, and several more for that 100-round magazine.

But first, let's look at the suspect. What has been released about him is that he was a neuroscience phd student; he was, at least somewhat, dedicated up until a little while before the shooting. He also, in 2008, been a counselor for children at a summer camp; thus I would imagine he had to have been level headed and trusted by his community. Once an honor student before all of this, he did poorly on exams a semester previous, and then he dropped out of school. I'm tired, and it's late, so I'm just going to say; something had to have happened in his life to make him, like anyone else, take such an extreme action. Also, I wish to suggest that there may be a reason for that movie. Why the batman movie? Why not a school, or a mall, or some other place? It may be that there is a connection of some sort. Perhaps, for example, someone that he believed to have been there that wronged him in a major way; hurt him so deeply, that he would consider such a violent act. Perhaps, if correct, that person could have died that night, and the only way we could ever find out is either through a close friend of his, or he himself.

[nevermind]

Honestly I could careless about his motivations, there is simply no possible excuse for this type of behavior. Even if his father dressed up as Batman and sadomized him for years, I'm not mustering any sympathy for James Holmes. I'm sure Psychologists are happy he was taken alive, he will make a fascinating case study.

Also, this 'personality' change couldn't have been a sudden as some people are making it out to be, his own mother was not surprised to learn at his involvement in this incident (Didn't she call the police when she learned about the shooting and tell them that he might be involved?). He must have been reaching out for help to family and friends, and they either missed the signs or were unwilling to act.

Oh really? I could find probably 10 stories on local news websites right now where cops have gone in and just shot someone. I mean, especially right here in columbus I'm pretty sure it's happened like twice in 2 weeks.. They just run in and shoot someone no questions asked... but this guy they just capture him? No **** that he doesn't deserve to live, it has nothing to do with FASCISM... jesus really? You're ****ing hilarious. This guy should ****ing DIE why the **** should he sit in an overcrowded prison with 75% non voilent ****ing drug crimes, huh? Whatever dude. Because you know what?? This guy is probably just going to hang himself in his jail cell anyway on his own ****ing terms...

Zanardi: Even if it does happen all the time it doesn't make it right. It's part of what makes us, you know, civilized.

Vengeance isn't going to bring those people back to life. The damage is already done. Just keep him from being able to hurt anyone else is all we need to do as a society. Taking a life isn't necessary.

(Also, before this turns into a death sentence debate, keep in mind that despite prison overcrowding, it is still cheaper to keep a prisoner with a life sentence than to kill him via the justice system).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/the-unknown-why-in-the-aurora-killings.html?_r=1

I found this to be relevant to the discussion. It's written by a reporter that covered Columbine in Denver & has spent 10 years studying said incident & others. Essentially, he's pointing out that the public & media responses to the perpetrators in such incidents are often wrong & these concepts tend to stick with people, despite their erroneousness.

If that's the case, you're being awfully picky about how he dies.

i'd prefer his death be at the hands of the friends and relatives of the victims as well as the survivors

Only because we make the death sentence so expensive with over the top, unnecessary beaurocracy.

But shouldn't this be a moral issue rather than a financial one? Think about it this way. If the death sentence WAS cheaper than a life sentence, then would you support it? No? Why not? Because it's (in your mind) immoral, right? So why bring money into the argument at all?

I'm really glad that you're too stupid to be in charge of anything.

What? No.

Is that all you have to say? That doesn't even make sense, at least other people who responded to me made sense but this makes no sense at all. In charge of what? I'm stupid? Nice insult buddy. Why don't you just go back to your circlejerk that is massassi.

Ok. If you ask really nicely, you can be the next one to jerk me off.

Yeah, because making doubly sure that the guy you're about to kill is actually guilty is unnecessary bureaucracy.

Also, part of the reason I make the money statement is because (as seen in this thread) the most common reason I hear for the death penalty is "it's a waste of taxpayer money to lock them up for their whole lives!!!!"

I don't support the death penalty in any case. I think everyone has an intrinsic right to live, no matter how horrible they are. It's nothing religious. I just don't see how killing someone is justice. It doesn't change what happened.

Sidenote: I do believe cops/soldiers/etc should have the right to kill someone in self-defense, however, as long as it is absolutely necessary. The right to live does not override someone else's right to live. To be relevant, I don't think shooting someone who has surrendered or is no longer a threat to your life is self-defense.

Actually, yes.

(specifically beating up California's death penalty program, which is one of the worst)
"California's legendarily slow appeals system, which produces an average wait of nearly 20 years from conviction to fatal injection — the longest in the nation. Of the nine convicted killers McCartin sent to death row, only one has died. Not by execution, but from a heart attack in custody."

"Additional costs are incurred from a multitude of factors: two attorneys per side (rather than one), multiple investigators, multiple experts in the penalty phase of the trial, extended jury selection process, the additional penalty phase, and a longer guilt phase."

"The Supreme Court automatically considers all capital cases if a sentence of death was rendered"
"Defendants have a constitutional right to representation on direct appeal, which is paid for by the state. The legislature has failed to provide adequate funding for the public agencies charged with defending capital defendants, thus the state has been forced to rely on appointing private lawyers. The average cost to represent a defendant in a case in which private lawyers are hired is between $200,000 and $300,000."
---

In short, a bunch of completely unnecessary hogwash. Why, for example, should it be required that there be 2 lawyers per side if the death penalty is being sought? Multiple experts and investigators? Extended jury selection? Why? If the process is sufficient enough to put someone away for life without parole, why is it not sufficient enough if the death penalty is an option?

Consider that 20 YEAR wait between the trial and the injection (in California, national average is 10 years). But, did you know that in the beginning of the 20th century, the average wait between trial and execution was less than a year (ref)? WHY the change?? Because over the years, the Supreme Court changed its interpretation of the US Constitution to require more rights for the convicted. In short, now they can drag and drag out multiple lengthy appeals to (bureaucratically) nitpick every little detail of the trial.

Uh, maybe literally all of that is because we still execute innocent people, and because killing someone is (and should be) a really big deal. If you're ever wrongly convicted of a crime, be sure to tell them that you don't want any of that.

It is, because that's the WHOLE POINT OF THE TRIAL IN THE FIRST PLACE (or should be). Whether you sentence someone to life without parole or you sentence them to death, you're destroying their life. What's the difference? Also, how can we believe in the infallibility of the justice system if we DON'T believe in the infallibility of the justice system? We need to either say "Hey, this system works so let's trust it" or "This system doesn't work" and scrap it or reform it for ALL situations. Not just the death penalty.

(Only seen in this thread because you brought it up, unless I missed something?), but: Easily debunked by linking a google search of "difference in cost between life imprisonment and death penalty", so I just didn't really get why you felt you needed to jump right to that.

You're of course welcome to that belief, though I think it might be beneficial for you to consider studying the distinction between "justice" and "vengeance" because based on your "it doesn't change what happened" remark, I'm not sure you consider them any different. (In short, "it doesn't change what happened" IS a valid argument against someone seeking vengeance, but is NOT a valid argument against a government seeking justice.)

In case you have any misunderstandings here, cops/soldiers/etc (at least in the US) have this right exactly, and nothing more. There are very specific criteria that must be met in order to justify using deadly force against anybody, and these criteria have to be proved to have existed after the event. If not, the cop/soldier/etc will be brought up on charges.

And Antony: See my first response to CM's comment above.

How about we cease being the only "civilized" country to execute people (because I know we enjoy sharing so much in common with our neighbors in Iraq, Libya, Iran, and North Korea)... -_-

Empathy. Not to be confused with sympathy, but empathy as in "the ability to put yourself in someone else's situation." Kind of like Thomas Jefferson's "If angry, count to 10. If exceptionally angry, count to 100." Try replacing those precious seconds with thoughts of what it must be like to be any one of these people, victims or perpetrators. Life is complicated, peeps, it aint black and white. Everybody was born at some point, and even the most ****ed up individuals (at some point) had a mother who decided to bring them into this world, and might still love them very much. And don't even get me started on this country's appalling lack of empathy for people with mental health disorders.

Antony: I'm so sorry to hear about what happened to your father, what a terrible situation to have to explain to the police. My sister has had a lot of issues with eating disorders and self-harm and ... people who haven't been in situations like that have a very hard time understanding that you can't just "fix" something like that, because it's not what's on the surface that causes people pain, it's the feelings underneath, and sometimes.... they're very well-hidden.

Jason Alexander made a nice post about the incident and the whole "gun-restrictions" thing.

Because it's not infallible, and we know it isn't. You would only be right if there had never been a single case of wrongful conviction. Furthermore, we don't have a better system. You got one? Make it happen. Good luck with that.

Also, ask anyone who's gone to jail with a life sentence. I'm sure a very high percentage would say they'd rather serve the sentence than die. After all, if it was equal, people wouldn't fight it (fighting a death sentence is almost invariably reduced to a life sentence).



Zanardi brought the topic of money up on the first page.



Doesn't matter who did it (people or government), killing the person does not offer the country as a whole anything of value. Otherwise, the government could easily enact far more gruesome punishments like the ye olde days. I find the argument for the death penalty to be the same one used for torture devices of yore. Killing a person for a crime is meaningless, it offers nothing of value. The only reason anyone should ever be killed is in direct self-defense.

You tell me, what good does killing someone do, as far as justice is concerned? I don't know about you, but "making the victim's family feel better" seems like a really, really ****ty excuse to do anything, much less kill a person.



I don't have any misunderstandings here. I am just making the point that this is only how it should be. We shouldn't legalize killing someone later just because they did something horrible. It doesn't appreciably protect anyone, and it doesn't reform the criminal.

That is a really nice post.

Right, I know it isn't, and that's my point. We can put checks and balances into the system as much as we want, but at some point we have to throw our chips in or fold. Where we're at now is this "half way" place where we say we believe our system works well enough to justify using it to end someone's life for imprisoning them for the rest of it, but not well enough to justify using it to end someone's life by killing them. It's a weird, unbalanced position we're in, and we either need to put our trust in the justice system fully and stop wasting money second guessing our process, or we need to scrap it and start letting criminals off the hook.

Oh, yep. I did miss something then.

You already answered this question yourself, earlier in the post:
"Also, ask anyone who's gone to jail with a life sentence. I'm sure a very high percentage would say they'd rather serve the sentence than die. After all, if it was equal, people wouldn't fight it (fighting a death sentence is almost invariably reduced to a life sentence)." The Death Sentence is a pretty damn good deterrent to crime, and would be even more so if we weren't so afraid to use it (tie in to our "half way" position I mentioned above). Consider: There's no death penalty. You're broke, and living on the streets. You're cold and hungry every night. You haven't had a shower in months. You can't get a job, and you're barely surviving. Then you are somehow given the opportunity to be involved in an armed robbery. You don't like the idea of being a criminal, but best case scenario, you get some money and go eat, worst case scenario, you get caught and get to spend a long time in a place with 3 meals a day, an exercise yard, and HBO. Either way you're better off than you started. On the other hand, same scenario, but this time death penalty is in effect. Now you have to consider that if the job goes sour and you shoot someone, you could end up DEAD.

I offer a third alternative (and this isn't to suggest that your options are valid):

Get rid of the death penalty.

Either way, I don't agree with your sentiment in the slightest. A life sentence is not the end of someone's life, just as going bankrupt is not the end of someone's life. I think it's perfectly acceptable for them to implement an extra level of caution when killing someone. Once they're dead, they don't get to speak up anymore. They don't get a chance at reform or appeal. I can live with myself with a 99.5% certainty when we convict someone to life imprisonment. That 0.05% may get screwed, but they have the chance to get out later (and it has happened). However, I am greatly disturbed by someone being killed for falling in that 0.05% barrier. It's a very, very large difference, and that's what matters here.




Considering how the death sentence is not employed across the entire country would seem to defy everything you said.

Besides, you just argued that attempting to be a drain on society is an acceptable reason to end someone's life. Unless you're literally starving to death, I think most people would rather stay out of prison regardless. Prison is not a nice place to be, you know, even with the "HBO and exercise yard". Yes, even compared to living on the street.

Yes, everytime a Murderer is convicted in a state which doesn't support the death penalty I console myself with thoughts of lifetime-prison-rape.

^^^^
That should have been an SNL 'Deep Thoughts' clip by Jack Handey.

FALSE DICHOTOMIES ARE THE BEST DICHOTOMIES.

THE DEATH PENALTY IS AN INEXPENSIVE AND EFFECTIVE DETERRENT TO CRIME

I AM AN UNEDUCATED MANCHILD.

An enlightened and educated person with a strong understanding of logic and statistics would be aware that a certain percentage of people will be wrongfully convicted regardless of circumstance or any preventative measures, so it is valuable to preserve people in a state where they can be exonerated if or when new evidence is presented that establishes their innocence. For example, since 1992 the Innocence Project has helped exonerate 292 people who were wrongfully convicted, including 17 who had received death sentences.

NOPE, IF YOU ARE CONVICTED BY A COURT OF LAW IT MEANS YOU ARE GUILTY, CHOP 'EM INTO FISH FOOD AND NEVER THINK OR TALK ABOUT THEM EVER AGAIN.

Most convictions happen due to eyewitness testimony, even though eyewitness testimony is considered deeply unreliable by the scientific community. For example, when a victim is presented with a lineup which does not even contain their assailant, they will essentially choose at random and convince themselves that the person they fingered is the person who did it. This unreliability occurs even when the person has been specially trained to provide accurate eyewitness testimony, such as police officers.

NO YOUR WRONG, I AM PAID TO POLISH THINGS THAT MAKE BROWN PEOPLE GO PIFF AND THAT GIVES ME STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT JURISPRUDENCE WHICH ARE TOTALLY VALID EVEN IF THEY MAKE ME SOUND LIKE A MONSTER.

Whether you agree with capital punishment or not, In a time of a major cuts and a recession I'd argue it's a very good thing that the death penalty costs more than keeping someone in prison for the rest of their life. How many people might be put to death in the name of "saving money". I'd much prefer the decision on their life to be based on facts rather than money.

NO YOUR DUMB, THE DEATH PENALTY IS A GOOD, HONEST, HARD-WORKING REPUBLICAN IDEA. MONEY-SAVING DEATH PANELS ARE A LIBERAL THING. IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.