Aurora shooting: Obama to visit victims' families in Colorado

GlobalPost

President Obama will be going to Aurora, Colorado today to visit with victims and their families after Friday's mass shooting at a movie theater outside Denver.

“We may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings like this,” Obama said in Florida, during an address in Fort Meyers, shortly after learning about the event. “Such violence, such evil is senseless. It’s beyond reason. But while we will never know fully what causes somebody to take the life of another, we do know what makes life worth living. The people we lost in Aurora loved, and they were loved.”

Obama will continue on from Colorado to a previously scheduled three-day campaign swing in Reno, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Seattle and then New Orleans, the Washington Post reported. This is the third time that Obama has visited a city after a mass shooting

In November 2009, he spoke in Texas at the memorial service for 13 service members who were killed by a fellow soldier in Fort Hood, Texas.

In January 2011, he delivered an address in Tuscon after Jared Loughner killed six people and wounded 13 others, including then-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, outside a grocery store.

The shooting, which took place at a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises," claimed 12 lives and left 50 people wounded. It is the largest mass shooting in American history, the Washinton Post reported.

The shooter, James Holmes, was taken into custody in a parking lot behind the movie theater on Friday. He warned police that his apartment contained explosives, but since then is said to have stopped cooperating with authorities. He also reportedly calls himself "the Joker." Authorities say that have found no evidence of links to organized terror groups.

According to the Chicago Tribune, deliveries received by Holmes indicate that there hmay have been months of "calculation and deliberation" leading to the shooting rampage.

Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates discussed the shipments after federal and local authorities disarmed Holmes' apartment, which was found booby-traped with explosive devices.

"We've become aware that the suspect over the last four months received a high volume of deliveries to both his work and home addresses," Oates said. "This begins to explain how he got his hands on all the magazines and ammunition.

"We also think it begins to explain some of the materials he had in his apartment," Oates said. "What we're seeing here is evidence of some calculation and deliberation."

According to the Denver Post, Holmes' was equipped with enough ammo to kill a small town. However, according to authorities say that the four guns found in his apartment — a assault-style refile, shotgun, and two pistols — were all legal and unremarkable for Colorado. 

Little has surfaced from Holmes's past to suggest he was capable of such violence, the Chicago Tribune reported.

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