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Shooting at Batman Movie in Denver

Another in what seems to be a horrific new aberration in modern society, mass shootings in schools, shopping malls, and now a movie theater. Nobody knows whether there is more to explain than crazy people emulating each other. It does seem to be a virulent strain of anti-social behavior. It shocks us repeatedly, perhaps even more than terrorist attacks in the Middle East.

One of the victims wrote movingly about an "odd feeling" that led her outside and to relative safety, just before a similar berserker shooting in a mall in Toronto. This is her blog entry.

From the Globe and Mail:

A gunman opened fire early Friday at a suburban Denver movie theatre on the opening night of the latest Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises, killing 14 people and injuring at least 50 others, authorities said.

The gunman, who is in custody, stood at the front of the theatre and fired into the crowd about 12:30 a.m. MDT at a multiplex theatre in a mall in Aurora.

Police in Aurora, Colorado say a gunman opened fire in a movie theatre during a showing of The Dark Knight Rises. Police say at least 14 people were killed, and at least 50 wounded.

“Witnesses tell us he released some sort of canister. They heard a hissing sound and some gas emerged and the gunman opened fire,” Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said at a news conference.

Police, ambulances and emergency crews swarmed on the scene after frantic calls started flooding the 911 switchboard, officials said.

Officers came running in and telling people to leave the theatre, Salina Jordan told the Denver Post. She said some police were carrying and dragging bodies.

Officers later found the gunman near a car behind the theatre.

The GCP event was set for 6 hours beginning at the time of the shooting, which was 12:30 AM local (06:30 UTC). The result is Chisquare 21932.562 on 21600.000, for p = 0.055 and Z = 1.595.

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.