14 dead, 50 wounded at Colorado Theater during Dark Knight

[goett047]

I was listening to survivor stories and one guy said he played dead while hot ejected brass was burning his arms. Um.....you're that close and you don't take the guy down? I'm not saying a PTC guy try to shoot him in a dark, smokey theater, I'm saying knock the guy down, grab his gun, do SOMETHING. He was wearing a gas mask...not a whole lot of peripheral vision in those things. Playing dead is a gamble...this nut job could have very well have "double tapped " the "bodies" as he came upon them. The survivor was extremely lucky that the shooter didn't do that. Granted, I wasn't there....just playing devil's advocate here.

You wouldn't have played dead, huh? You would have rushed the guy in that scenario and taken him down?

Why play dead when you can get dead.

Seriously though to those of you speculating that we are all Internet commandos, I ask what formal training did he have? None. So really the only advantage on his part was superior firepower and a gas mask. Someone with just a gun would have far better mobility than this guy who was so weighted down. They would also be able to regain some element of surprise. As a packed theater is a lot of information for one assailant to continually process.

[Hmac]

I'm not much of a movie goer. But wouldn't the fire exits be alarmed? Is it SOP for those exits to be used?

Not necessarily. Additionally a lot of that type of door alarm are battery powered and the batteries can be neglected. That's a good point though; did anyone read if there were reports of an alarm sounding and the nature of the alarm if there was?

I read that he came in the theater with a ticket, left through the emergency exit propping it open, armed himself and came back in, so no, apparently no alarm. Local theater complex here, there's no alarm on the emergency exits at the front of each theater. We often left that way to avoid the crush of people leaving out the front at the end of the movie and our car was usually parked where the emergency exit opens. I'll bet we see a whole different concept in movie theater emergency exit management from here on out.

They just recently renovated our local movie complex, so I don't know what it's like now, but previously, the management personnel on duty lacked any kind of...uh..."attention to detail". I suspect that's likely to change, at least a little, and at least for awhile. The American attention span is pretty short.

[Hmac]

I was listening to survivor stories and one guy said he played dead while hot ejected brass was burning his arms. Um.....you're that close and you don't take the guy down? I'm not saying a PTC guy try to shoot him in a dark, smokey theater, I'm saying knock the guy down, grab his gun, do SOMETHING. He was wearing a gas mask...not a whole lot of peripheral vision in those things. Playing dead is a gamble...this nut job could have very well have "double tapped " the "bodies" as he came upon them. The survivor was extremely lucky that the shooter didn't do that. Granted, I wasn't there....just playing devil's advocate here.

You wouldn't have played dead, huh? You would have rushed the guy in that scenario and taken him down?

Why play dead when you can get dead.

Seriously though to those of you speculating that we are all Internet commandos, I ask what formal training did he have? None. So really the only advantage on his part was superior firepower and a gas mask. Someone with just a gun would have far better mobility than this guy who was so weighted down. They would also be able to regain some element of surprise. As a packed theater is a lot of information for one assailant to continually process.

We don't know what, if any, training this nut job had. There is no shortage of carbine/pistol courses around the country that teach active shooter scenarios. There are at least a few such courses around Minnesota...I've even taken a few. Surely there are similar in Denver. Magpul Dynamics, for example is just up the road in Boulder. If it's true that he'd been preparing for as much as two months, it's hard to imagine that he didn't include some kind of training in his preparation.

[xd ED]

[quote="tman"]I can tell you that the next time I see someone get up and walk out the fire exit DURING a movie, I'll be making sure that the door is shut behind him.

That thought has crossed my mind at least a few times in the last couple days...
b

I'm not much of a movie goer. But wouldn't the fire exits be alarmed? Is it SOP for those exits to be used?

During high school I worked at chain of theaters in the south metro, if those doors are anything like the doors used, they were big metal fire doors with no alarm. People regularly use them to go outside for a smoke/talk on the phone/leave then comeback in the front and back to their movie. Also, there would be no way to kick one down unless he drove his car through it first. I haven't seen any news on the story since two days ago.

Something else that has bothered me a bit, is how did some people not know there were gun shots in the theater right away. Gun shots are loud, especially in a room where sound is designed to be kept in. Even in the largest theater we had (293ish seats) there would be some serious ear ringing if someone shot an AR, as in, you would KNOW.[/quote]

From the survivor accounts I've heard many in the theatre that was attacked thought at first the guy was a prop. people in adjoining theaters hearing the gunfire thought it was from the movie.

[tazdevil]

All valid points. And yeah, if you're 15 feet or more away, it would be suicide to try to rush the guy from the front. I was listening to survivor stories and one guy said he played dead while hot ejected brass was burning his arms. Um.....you're that close and you don't take the guy down? I'm not saying a PTC guy try to shoot him in a dark, smokey theater, I'm saying knock the guy down, grab his gun, do SOMETHING. He was wearing a gas mask...not a whole lot of peripheral vision in those things. Playing dead is a gamble...this nut job could have very well have "double tapped " the "bodies" as he came upon them. The survivor was extremely lucky that the shooter didn't do that. Granted, I wasn't there....just playing devil's advocate here.

You make it sound as if the guy being hit by the hot brass was right underneath him. Have you seen AR/AK rifles fire? They all have different brass trajectories post firing, and I have seen many that brass flying 15 feet would be simple for them to do. So it's very possible this guy "hiding" was doing so at a larger distance than what you imagine. One of the 3 gun matches I was in, we where standing at least 20 feet behind the shooter, and one of the guys was able to air catch the shooters brass with a bucket. Also, even if it was a few feet, that could translate to a few rows of seats between shooter and hiding guy. So he'd have to jump over a couple to get to shooter.

[bulletproof]

I'll bet we see a whole different concept in movie theater emergency exit management from here on out.

I'm sure they'll get right on installing $300+ alarm lock exits on all the firedoors. They'll probably do that just as soon as they get done installing all those 48fps 3D projectors Peter Jackson wants.

Come up with all the scenarios you want to, speculate, pander, or debate it. If someone is going to do evil, they'll find a way to do it. He could have bombed the theater killing much more than just 12 people. Six people died when Jared Loughner used a handgun. We should be thankful this lunatic was only able to kill 12.

[Hmac]

I'll bet we see a whole different concept in movie theater emergency exit management from here on out.

I'm sure they'll get right on installing $300+ alarm lock exits on all the firedoors. They'll probably do that just as soon as they get done installing all those 48fps 3D projectors Peter Jackson wants.

Come up with all the scenarios you want to, speculate, pander, or debate it. If someone is going to do evil, they'll find a way to do it. He could have bombed the theater killing much more than just 12 people. Six people died when Jared Loughner used a handgun. We should be thankful this lunatic was only able to kill 12.

My point being ... it is common in the US to frantically obsess over not just closing the barn door after the cow has escaped, but nailing it shut, even if it means throwing out the baby with the bath water. The problem has always been...they focus on the particular door the cow escaped from, not the several other doors in the barn (excessive metaphor use...excuse me). I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see a flurry of legislation mandating just exactly such an expenditure, and perhaps even a congressional round of hearings, maybe even a federal grant program, for managing emergency exits in public venues. It's the way we do things around here. Perhaps we should get TSA involved .

[tman]

I can tell you that the next time I see someone get up and walk out the fire exit DURING a movie, I'll be making sure that the door is shut behind him.

That thought has crossed my mind at least a few times in the last couple days...
b

I'm sure everyone would understand why you did it..

I'm not much of a movie goer. But wouldn't the fire exits be alarmed? Is it SOP for those exits to be used?

Like others have said, people, including me, use them to leave after the show to avoid the rush. A lot of theaters have intrusion alarms that are disarmed during business hours. I'd be pissed as a paying customer, if a fire alarm sounded while I was watching a movie because some asshat got up and left to have a smoke.

[bulletproof]

My point being ... it is common in the US to frantically obsess over not just closing the barn door after the cow has escaped, but nailing it shut, even if it means throwing out the baby with the bath water. The problem has always been...they focus on the particular door the cow escaped from, not the several other doors in the barn (excessive metaphor use...excuse me). I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see a flurry of legislation mandating just exactly such an expenditure, and perhaps even a congressional round of hearings, maybe even a federal grant program, for managing emergency exits in public venues. It's the way we do things around here. Perhaps we should get TSA involved .

That's an understandable point, and I'm actually surprised the politicians could contain themselves. I'm sure once the initial flood of news subsides they'll start mentioning it.

[tazdevil]

My point being ... it is common in the US to frantically obsess over not just closing the barn door after the cow has escaped, but nailing it shut, even if it means throwing out the baby with the bath water. The problem has always been...they focus on the particular door the cow escaped from, not the several other doors in the barn (excessive metaphor use...excuse me). I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see a flurry of legislation mandating just exactly such an expenditure, and perhaps even a congressional round of hearings, maybe even a federal grant program, for managing emergency exits in public venues. It's the way we do things around here. Perhaps we should get TSA involved .

That's an understandable point, and I'm actually surprised the politicians could contain themselves. I'm sure once the initial flood of news subsides they'll start mentioning it.

You thought it would take that long? They already have:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/48275691#48275691

[goalie]

I wish I was as bad-ass as some of the MGT members in this thread the first time I faced an AK across a room. I would have saved a pair of underwear and been able to tell Heffay MUCH cooler stories when drunk up in Duluth.....

[Snakeman721]

I was listening to survivor stories and one guy said he played dead while hot ejected brass was burning his arms. Um.....you're that close and you don't take the guy down? I'm not saying a PTC guy try to shoot him in a dark, smokey theater, I'm saying knock the guy down, grab his gun, do SOMETHING. He was wearing a gas mask...not a whole lot of peripheral vision in those things. Playing dead is a gamble...this nut job could have very well have "double tapped " the "bodies" as he came upon them. The survivor was extremely lucky that the shooter didn't do that. Granted, I wasn't there....just playing devil's advocate here.

You wouldn't have played dead, huh? You would have rushed the guy in that scenario and taken him down?

If I was close enough, yes I would.

[Hmac]

I was listening to survivor stories and one guy said he played dead while hot ejected brass was burning his arms. Um.....you're that close and you don't take the guy down? I'm not saying a PTC guy try to shoot him in a dark, smokey theater, I'm saying knock the guy down, grab his gun, do SOMETHING. He was wearing a gas mask...not a whole lot of peripheral vision in those things. Playing dead is a gamble...this nut job could have very well have "double tapped " the "bodies" as he came upon them. The survivor was extremely lucky that the shooter didn't do that. Granted, I wasn't there....just playing devil's advocate here.

You wouldn't have played dead, huh? You would have rushed the guy in that scenario and taken him down?

If I was close enough, yes I would.

You're bad-ass, man. I want to go to the movies with you from now on. I surely admire your self-confidence, if not your grasp of reality.

[Nat]

Let me be really really clear about this - you do not have the right to second guess the actions of anyone in that theater that night. You are living out an adolescent machismo fantasy where you reacted better than someone WHO ACTUALLY EXPERIENCED SOMETHING - that you only learned about on television. I promise you - if you let this drop and walk away from the conversation, we'll think more of you than we will if you keep perpetuating the crap you've been posting.

[Snakeman721]

All valid points. And yeah, if you're 15 feet or more away, it would be suicide to try to rush the guy from the front. I was listening to survivor stories and one guy said he played dead while hot ejected brass was burning his arms. Um.....you're that close and you don't take the guy down? I'm not saying a PTC guy try to shoot him in a dark, smokey theater, I'm saying knock the guy down, grab his gun, do SOMETHING. He was wearing a gas mask...not a whole lot of peripheral vision in those things. Playing dead is a gamble...this nut job could have very well have "double tapped " the "bodies" as he came upon them. The survivor was extremely lucky that the shooter didn't do that. Granted, I wasn't there....just playing devil's advocate here.

You make it sound as if the guy being hit by the hot brass was right underneath him. Have you seen AR/AK rifles fire? They all have different brass trajectories post firing, and I have seen many that brass flying 15 feet would be simple for them to do. So it's very possible this guy "hiding" was doing so at a larger distance than what you imagine. One of the 3 gun matches I was in, we where standing at least 20 feet behind the shooter, and one of the guys was able to air catch the shooters brass with a bucket. Also, even if it was a few feet, that could translate to a few rows of seats between shooter and hiding guy. So he'd have to jump over a couple to get to shooter.

Yes, I have seen AR/AK fire. And yes, some guns fling brass 20 feet away, but some just 3-4 feet away. And yes, maybe there were a few rows of seats between the victim and the shooter, I don't know. All I'm saying is that if someone was close enough, say 5-10 feet, and had a clear shot with no seats to hurdle, say like at the end of an aisle, why didn't they take him down. Yes, I know I'm just speculating, but the fact that no one even tried to take this guy down is disturbing to me. Are we turning into a country of sheeple that fast? Like I said, I wasn't there and am just speculating, but from some survivor reports, it sounds like the shooter was damn near standing on top of them. Then there's the reports of the shooter pausing to reload?? or clear a jam??...which would explain how so many had the opportunity to escape the theater.