Shooting after Nas at Red Rocks

There was a grim end to last night's Nas, Schoolboy Q and Flying Lotus at Red Rocks: There was a triple shooting which - depending on which tweets you believe - saw the open air venue somewhere between lockdown, or everyone being searched as they left.

The Denver Post reports there's no indication of what happened to either shooters or shootees.

Dave Mustaine fingers Obama for mass shootings

Dave Mustaine might seem like a gun-cocked nutcase, but, hey, you wouldn't be accusing Obama of the Aurora shootings without evidence, would you?

“Back in my country, my president is trying to pass a gun ban, so he's staging all of these murders,” Mustaine told the crowd [at a Megadeath gig in Singapore]. “Like the 'Fast And Furious' thing down at the border and Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there and now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple."

"I don't know where I'm going to live if America keeps going the way it's going because it looks like it's turning into Nazi America."

See? He's got the evidence of, um, some sort of vague feeling, right, that's there's a Nazi-style conspiracy.

Before we even start, let's not forget that Dave Mustaine is, like Donald Trump and many other people who would object strongly to be called racists, is a birther. Although Mustaine claims that despite pushing the line that Obama isn't American, he isn't a birther any more than he's a racist:

Megadeth guitarist Dave Mustaine said in an interview with a Canadian television show “The Hour” that he “has a lot of questions about him [President Obama], but certainly not where he was born. I know he was born somewhere else than America.”

“Well, then you’re a birther,” said host George Stroumboulopoulos, who had asked Mustaine directly whether he was one.

“No I’m not calling a question to it, I just, you know, what’s the point?” Mustaine said, who then proceeded to say that Obama had been “invisible” until he became President.

Mustaine has such a lose grip on reality, it's possible when he says Obama was invisible before he became president, he might mean that literally. It's not known if Mustaine believes that Obama has magikal powers to make himself vanish, or is in possession of some sort advanced technology cloaking device.

Seriously, if Obama had been invisible, how would people have spotted him at Jeremiah Wright's church?

So, Mustaine is in Singapore telling his fans about how America is going all Nazi-like. Singapore. A country which, according to Amnesty, "continue[s] to threaten and punish government critics, using sweeping criminal and civil defamation laws." It's a bit like going to Wisconsin and trying to tell them that your home makes a lot of cheese.

But, despite the fact Mustaine's political worldview seems to be drawn entirely from Astons shown on Fox News, let's do him the honour of taking his central challenge seriously.

[M]y president is trying to pass a gun ban, so he's staging all of these murders

The logical conclusion of this claim would be that the NRA is a front for the Democratic party - pushing for lax gun law to create a climate in which it's easy for even people like Dave Mustaine to buy guns, making these staged murders seem plausible.

If Obama wanted to bring in draconian gun laws, why would he need to stage anything? In 2010, there were 8,775 firearm murders in the US. That'd be all you really need to stand up and say 'maybe we should take some guns out the equation', right?

Maybe Mustaine thinks that Obama spent the first year of his administration setting up all those killings, right, Dave?

Still, maybe these were staged murders. So in the wake of Aurora, Obama was sweeping around calling for the Nazi-style ripping of guns from the cold, dead hearts of NRA members, was he?

Here he is using Aurora as a pretext for a house-to-house search of every building in America, removing all firearms and disarming the US populace forever:

"I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms," Obama told the National Urban League convention in New Orleans. "I think we recognize the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation. That hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage."

Obama continued: "But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals. That they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities. I believe the majority of gun owners would agree we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons, and we should check someone's criminal record before they can check out a gun seller."

Maybe it's just me, but that doesn't sound especially Nazi-like.

In effect, then, Dave Mustaine believes that Obama has staged at least three mass-killings in order to enforce a draconian vague sense that perhaps background checks could be a little tighter and, you know, that perhaps it's not a good idea to let criminals own guns.

That would be on a par with staging a car crash outside a Tony Carvery so that you can surreptitiously take an extra Yorkshire Pudding from the buffet without anyone noticing.

It's not even as if you need to make shit up about Obama being involved in extrajudicial killings - he's got a list he uses for that.

Perhaps the last word, though, belongs to Carli Richards. She was in the cinema the night of the shooting, and has the wounds to prove it. What does she make of Mustaine's views?

“Everybody is emotional at this time and needs to blame somebody, I guess,” Richards told the gossip website. “I don't think they realize the consequences of not being responsible for your own actions and James Holmes needs to be held accountable for his, to whatever way the justice system deems fit."

George Clinton: Shooting "near", not "at"

Although some reports are making it sound like there was a shooting during a George Clinton gig in Ohio, it actually looks like there was a shooting in the park after the gig finished.

One eyewitness, David, tells 19 Action News the shootings happened "right after the fireworks... that's when the action started...heard four shots. The police were here within two minutes, because they were already here."

Yes, if you're already somewhere, a two minute response time is probably slower than you'd expect.

Wyclef Jean: Not shot?

Yesterday, Jeff Jarvis seemed to be grumping that mainstream media had used the word "shot" in headlines about Wyclef Jean, despite the bullet only grazing his hand - personally speaking, if a bullet has been close enough to do me any damage, I'm going to say I've been shot.

Turns out, though, that the facts might be on Jarvis' side. Not because of 'not shot enough' pedantry, but because Jean wasn't shot at all, according to Haiti police:

Jean said, “The way I can explain it is that the bullet grazed me in my right hand. I heard blow, blow, blow and I just looked at my hand.” Doctors at the hospital where he was patched up and ace-bandaged beg to differ. Police chief Vanel Lacroix told Reuters he, “met with the doctor who saw him and he confirmed Wyclef was cut by glass.”

The Fader reckons that this might be Haiti police trying to play down election violence. It's probably a question of who you trust the most.

Wyclef Jean: shot

Although his own plans to run Haiti fell down in the face of the nation's constitution, Wyclef Jean is still busy with the presidential campaign there. He's been campaigning for Michel Martelly in the second-round vote.

He's been shot in the hand for his troubles.

Never happened to Gary Barlow when he was out on the stump. And he was supporting David Cameron.

Gordon in the morning: N-Dubz spraying for Easter

Normally, yobbish louts firing paint pellets at innocent bystanders would be the sort of thing The Sun would rail against - broken Britain, don't you know? - but what do you when it's one of Gordon's chums doing the shooting?

The result is a slightly strained report into N-Dubz firing on their own fans. Not a word suggesting that it's a bloody dangerous thing to do, or that people who aren't earning money for old rope might be less than thrilled that their gig-going outfits have been destroyed by rich kids with paints "having a laugh". Gordon restricts himself to just the facts:

Northumbria Police said: "Police were called to a coach at the back of the O2 Academy following a complaint that pellets were being fired.

"The two people involved had been firing plastic guns at each other which discharged a 6mm-sized pellet.

"They were very apologetic and handed the toy guns over voluntarily.

"No complaint of injury has been made.

"No arrests were made. Advice was given to the parties involved."

You'd have to wonder at the sort of twits who fire paint at their own fans. Most bands at least try to disguise the contempt they feel for the people who pay their wages.

Remy Ma abandons SUV, disappears after shooting

Remy Ma's SUV has been found, crashed and abandoned, by police investigating a shooting incident in New York. The suspect in the shooting has been described as "a woman in her 20s"; the 26 year-old Ma scampered away from her car a block away, and is being sought for questioning.