2010s In The United States

"The three types of weapons used by the man accused of killing 12 people in a Colorado movie theater — a semiautomatic variation of the military’s M-16 rifle, a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun and at least one .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol — are among the most popular guns available in the multibillion-dollar American firearms market...It appears, the police say, that James E. Holmes, the man accused in the Aurora shootings, used all three types of weapons inside the theater as well, first firing the shotgun, then using the semiautomatic rifle until its 100-round barrel magazine jammed, and finishing off with a pistol. ...much of the public and political attention has been focused on the potential deadliness of the semiautomatic rifle, which law enforcement officials identified as a Smith & Wesson M&P15. The rifle belongs to a class of weapons broadly known as AR-15s, after the original civilian version of the rifle.... The M&P15 also comes in a variety of models that fire different sizes of ammunition, from .22-caliber to .30-caliber rounds. The rifle used in Aurora fired .223-caliber ammunition, law enforcement officials said. Those rounds — similar to the ammunition used in American M-16 and M-4 rifles — are smaller than the rounds fired by Afghan insurgents wielding Kalashnikov rifles, but pack far more power than .22-caliber rounds, even though they are only a hair’s-width larger in circumference."

"The defunct Federal Assault Weapons Ban limited most clip sizes to 10 rounds; police say the theater shooter had a .223-caliber Smith & Wesson AR-15 assault-style rifle with a drum clip that could hold up to 100 rounds and shoot as many as 60 times in a minute."

"Even as we come to learn how this happened and who's responsible, we may never understand what leads anyone to terrorize their fellow human beings. Such evil is senseless – beyond reason. But while we will never know fully what causes someone to take the life of another, we do know what makes that life worth living...The people we lost in Aurora loved, and were loved. They were mothers and fathers; husbands and wives; sisters and brothers; sons and daughters; friends and neighbors. They had hopes for the future and dreams that were not yet fulfilled. And if there's anything to take away from this tragedy, it's a reminder that life is fragile. Our time here is limited and it is precious. And what matters in the end are not the small and trivial things which often consume our lives. It's how we choose to treat one another, and love one another. It's what we do on a daily basis to give our lives meaning and to give our lives purpose. That's what matters. That's why we're here."

"In America today—where virtually anyone with a credit card and a grudge can outfit their own personal army—mass shootings are as predictable as they are tragic. Just as predictably, those who celebrate this lethal shift—the NRA and its gun industry partners remain mute when families and communities suffer the consequences. And when attention fades, they'll once again resume their lethal trade, unless we stand together as Americans to stop them."

"The bullets it fires are larger. They put bigger holes in things."

"Certain guns have a reputation of being especially deadly. They would be the weapons of choice. Contrary to popular belief that these are guys who go berserk, they tend to be well-planned executions. They plan what they are going to wear and what weapons to bring."

"Virginia Tech. Gabby Giffords. Now Aurora, Colo. The names and places are linked by tragedy, death and the Glock semiautomatic handgun. The young men who carried out these mass shootings — and analysis says such killers are almost always male and most often young — all counted at least one of these versatile, easy-to-fire pistols in their arsenals.... Like other mass shootings, Friday’s attack sparked calls for more gun control."

"The four weapons that authorities say were used in the massacre at a Colorado theater showing of the latest Batman movie included a popular semiautomatic rifle, a .223-caliber assault-style rifle with a 100-round drum magazine. The suspect also had two .40-caliber Glock handguns and a 12-gauge Remington Model 870 pump shotgun. In the past 60 days, police said, Holmes bought more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition, at gun shops and over the Internet, including: * 3,000 rounds of .223-caliber ammunition for the rifle. It was described as an AR-15-type weapon built by Smith and Wesson. * 3,000 rounds of .40-caliber ammunition for the Glock handguns. * 300 rounds for the shotgun.... Officials told NBC News that all four were purchased legally, beginning in May, from two national chain stores: Gander Mountain Guns and Bass Pro Shops."

"The truth is made worse by the reality that no one--really no one--anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to speak out about the madness of unleashed guns and what they do to American life.... The reality is simple: every country struggles with madmen and ideologues with guns, and every country--Canada, Norway, Britain--has had a gun massacre once, or twice. Then people act to stop them, and they do--as over the past few years has happened in Australia. Only in America are gun massacres of this kind routine, expectable, and certain to continue."

"James Holmes purchased a Smith and Wesson .223 semi-automatic rifle at Gander Mountain gun store in Thornton, Colo., according to the law enforcement source. He also bought a .40 caliber Glock pistol at Gander Mountain gun store in Aurora, Colo. Another .40 caliber Glock handgun and a Remington 870 shotgun were purchased at Bass Pro Shops in Denver, Colo."

"JULY 20, 2012 James E. Holmes, 24, killed 12 people and wounded 70 at a theater in Aurora, Colo., using a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle, a Remington shotgun and a Glock .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol. MARCH 2012 Over four months, Mr. Holmes legally bought more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition for handguns, 3,000 rounds for a semiautomatic rifle and 350 shells for a 12-gauge shotgun, all over the Internet. MAY 2012 He was seeing a psychiatrist and in the process of withdrawing from a graduate program at the University of Colorado Denver’s Anschutz Medical Campus. MAY 2012 In the 60 days before the shooting, he bought four guns legally at local gun shops. Seeing a psychiatrist, even for a serious mental illness, would not disqualify him from buying a gun. JULY 20, 2012 He opened fire in the theater, killing 12 people."

"Americans who know nothing else about firearms are all too familiar with the name AR-15. It’s the semi-automatic weapon that murderers have used in many of the most notorious and highest-casualty gun killings of recent years: Aurora, Colorado. Newtown, Connecticut. Orlando, Florida. San Bernardino, California. Now, with modified versions, in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Sutherland Springs, Texas...A little bullet pays off so much in wound ballistics. That is what people who choose these weapons know."

"The AR-15 is America’s most popular rifle. It has also been the weapon of choice in mass shootings from Sandy Hook to Aurora to San Bernardino."

"On July 20, 2012, a mass murderer killed 12 and wounded 58 others at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., using a Smith & Wesson M&P15. On Dec. 12, 2012, another mass murderer killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., using his mother's Bushmaster XM15-E2S. The letter and number suffixes belie a simple truth -- the guts of both guns look just like an M-16 or, as it is known for civilian use, an AR-15. OK, the M-16 can fire in fully automatic mode but otherwise, the same. In Orlando just this month, it was a similar type of semiautomatic assault weapon, a Sig Sauer MCX, that helped claim 49 lives."

"It was used to slaughter first graders at Sandy Hook, murder Batman fans at Colorado movie theater, kill county workers at a holiday party in San Bernardino. Now a descendant of the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle — a Sig Sauer MCX — has the dubious distinction of being the weapon of choice for a homosexual-hating gunman named Omar Mateen who is being blamed for the worst single-day mass shooting in U.S. history."

"What do James Holmes, Adam Lanza, and Omar Mateen have in common? Besides being the perpetrators of three of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, they all share a preference for the AR-15 assault rifle. The AR-15 assault rifle was used at the Aurora, Colo. shooting, the Newtown, Conn. shooting, and now the mass shooting in Orlando, Fla. that killed 50 and is officially the deadliest such massacre in U.S. history...While Colt alone makes the official AR-15, variants and knock-offs are made by a huge number of gun manufactures, including Bushmaster, Les Baer, Remington, Smith & Wesson (swhc, +0.00%), and Sturm & Ruger (rgr, -2.04%), just to name a few. TacticalRetailer claims that from 2000 to 2015 the AR manufacturing sector expanded from 29 AR makers to about 500, “a stunning 1,700% increase.”"

"In recent years, the AR-15 has become, simultaneously, one of most beloved and most vilified rifles in the country. It is no surprise why the gun is so reviled by gun control advocates. Omar Mateen, the gunman in the attack this weekend on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., used a spinoff of the rifle produced by SIG Sauer to kill nearly 50 people. The military-style weapon has also been the gun of choice in several other mass shootings: at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.; at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.; at a holiday party for county health workers in San Bernardino, Calif.; and at the campus of Umpqua Community College in Oregon."

"The Shooter Had a Powerful Rifle and High-Capacity Magazines The gunman was armed with an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle and a 9 millimeter handgun, Chief Mina said. AR-15s, which were first developed for the military and used extensively in the Vietnam War, are widely owned by assault-rifle enthusiasts. The rifle, which can rapidly fire multiple high-velocity rounds, has been used in a number of mass shootings, including those in Aurora, Colo.; Newtown, Conn.; and San Bernardino, Calif."

"The laws, passed in the wake of the Aurora theater shooting in July 2012 and the Newtown shooting in Connecticut in December 2012, went into effect during the summer of 2013. They included expanding background checks to cover more purchases and limiting new gun magazines to 15 or fewer rounds."

"Shooting: Movie theater in Aurora, Colorado Date: July 20, 2012 Perpetrator: James E. Holmes Guns: Holmes used a semiautomatic Smith & Wesson M&P15 (a variation on the military’s M16 weapons), a 12-gauge Remington 870 shotgun, and a semiautomatic .40-caliber Glock 22, killing 12 and injuring 70. The New York Times reports that these three guns are some of the most popular in the U.S.—so widely used, in fact, that a “three-gun competition” has been established to test gun enthusiasts’ proficiency on each in a target-shooting game of speed. How he got them: All three guns were purchased legally in 2012 between May 22 and July 6 at three different Colorado gun stores."

"As the community mourned, attention turned to what lawmakers could do to prevent future instances of gun violence. In a highly contentious debate, the Democrat-controlled legislature passed a series of bills in 2013 to tighten the state’s gun laws. Among them were a measure to require universal background checks in order to prevent buyers from skirting background checks by purchasing weapons from private sellers online, for instance, and a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds, like those used in Columbine and Aurora. Two awful tragedies were enough to to galvanize lawmakers."

"For 25 minutes Thursday morning during the murder trial of James Holmes in Centennial, Colorado, jurors passed the mountain of evidence gathered from the theater from person to person. Among the items they handled were two Glock handguns, a Smith and Wesson M&P15 rifle, magazines and ammunition, tactical body armor, two knives, a trio of gas masks, a Taser, and even the pink flip flops of one of the victims."

"In May 2012, Holmes purchased a Glock 22, then bought the shotgun days later. After failing his oral exam, he bought a Smith & Wesson M&P15 semiautomatic rifle and a second Glock in July. He also purchased 3,000 rounds of ammunition for the pistols, 3,000 rounds for the M&P15, and 350 shells for the shotgun over the Internet, police have said."

"A bullet leaves the barrel of a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 traveling at 3,000 feet per second, covering the space of a large room seven times faster than a human can react. Five spiraling grooves inside the rifle’s barrel spin the bullet clockwise to improve accuracy. And, when the bullet strikes a person, it causes what Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Dale Higashi on Wednesday called a “snowstorm effect,” breaking into hundreds of little flakes. “The damage it causes to the target, the damage it causes to the bullet itself, is dramatic,” Higashi said. On Tuesday and Wednesday, testimony in Arapahoe County District Court told the microscopic story of the Aurora movie theater shooting. Three evidence analysts described in tedious detail their scientific analysis of bullet fragments, pieces of metal and gunshot-residue swabs. On Wednesday, Higashi testified that, out of the 150 bullets, shell casings and fragments he looked at, all of the items he could trace linked back to one of three guns — including the Smith & Wesson rifle — investigators say James Holmes used inside the theater in July 2012."

"America's most popular rifle, the AR-15 is at the center of the debate on gun control raging through the United States. As the smoke clears from a shooting at Los Angeles International Airport this morning, there appears to be a familiar rifle laying on the ground by the feet of officers and first responders — an AR-15. Los Angeles' ABC News affiliate confirms that the weapon was indeed an AR-15, and images of the scene indicate that, as well. It was also the weapon of choice for James Holmes in Aurora, Colo., and Adam Lanza in Newtown, Conn."

"September 2011 shattered the ideology of an invincible Wall Street much as September 2001 shattered the illusion of an invulnerable United States. All of a sudden and seemingly out of the blue, people outraged by the fact that "banks got bailed out" and "we got sold out" installed themselves in the financial heart of New York City. Occupying the symbol of capitalist class power, they ruptured it. The ostensible controllers of the global capitalist system, still reeling from the crash of 2008, appeared to have lost control over their own cement neighborhood. Hippies with tents and cops with barricades had turned Lower Manhattan into a chaotic mess. Those seeking to combine the people's work, debts, hopes, and futures into speculative instruments for private profit confronted a visible and actual collective counterforce. There in the power of the people where investment banks and hedge funds had already identified an enormous social surplus, a cadre of the newly active located an inexhaustible political potential. It was like a giant hole had been opened up in the steel and glass citadel of the financial class. Through it, traders, brokers, and market-makers – as well as everybody else – could see the possibility of a world without capitalism. Wall Street was occupied."

"Ordinary people reclaiming rights which should always have been theirs. I can't think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it – they've certainly not been punished in any way because they're too big to fail. I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who's too big to fail. As an anarchist, I believe that power should be given to the people whose lives this is actually affecting."

"among the many inequities in a society are the ones that this protest has brought to light, the inequitable distribution of wealth and power. But what is not so generally realized, that this society also makes people sick. Fifty percent of American adults have a chronic medical illness, and much of that has to do with stress. And if you look at the literature on what causes stress, it’s uncertainty and lack of information and loss of control and lack of expression of self. And the uncertainty that has been forced upon the American population by the recent economic crisis, the loss of control as power has flown into the hands of very, very few people, and the absolute powerlessness of the many in the face of all that, and the lack of expression through the ordinary political process, people are totally disempowered and deprived of their voice. This protest addresses all those issues. So I can only say that this is an extraordinarily healthy thing to happen. People who participate here will be healthier for it as a result, and maybe society, in general, as well. And one more thing, as well. There was a study just this morning that parents who are stressed, they’re not as tuned in to their kids. They’re not as connected to their kids. So when society stresses people, like the current economic uncertainty and crisis does, children are not getting what they need. So this protest, as well, speaks to the needs of children as much as to the needs of adults in general. So that’s why I’m so gratified to see all this."

"Occupy is a real place for people to talk, to blossom. How beautiful, how exciting!...I’m excited some people of color are participating, but we should be the majority. Occupy should be led by people of color. We’re the ones suffering from unemployment, from the recession, and from banks being bailed out."

"Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens. Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families. This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage."

"The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is. Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland."

"It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent."

"The Occupy Wall Street movement was not only about battling back against the rise of a corporate oligarchy. It was also about out right to peaceful protest. The police in cities across the country were deployed to short-circuit this right. I watched New York City police during the Occupy protests yank people from sidewalks into the street, where they would be arrested. I saw police routinely shove protesters and beat them with batons. I saw activists slammed against police cars. I saw groups of protesters suddenly herded like sheep to be confined within police barricades. I saw, and was caught up in, mass arrests in which those around me were handcuffed and then thrown violently onto the sidewalk. The police often blasted pepper spray into faces from inches away, temporarily blinding the victims."

"When I asked Amin [Husain] and Katie [Davison] what Occupy Wall Street’s ultimate goal was, they said, “A government accountable to the people, freed up from corporate influence.” … Organizers described Occupy Wall Street as “a way of being,” of “sharing your life together in assembly.” … The ambitions of the core group of activists were more cultural than political, in the sense that they sought to influence the way people think about their lives. “Ours is a transformational movement,” Amin told me with a solemn air. Transformation had to occur face to face; what it offered, especially to the young, was an antidote to the empty gaze of the screen."

"I stood on the corner, too, with my sign saying I'm one of the 99 percent. I am [laughs] because I'm an American, too. But I have a different history, a whole different history. When you talk about Occupy, that's one of the reasons there was not a whole bunch of Indians who stood on the corners with us because we have a different definition than what Occupy means. We have a different definition of what dispossession really is. We have never bought into this of our free will anyway. Our relatives were not Christians when they were born. They didn't speak English when they were born. They weren't Americans when they were born. They became that because they had to. That's really different from anything you could say about an immigrant settler society."

"The Democratic Party loves mob uprisings. It's their path to power. And, you know, they always assume the mob leaders will remain mob leaders, and not end up like Maximilien Robespierre, beheaded a couple years after the revolution began. That is often the way the revolutions go."

"I went to the first day of Occupy, and then I went away for a few days, and when I came back, it had formed into a mini-city, with like a kitchen and a library and a place that gave out free clothing, and they had veterinarians, and the infrastructure of it was amazing. And that was the first thing that hit me. And the second thing was, this is for everyone — it was the first time where I felt like, this was a political space that I could stand in."

"I think the influence of Occupy will continue even though the encampment could only exist for a very defined period of time. One can see the influence of Occupy in the Ferguson demonstrations now, in the sense that they recognize that it's not only about demanding that this one individual cop be convicted, but it's also about recognizing the connection between racist violence and the profit machine. That's what we're fighting against."

"This is why the Occupy movement erupted as it did: it was an indication that we need to find a new vocabulary talk about capitalism publicly. It is now possible to talk about, to criticize capitalism in a way that may not have been possible even five years ago."

"The corporate media came late to Occupy Wall Street, offered superficial, often derogatory coverage, and, with a few exceptions, still haven't gotten it right...At the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement is the critique that wealth and opportunity are not equitably distributed, and our media system, largely controlled by corporations, contributes to that status quo."

"The Occupy movement may have burned out, but it injected economic inequality into the American political debate."

"For Native people, we begin asking questions like, "What do you mean 'the 99 percent' is dispossessed? What do you mean when you say 'occupy'? Isn't this land already occupied?" These are very contentious terms. For Native people, it obscures the real history that this capitalist democracy has always been a failure, if not premised on our death."

"The banks have said, leave us deregulated, we know how to run things, don't put government in to meddle. Then with that freedom of maneuver they took huge gambles, and even made illegal actions, and then broke the world system. As soon as that happened then they rushed out to say 'bail us out, bail us out, if you don't bail us out, we're too big to fail, you have to save us'. As soon as that happened, they said 'oh, don't regulate us, we know what to do'. And... the public is standing there, amazed, because we just bailed you out how can you be paying yourself billions of dollars of bonuses again? And the bankers say, 'well we deserve it, what's your problem'? And the problem that the Occupy Wall Street and other protesters have is: you don't deserve it, you nearly broke the system, you gamed the economy, you're paying mega fines, yet you're still in the White House you're going to the state dinners, you're paying yourself huge bonuses, what kind of system is this?"

"The occupation was always about values, it was about reconfiguring the relationship between people and profit so that people are privileged instead of profit. There's a natural affinity between those values and struggles over housing and land."

"In response to the federal government's "bailout" betrayal of its citizens, the Occupy Movement and its slogan of "we are the 99%" spilled onto Wall Street and onto the Main Streets of this country, spreading the dirtiest five-letter word in "America": C-L-A-S-S. The Emperor's nakedness had been revealed: the United States is a class-based society, with an absolutely unconscionable unequal distribution of wealth and resources upheld by our government. For that revelation alone, in that it inspired a critical view of class inequity in this country, I am beholden to the Occupy movement, misnomered as it is. Although women of color and workingclass people were not represented there in large numbers, these activists, of some social privilege, publicly (and en masse) acknowledged that they were being bamboozled by their own government. Just like us. This is what the "Occupy" movement proffered, the possibility of a one day aligned oppositional movement."