Aurora Theater Should Have Predicted Mass Shooting, Judge Rules

The 2012 mass shooting in a movie theater in
Aurora, Colorado, was “foreseeable,” a federal judge ruled last
week. That decision came out of an attempt by the theater’s owner
to demonstrate otherwise, thus ensuring that lawsuits brought forth
by the attacker’s victims would be dismissed. But according to

The Denver Post:

The owner of the Aurora movie theater that was the site of a
deadly 2012 attack could have reasonably enough foreseen the danger
of such an attack to be held liable for it, a federal judge
ruled Friday.

Noting “the grim history of mass shootings and mass killings
that have occurred in more recent times,” U.S. District Court Judge
R. Brooke Jackson ruled that Cinemark — owner of the Century Aurora
16 theater — could have predicted that movie patrons might be
targeted for an attack. Jackson’s ruling allows 20 lawsuits filed
by survivors of the attack or relatives of those killed to proceed
toward trial.

“Although theaters had theretofore been spared a mass shooting
incident, the patrons of a movie theater are, perhaps even more
than students in a school or shoppers in a mall, ‘sitting ducks,’ ”
Jackson wrote.

The judge seems to be saying that because we do not live in a
perfect world, free of all violence, all businesses open to the
public should be constantly on guard against psychopathic killers.
Even though, as Scott Greenfield points out at his
blog Simple
Justice, “Perhaps the defining feature of crazy people is
that they’re unpredictable.” But predict them businesses must, said
Judge Jackson. Which means, as Greenfield notes, this ruling could
have far-reaching consequences:

The biggest growth job in America will be armed guard. Every
theater will require its own SWAT team, perhaps a MRAP or
Bearcat.  Office buildings, parks, skating rinks, pretty much
anywhere more than three people gather, could be the next target of
a madman. They will all need security, armed with the weapons
needed to take out any crazy.

Don’t blame the businesses. They’re just trying to cover their
foreseeable obligations.  Sure, there is almost no chance,
almost no possibility whatsoever, that they will be the target of
the next insane shooter, but Judge Jackson says it’s still
foreseeable.  In fact, that no one has ever shot up a skating
rink makes it even more foreseeable, by his rationale.

That’s a rationale that’s not rational. While the ruling does
not decide any of the lawsuits, it does establish that they can
proceed. In doing so, it endorses what I call “worst-first
thinking”—dreaming up the worst case scenario first (“What if
someone comes in and shoots up our book club?”) and proceeding as
if it’s likely to happen.

Worst-first thinking promotes constant panic. The word for that
isn’t prudence. It’s paranoia.