Was Colorado shooter a highly intelligent student?

news.yahoo.com...
Above link is an attempt to validate my points, and will be quoted upon for the implication of my perspective.
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"AURORA, Colo. (AP) — The semiautomatic assault rifle used by the gunman in a mass shooting at a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie jammed during the attack, a federal law enforcement official told The Associated Press, which forced the shooter to switch to another gun with less fire power."

That being said, would this man really plan an attack without proper research? Your telling me that be planned to use an un-reliable weapon to inflict mass casualties? Or perhaps that rifle may have been shot before, it's quality reduced, or that the weapon wasn't properly mainained? It could have been dirty? Sorry but I don't think a smart man accused of planning an attack with "("calculation and deliberation," police said Saturday.)" would let these kind of variables have any effect on his attack. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it seem strange they can tell you the weapon jammed, but I didn't see any indication of the type of rifle he used.
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"During the attack early Friday, Holmes used the military-style semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun and a pistol to open fire on the unsuspecting theater-goers, Oates. Holmes had bought the weapons at local gun stores within the past two months. He recently purchased 6,000 rounds of ammunition over the Internet, the chief said.

Holmes also bought an urban assault vest, two magazine holders and a knife for just over $300 on July 2 from an online supplier of tactical gear for police and military personnel, according to the company."

He was armed to the teeth, with an arsenal that included a knife. The knife is a very personal, last line of defense. Obviously his last resort in case he ran out of any other means to inflict casualties before being taken out. It could also be said that he had a knife because he may have valued his life, which would not make sense, if this held value to him, would he really have done this? Why would he need a knife if he planned to just allow himself to be captured. He killed innocent people, then allowed himself to be captured? Indicating perhaps a change in persepective. The 1st change I would think is he "Gave Up" but knowing that he had innocent blood on his hands, and he was finished, his actions un reversable, why didn't he just take the easy way (suicide) out? Doesn't make sense...this man is supposed to be very smart. I believe that his arsenal only serves the purpose of "Show of Force". Showing you how easy it is to become so dangerous. Surely a means to reduce our capability to acquire any means of self defence.
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"About 8 p.m. Saturday, police left the apartment building carrying a laptop computer and a hard drive"
Why would a man who wanted to turn himself in need to booby trap his house? If a smart man like this decided to booby trap his house, what makes you think that the authorities could just walk in, and defuse everything, and recover his laptop, and hard drive. I believe they wanted to show you that he planned on destroying everything that coud be used to explain this situation, but instead they recovered his laptop and hard drive that will surely contain evidence that will be made up, distorted, twisted, and delivered unto you. And you won't suspect a thing, because the house was boobytrapped, and that he didnt want anyone to recover this "evidence".

My two pennies...

I lurk, but rarely post... mostly because I usually am not qualified to make a comment one way or the other on a given subject. But then, here we are. I am a graduate student studying marine environmental toxicology and the related cellular physiology in animals.

I doubt that this guy was anything special. There are a lot of people in these fields with fancy titles, but they are not anything exceptional. It sounds like this kid was washing out, which happens routinely, and perhaps that is what sent him over. Don't know.

The classes you take as an undergrad, while having clever names like "Abonromal human psychology and the associated physiological mechanisms and consequences", do not qualify you as a professional in the sciences. Usually, those classes just give broad pictures of what is available within the greater research literature. I could be wrong, but I am guessing he was not a particularly profound researcher.

The chips you mention, I am assuming, are genechips. There is nothing nefarious about gene chips. I encourage you to learn more about them if you want, but that is beyond the scope of this post (they are actually pretty awesome tools). Gene chips allow a researcher to tell which genes are being expressed, and in what quantities. They are not some crazy evil science experiment with an ulterior motive. Most molecular based bio labs deal with gene chips at some point.

Many scientists are German (as well as Russian, Indian, Chinese, US, etc... ). I will try to explain the miRNA in several sentences (not enough, but will hopefully put your mind at ease). miRNA is short (~25 bases in length) strands of RNA which are constantly being made, destroyed and recycled. While nearly nothing was known about them as recently as ten years ago, they are thought to play an incredibly important (if not the most important) role in managing the cellular response to changes within the cellular environment. Since they are ubiquitous, we can look at their levels within a cell at different points of an experiment to see how their levels change in response to stimuli of one sort or another. Ultimately, they could be used to diagnose and perhaps treat various ailments as well as provide a much more complete understanding of cellular biology. I am not saying that it is impossible to somehow manage miRNA levels in a nefarious way (I am not even sure how that might work), but many, many research labs are now using them as a way to monitor the intracellular response to extracellular stimuli.

I am a pretty big believer of a number of conspiracies (how and why I ended up here on ATS), but not everything is a conspiracy. I think this is just some kid that was either never right, or ended up not right, and did something terrible for reasons unknown. This might play into a gun control agenda, one way or the other, but I doubt that this kid has anything to do with that. Grad school in a research field is incredibly demanding and causes a huge amount of emotional, intellectual and personal stress (one reason that I will be leaving the field as soon as I get my degree ). I would not be surprised if that was the cause of his breaking.

I would be happy to try to answer any technical questions about research that anyone might have, since what we do can be difficult for non-researchers to understand.

reply to post by KringleFantastico


Damn dude,95% of what you posted went wayyy over my head

reply to post by Juggernog


I'm sorry man. I was trying to do the exact opposite. The gist is this, and that is there is nothing evil or bad about his research on the face of it. The tools, field of study and techniques that he has been reported as using are common in biological research. Just because something has a fancy name or someone has a fancy title does not mean that it is anything special or to be worried about. If there is any one thing that you would like for me to try to explain, let me know and I will give it a shot.

reply to post by Tholidor


Thank you for putting together a well structured thread with links and evidence to support your ideas. I like reading about people's conspiracy theories, including this one, but only when they actually make sense. Some people on here start threads with some hyped up title, no info in the OP besides their own delusional rantings, and somehow it makes the front page. Sigh..

reply to post by benrl


I found a very interesting pastebin link, with sources. The OP may be onto to something.

James Robert Holmes DARPA CIA neuroscience HNC Software

reply to post by cenpuppie


Robert Holmes brief bio at linked in states the following: “My educational background is in Mathematics and Statistics. My experience over the last 10 years at HNC and FICO has been in developing predictive models for financial services; credit & fraud risk models, first and third party application fraud models and internet/online banking fraud models.”

Management Experience: I am currently managing a team building Falcon Fraud Manager Credit card fraud models. I have also managed teams in the Telco and Identity Theft fraud areas.”

How interesting and coincidental is it that in the film The Dark Knight Rises Bane gets his hands on Software that is used to expose the fraud in Wall Street and literally guts the rich?

If the kid didn't plan the attack out himself then why isn't he more adamant in court about his innocence. I feel like he would say something, instead of sitting quietly.