The Aurora Shooter had an accomplice, and the police refused to investigate it!

February, 2013.

One conspiracy theory blogger thinks that James Holmes, the mass murderer responsible for the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, didn't act alone.

First, the author evokes the other Aurora conspiracy theory about the gunman actually being part of a government plot to push forward a gun control agenda:

While the grander conspiracy theory behind the Aurora shooting entails a staged Manchurian Candidate-like attack with a government endgame of gun control, this post will focus on more direct evidence that contravenes the official lone-wolf narrative, in an attempt to support the probability that Holmes did not act alone.

Like so many conspiracy theorists, the author basically pieces together a hodgepodge of heresay to build the case of an accomplice.  In our modern age of information, we have the ability to see violent events happening almost as soon as the shots are fired, with tweets and live news coverage, 911 calls, and police radio, the chaos of the moment is captured and disseminated, with all the confusion that accompanies it, with no filter whatsoever.  

In a dark theater, during an action movie, with shots fired and tear gas cannisters, naturally some witnesses are going to get disoriented about where the shots are coming from, and memories become clouded by the confusion.  The author basically says as much, but then dismisses it entirely:

Studies have shown that witnesses to a crime aren’t always reliable because of distortions in human perception caused by various biases and stressors. It's the "fog of war"—what one person thinks they saw is not always what was actually there. Moreover, even the most compelling eyewitness testimony can’t always prove that something did or didn’t happen. 

But in the absence of more objective, undeniable evidence, it sure can paint a convincing picture.

and then suggests that, maybe, other witnesses actually saw another shooter, but then simply were never interviewed by police or spoke out.  Uh huh.

And when the police arrive, there is confusion on their part, too, as they try to identify suspects, sometimes reporting to each other over the scanner about potential suspects who turn out not to be involved.

The author of the blog in question (whose only other post is one defending another conspiracy theorist who suggested that the Sandy Hook shooting never actually happened!) basically uses all those chaotic and potentially misleading confusions to build his case that some other figure, who remains shadowy and never really described by witnesses, was involved alongside Holmes.

Just another wacko pro-gun conspiracy theory!

The "Illuminati" used a Batman movie to brainwash the shooters into committing the Sandy Hook and Aurora mass shootings!

December, 2012.

Momentary scenes in the movie which feature the words "Sandy Hook" and "Aurora", according to this theory, were actually placed there by the "Illuminati" in order to play mind games with viewers and brainwash them into committing mass murder.   

These momentary mentions are supposedly used to “brainwash” the viewers into committing the Sandy Hook massacre.  And who is behind this “brainwashing”?  Why, the “Illuminati”, of course (anytime you see the word Illuminati, it’s safe to say that the user is a wacko conspiracy theorist).  Said one conspiracy theorist: 

I was denying to myself that this shooting was staged by the deep state and the Illuminati just like the last one in the movie theatre in Colorado. But not anymore. It’s impossible to deny now. These are huge red flags. The filmmakers of The Dark Knight Rises must answer why they dropped these hints in their film. Is this a sick game their playing with the public? Are they dropping hints to themselves?

Just another wacko pro-gun conspiracy theory!

The Aurora, Colorado mass shooting was actually staged by the government as an excuse for more gun control!

July, 2012.  

When a mentally ill young man, James Holmes, opened fire on a crowded movie theater in Aurora, killing 12 and wounding 58, he did so with an arsenal of weapons and body armor which he purchased legally on the internet, and then booby trapped his apartment. Such mass shootings happen all too frequently in the United States.  But, as I said above, pro-gun extremists don't like to believe that "law-abiding" citizens are capable of such atrocities, or that lax gun regulation that allows such weapons into dangerous hands could be partially to blame.  Instead, they would rather blame the government.  Such is the case when an extremist "news" site declared that the Aurora shooter was "enlisted" by the government to carry out the act.  From the site:

I wouldn't be surprised to discover someone in Washington was behind it all. After all, there's no quicker way to disarm a nation and take total control over the population than to stage violence, blame it on firearms, then call for leaders to "do something!" Such calls inevitably end up resulting in gun confiscation, and it's never too long after that before government genocide really kicks in like we saw with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao and other tyrants.

He then tried to tie this conspiracy theory to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty conspiracy theory, because of its timing.  He also, incredibly, tried to confuse the issue by denying that the weapons and body armor would be easily available or that a college student would be able to purchase them, despite the fact that they are.

This  ridiculous conspiracy about the Aurora shooting, with no evidence whatsoever, was then repeated and propagated by the president of the Gun Owners of America, Larry Pratt, who also tried to tie the shooting to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty conspiracy theory.

The closest thing the conspiracy theorists have to "evidence" is what they perceive as slight differences in facial features in before and after pictures of the shooter, implying that the person who was arrested couldn't possibly be the actual James Holmes but rather an "impostor."

Just another wacko pro-gun conspiracy theory!