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I thought I would step back away from the usual news and gossip tidbits that I report on month to month and give my thoughts on the Shootings that took place at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises last month. Batman the Dark Knight Returns was a one off graphic novel that DC Comics published back in 1986. I have never read said graphic novel since I was only about nine years old when it came out, and much like Watchmen it has not been high on my comic book to read list. I think mostly because Frank Miller has expressed some unpopular opinions that rubbed me the wrong way, so that pushed it on the furthest back burner I could find. This is the same graphic novel that Christopher Nolan based his version of Batman for the movie. In the initial day or so since the shooting took place, the press have taken a close look at Batman, the Dark Knight Returns. The Washington Examiner newspaper posted the possible link to the shooting and something that was in the comic. In the comic there is a scene over about a page that has a mentally unstable man go into an adult movie theater and pull out a revolver. The last panel has a sort of news report that says that three people were killed in an adult movie theater, and we are shown everything but the actual shooting in the comic. There was no smoke or tear gas used by said man in the comic, he was not wearing body armor in the comic, and like I said the man in the comic used a revolver rather than a rifle. To me this seems kind of a knee jerk reaction, but when the report was published they had very little to go on to make sense of it all. I'm not trying to prove or disprove this being a cause of the shooting, but when dealing with a mentally unstable person it's hard to know what sets them off. It's also not good that we look to just one thing that could be to blame for what happened. Generally in the press they look for something in the media to blame and they naturally went to The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel for answers. Could we also blame the gun dealers for selling the potentially unstable man guns and ammunition he could use to shoot people, yes; and we could also blame a broken medical system for not getting this man help with his potential mental instability. Ultimately we have nobody and no one to blame other than the man who did it. Some slick lawyer for the families of the dead will find some way to get the gun manufacturers and dealers in a civil law suit as well as find some way to get Warner Brothers and by extension DC Comics in on it too. They have nothing to do with this. The man who made a conscious decision to go into that theater and start shooting people; it's his fault and no one else's. I have gone through some of the pages on Reddit about the shooting timeline two people have been posting and there is one thing that stood out to me, the man who did the killing said he was "The Joker" at the arraignment later in the day. If I were the judge, I would have said to his comment, "You are about two years too late, Joker" and held him without bond. There was talk of two shooters at the beginning of the timelines as news was coming out, but that was since dropped to just the one shooter. There are also reports that there is a highly complex explosives set up at the shooter's house that as of this writing has not been disarmed and may take days to fully disarm. There has also been talk that there might be bombs at the university where the shooter worked and that they have sent all non essential personnel home for the day. I was a little on edge yesterday afternoon when the alarm went off to evacuate the building that the classroom of the Insurance class I am taking to complete Pharmacy Technician training. Not so much for the alarm as when we went outside, we saw a campus police officer run by with his hand on his sidearm as well as another officer who moments later went by on a gas powered golf cart, hand on his sidearm. After hearing what went on earlier in the day I can only imagine how on edge they must have been. We never found out what happened, but we got out of class about twenty minutes early and I drove home to do my research on the shooting. This is a human tragedy on a large scale for the United States. Twelve people have died including children, but some things are still unconfirmed as of this writing. Some of the wounded include two Air Force reservists and two active duty Navy sailors. People who just wanted to enjoy a movie and get away from the rigors of being in combat. Instead they come to war zone in their own town. The only thing is that the bodies of the dead are still in the theater and the Police are still waiting to clear the theater house for bombs before getting to them. With the whole thing with the shooter's apartment being wired to explode they might have a while to wait. Those twelve souls will not rest until they are given a proper burial. There was talk of Warner Brothers canceling all screenings of the movie Friday evening all around the world, but that did not happen. My brother in law went to see the movie at the first showing of the day at the local Cinemark and did not come home early. In the thankful for something good to come out of all this; a three month old was treated and released. It's also good that both presidential nominees decided to stop running campaign ads for Friday and President Obama ordered all flags to fly at half-staff until Wednesday of the next week. The President also called the mayor of Aurora and offered his condolences and he went on television to speak on this tragedy. Those are about the only things he can do right away other than asking the FBI and ATF nicely to send some agents to the scene to help with things. You can try to figure things like this out, but I gave up trying to make sense of things like this after 9/11/2001. Back then I learned that anyone can do anything just because of something they read or heard flips a switch in their head, and they go off the deep end and start planning something like this, and then execute it. What can us as comic book fans do to help make not all comic book fans look like we like stories of gun toting vigilantes. The first and simplest thing you can do is do something to help in this situation. You could donate time, money, blood or all three to the Red Cross. You can go through the screening process to work at a victim of violence charity. These two things show people that you are a comic book fan and care about your fellow human beings. Second, we can get on our blogs and web sites and write about the positive stories that comic books tell. Not just the one that the press is going to focus on in Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. I went to my local comic book store the day after this happened and there just seemed to be a pall hanging over the place. They are on the opposite corner of a movie theater showing Dark Knight Returns so maybe that had a little to do with the atmosphere in the store. Everything should be back to normal by next week hopefully and that this has not hurt his business. Third you could go and buy something extra from the local comic book store, if you have one in your area. This shows that you care about the business that the owner runs and also that you are not scared of what might happen in the comics you buy. Fourth and final, talk to your kids; little ones, tweens and teens about what happened. Be frank, but not to frank with them. You may want to explain to the little ones that what happened at the movie theater was something that was scary, and talk to them about their concerns. For the tweens and teens, they may be scared as well, but not tell you they are scared. You may suggest that you all go to the movie and they will be firm in their resolve in not going, or may want to go by themselves. As the adult you can tag along. The teens may not like it, but I think it would give both the adults and teens a sense of security. All I have to say to the movie theater chains out there that are considering adding extra security measures to their theaters, don't. If you install metal detectors and X-Ray machines at your theaters then you might as well kiss any of the business you have goodbye. People are not going to go through the hassle of going through a metal detector and having their things X-Rayed just for a movie we have already paid for. Sure we put up with it at the likes of the airport and at some government buildings, because those places need to be secure. All that extra security is also going to drive up the price of tickets and we already pay enough as movie goers to spend two hours in a theater paying an already obscene amount of money for popcorn and a soda to have with our movie. You can hire an off duty Police Officer or two to help with security, but don't go to an extreme where people are not going to go any more. I know I felt secure at the local theater house I go to when I went to see The Avengers back in June.
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