Aurora Truther arrested for harassing families

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD/Salon

Police in Portland, Oregon arrested a native of the state yesterday on charges that he has been harassing family members of some of those killed in the Aurora, Colorado shooting. “In the beginning it was this conspiracy theory stuff,” Aurora police spokesman Frank Fania said, “then it went away from the conspiracy theory into personally attacking the families, calling them names and hoping bad things would happen to them.”

As with the Sandy Hook shooting, the Aurora massacare has attracted a host of conspiracy theories, and harassment of victims has gotten so bad that prosecutors there asked the judge toredact the names of victims in court documents to spare them the “relentless contacts by proponents of purported ‘conspiracies.’”

Kevin Michael Purfield, the 45-year-old man arrested in Portland, also posted messages on his Facebook page and blog that seemed to endorse conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the Sandy Hook shooting. Purfield was jailed in lieu of $10,000 bond and will be arraigned in court today.

Jordan Ghawi, whose sister was killed in the Aurora shooting, told Salon last month that he hadreceived death threats and constant harassment from conspiracy theorists. “Some of these people are incessant. They don’t stop,” he said.

Even some presumably credible people, like Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt, have given credence to Aurora conspiracy theories. “We have to admit that this is something that maybe our government is capable of,” Pratt told conspiracy journalist Alex Jones of the notion that government agents carried out the shooting as part of a “false flag” operation. “This was only 12 people murdered [in Colorado], they were good for 400 in Fast and Furious.”

In Newtown, theorists have stalked the town and visited the homes of those who helped victims of the shooting.

Romney Falsely Claims Colorado Gunman Obtained Weapons Illegally

By Annie-Rose Strasser/Think Progress

Mitt Romney revealed that he is unfamiliar with the details of the largest mass shooting in American history, during an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams. The former Massachusetts governor claimed that alleged gunman in the Aurora, Colorado massacare, James Holmes, illegally obtained his weapons, when in fact Holmes legally purchased the firearms through various national gun chains.

According to a transcript of an interview that will air Wednesday night on NBC Nightly News, the presidential candidate said “it was illegal for him to have many of those [weapons] already,” and suggested that stronger gun laws would not have prevented the tragedy. Instead, Romney claimed that the way to deal with such senseless violence is by “changing the heart of the American people”:

ROMNEY: Well this person shouldn’t have had any kind of weapons and bombs and other devices and it was illegal for him to have many of those things already. But he had them. And so we can sometimes hope that just changing the law will make all bad things go away. It won’t. Changing the heart of the American people may well be what’s essential, to improve the lots of the American people.

In fact, 24-year-old Holmes legally purchased every firearm, bullet, and piece of tactical gear that he used for the attack, according to local law enforcement. He bought most of it over the Internet. Mentally ill people are barred from purchasing firearms, but Holmes had no previous record of illness, and would not have been flagged in a background check.

Unfortunately, rather than addressing the inadequacies of the nation’s existing gun laws, Romney instead focused on “changing the heart of the American people” and successfully dodged the larger conversation about gun control.