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user-inactivated  ·  3178 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Regal Cinemas announces bag checking policy before admission due to recent shootings

This wouldn't have prevented Aurora whatsoever. The shooter bought a ticket, sat in the front row, waited for the theatre to fill up, and then left through the exit door. He parked by the door that he had propped open, and re-entered armed and wearing protective equipment. How does this stop that?

A much better system would be to simply alarm the emergency exit doors so that the shooter wouldn't have the time to do all this incognito. It would also draw the authorities to the door to check out what's going on. That would be an actual solution to this problem.

Instead you get bag checks at the theatre. And what happens when someone brings a big scary black gun to the check-in booth and opens fire there instead of in the theatre? Or someone gets a job there and sets up a pipe bomb themselves in one of the seats? It's not like there's a background check to sling popcorn at the theatre. And even if there was, most people would pass it even if they have terrorist intentions.

This kind of crap has got to stop. It's inconvenience in the name of safety with no payoff. We have already seen the lengths to which shooters and terrorists are willing to go to get what they want. It is simply impossible to prevent everything terrible from happening forever, and I don't want to live in a world of false security where my bag gets checked everywhere I go. I'm sick of it already.

We just continue to give authority figures more and more power, and then we're shocked when they abuse it. In the 60s cops didn't have automatic weapons and tanks until they 'needed' the SWAT team to stop bank robbers. Then they needed helicopters, Camaros, and sport bikes to catch speeders. Now we regret that they use force when we were the ones that gave them so much to use. When are we going to learn that authority is not there to serve you after a certain point?

I will not go to a movie theatre where they check my bag. I don't want to go to the movies that bad.