I clicked a link on Twitter that took me to the BBC website where they were showing the
the first court appearance of Aurora shooter James Holmes practically live. It felt wrong that they were broadcasting this and wrong to be watching it and yet I found it impossible not to watch it. Some people were suggesting that if mass shootings happen again that the name of the perpetrator should never be revealed to stop them doing it to become "famous", but noble as that idea is, human beings are fascinated by this stuff and want to know all about it, even if, as is the case with me, they find the whole thing appalling. You can't help but want to look at him to see if there is any clue as to why he would do something like this and rip so many people's lives apart and needlessly so. He had attacked the least offensive people in the world, nerds so it feels a bit like he attacked me. In fact a
comedian was amongst the seriously injured - the story is heart-breaking on every single level. As a comedian I felt I had to donate some money to him and his family. I hope other comedians will feel the same. And I hate myself for being drawn into it and wanting to find out answers, even though I'd say there are no real answers out there. Not rational or logical ones.
But this is quite an unusual case in that the gunman didn't end up dying himself - he now has to live with the consequences of what he's done, even if, as I suspect, he is not of fit enough mind to understand any of it.
Holmes looked exhausted, maybe shocked and confused, but mainly detached from the world and reality. He seemed pathetic and harmless, like Stan Laurel mixed with Screech from Saved By The Bell. This would be comic if it wasn't real. But it's just gruesome and gut-wrenching, but impossible to turn away from. The mundanity and matter-of-factness and calm of these court proceedings made the juxtaposition with the crime all the more affecting.
This wasn't like the Norwegian gunman, full of psychopathic swagger and nor were we confronted by a supervillain Joker (as Holmes supposedly claimed to be), this was, I would assume, a disturbed and broken young man with no more idea of why he did this than you or I have. I felt sorry for him and sick at myself for observing this thing that shouldn't really have been streamed on the internet.
Everything about this, including my own involvement in observing it and my own speculations about what had happened, shows a sickness in our world. It's astounding that we are allowed to see this, it's astounding that Americans can buy automatic weapons and loads of ammunition without setting off an alarm of any kind, it's astounding that (according to Twitter at least) that the reaction in America is to ban costumes from screenings of Batman, rather than to really question gun laws - the costume element played little to no part in the event, other than giving Holmes maybe one or two seconds of people assuming it was a prank - something that I would argue would not be afforded to any copycat. Enough people are effectively arguing the ridiculous idea that the right to bear arms shouldn't really include mass killing machines that there's no need for me to add anything, but I can see no situation outside of alien invasion where anyone other than the army would need this kind of weapon.
Nothing's going to change though is it? If the pointless murder of school children doesn't make people change their minds on this, then the pointless murder of some Batman nerds isn't going to make any difference either. But also we're never going to be grown up enough as a species to not find this kind of thing fascinating and so the kinds of individuals who are drawn to the idea of becoming notorious or furthering an agenda through violence or who just become detached from reality and think the rest of humanity are zombies or aliens or whatever are going to carry on seeing this as an outlet for their ambitions.
Making it harder to get guns would surely help a little bit, you'd think. But we're all in this to some degree and as with most issues have to confront the unpleasantness in ourselves as much as everyone else.
I didn't like watching, but I kept watching. To see if I could see into his soul, almost as intrigued as I was appalled. No one comes out of this well. Not him, us or the government that allows guns and expects an uninsured man shot in the face to pay his own medical bills.
