Hmm. Regular friends of the decanter will recall that last Friday I posted a rayther lengthy piece based on a comment reportedly made by the crazed Colorado gunman’s mother when she was first contacted by the press. For those of you too lazy to click back through and read it, she had said something to the reporters along the line of “Yes, you’ve got the right person”, the implication being that she wasn’t surprised at her son’s alleged involvement in the slaughter.
Well, now the family is saying that the press took the mother’s remark the wrong way:
An attorney representing the family of James Holmes, the man accused in Friday’s mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater, on Monday said his mother’s initial comment to ABC News on the morning of the shooting has been misconstrued.
Reading a statement she attributed to Arlene Holmes, San Diego-based attorney Lisa Damiani said Arlene Holmes’ comment “You have the right person” to an ABC reporter referred to herself, not James Holmes as some media have suggested.
As I said at the time, I simply didn’t know what to believe. I still don’t. This could be an instant of the lawyers doing some damage control. On the other hand, the press really could have misinterpreted. I’ve been part of several investigations and lawsuits in which the press have taken an interest, and I must say that their ability to get things flat wrong must never be underestimated.
(The post itself still stands, since it was about social doctrine, not the ins and outs of this situation.)
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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July 24, 2012 at 2:04 am
mothe
Is it being suggested by the lawyer that Holmes’ mother meant that she was ‘the right person’–as in, ‘yes I am the other of James Holmes?’ Rather an odd way of putting it?
Otherwise, it seems to me that he is almost a textbook schizophrenic–usually such persons are very intelligent and suffer their first breakdown in adolescence or early adulthood. Very often the family knows that there is something terribly wrong, but since the abolition of involuntary committal to psychiatric hospitals, back in the enlightened 70’s, there is nothing they can do about it. In fact they are frequently quite afraid of the family member themselves. How very sad if this should prove to be the situation here. So man people are ready to sound the gun control mantra, but how many make the connection to the fact that there are many seriously mentally ill people at large–on the streets–with no way of getting any treatment, which they refuse to seek for themselves, as part of their illness.
And no, I do not think there is any reason why civilians need to have semi-automatic weapons, any more than they ever needed sawed-off shotguns, which are illegal. But maybe the real problem is not being addressed.
July 24, 2012 at 2:05 am
mothe
typo–‘…the Mother of…’