This would be the same as them saying it would be fine if when you locked the door in a public bathroom anyone could walk in and attack you through a concealed door that was left unlocked behind you by the shopping center because they didn’t feel like securing it.

That worked out super well when you lectured me about the risks facing people of color, didn’t it?

No, I actually didn’t pick up the detail about the door failing from other commenters in the thread

When you go to bible study at your local church and the bible study welcomed all interested parties free of charge, the relationship is not buyer/seller. It is a different situation.

Also, not agreeing with the echo chamber that Jezebel can occasionally turn into doesn’t make one wrong.

Just like you took from my comment I obviously wanted all powerful organizations to set up private guards and metal detectors.

Do you realize if we were talking about literally any other incident of mass death—say, a fire—there would be no question of liability on that very subject

Does anyone really imagine that if Cinemark was saving, say, 50% on their general liability insurance, that they would pass those savings onto ticket buyers? Survey says: Not bloody likely!

How are they different in any way that is pertinent to this discussion? Of course churches aren’t movie theaters; however, if we declare an affirmative duty for movie theaters to prevent terrorist attacks, there’s no obvious reason why we wouldn’t apply that to churches as well.

Movie theater exit doors aren’t normally alarmed for a reason, because people use them for, you know, exiting. The reason they’re locked from the outside is to prevent people from getting in without tickets; the reason they don’t engage in more serious security than just making them only open from the inside is…

You want to carry on the fantasy

Metal detectors, coupled with enough enforcement to make sure everyone actually walked through them, would absolutely lead to an environment in which private security forces would end up victimizing innocent people. For starters, metal detectors don’t actually do much good at stopping people with weapons unless…

Oh, okay. You don’t want anything unreasonable, then. You just want every private business to be responsible for evaluating whether people’s behavior is “strange” or “erratic” or not.

I dunno. I’m used to rolling my eyes when people say that plaintiffs in lawsuits just want someone with deep pockets to pay out, regardless of whether they actually did anything wrong, but I guess that’s true sometimes.

. . . huh okay. I guess maybe this is not widespread knowledge, but actual cops kill people all the fuckin’ time. I don’t even want to imagine what mall cops would do if they were expected to stop terrorist attacks.

I think it’s totally unreasonable to expect businesses to provide counterterrorist efforts; just imagine how many more deaths there would be if the folks who failed out of the police academy got hired by movie theaters to maintain security.

Because as a small business owner, I’m happy to give up some of my personal rights of privacy and general objections to the growing securitization of society if it it means ONE LESS gun death in the world.

Ahh, so it’s probable that this “outrage” is just a legal maneuver that’s part of the process. I guess that’s not surprising. So there is even less reason to blame the theater here.

Part of the services the customer was paying for is the automatic assumption that a safe space is included as part of those services.

I don’t think it’s legitimate to complain that a third party who wasn’t responsible for the tragedy didn’t offer enough money to its victims. I really don’t want to live in a world in which private businesses are required to maintain the degree of security that would be necessary to make an event like this impossible.…