The Vegas Massacre

Yes, based at least on initial reports, it does appear to be very, very strange.

[Update later afternoon]

The Vegas shooting and the attack of the carrion crows.

Every.Single.Time.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Mass shootings are a bad way to understand gun violence.

And Nick Gillespie says that this is the time to defend the Second Amendment and less-strict gun control. Because gun control is not, and has never been, the solution.

I have a crazy idea that if you’re going to propose a policy or law in response to a tragic event, you should have to explain how it would have actually prevented that event. Everything this guy did and used was already illegal, as far as I can tell.

37 thoughts on “The Vegas Massacre”

  1. I’m for the 72 hour rule. Apparently the media is too when the shooting occurs in a Tennessee church by a person that doesn’t fit their narrative.

    But whatever the motive; why is it when an individual commits a crime, Democrats first response is that other people not involved should lose their rights? I know the answer, Democrats just want to do away with the Bill of Rights, but I’m getting tired of the same trope.

    1. Leland,

      Gotta keep the pressure one…

      never let a crisis go to waste.

      Gotta keep the rachet clicking in one direction only

      1. I hear you, but at some point, people will point out that it was the fascist Hitler that disarmed his population and then either forced loyalty to the Nazi cause, put others in a labor camp, or just flat executed those with whom they disagreed.

        On a different but related note, perhaps it was silenced sniper fire that Hillary was under in Bosnia, which is why she didn’t respond to it at the time and just accepted the flower from the little girl that met her as she exited the aircraft.

    2. Celebrating that people were shot because of their perceived identity while immediately turning the event political is incredibly poor form. Its not even that people are calling for gun bans but the political attacks and blame casting.

      1. After awhile, you do get the impression that many of them really just want us to do die but can’t bring themselves to pull the trigger themselves.

  2. Given that the target was country music fans, it appears likely this is more left wing violence. They’ve completely lost their minds.

    1. Tough to say. It could have been a lot of different motivations. Hopefully they tell the public when they find out.

    2. “They’ve completely lost their minds”

      Assumes facts not in evidence.

      Can’t lose what you never had.

  3. This is the strangest shooting I’ve ever seen. Full auto fire from a guy who wasn’t a gun nut? I’m a gun nut, and I had never heard of bump stocks until tonight. Not that I’d want one. I’ve fired enough full auto to know that I’d rather have a bolt action against almost anyone, including this a**hole. A 300 Winchester Magnum from 226 yards (the 45 degree slant range to that a**hole’s window) would have been the only shot I’d need.

    1. I’m a former infantryman but currently don’t own any firearms. That will change soon. I’d never heard of bump stock before today, either. I work with some people who are extremely knowledgeable about guns. One of them explained to me that, in his opinion, the killer was an idiot. By spraying full auto while shooting down at approximately a 20 degree angle (roughly 100 meters high and 300 meters away from the venue), he probably put a lot of rounds into the parking lot behind the venue instead of into the crowd. Your barrel tends to rise uncontrollably when you’re on full auto. In addition, your weapon will soon get very hot to the point it can jam due to casings expanding or even have rounds start to cook off.

      Anyone who has been through Army or Marine basic training can routinely hit human sized targets at 300+ meters with an M-16/AR-15. Had he fired semi-automatic with aimed shots and worked from the back of the crowd (See: Sergeant York), he could’ve killed more people before most people realized what was happening. As for the reported 23 guns he had in the room, that also shows he was an idiot. Two or three AR-15s with a lot of ammo would’ve been sufficient if he knew what he was doing. My coworker claims that this guy, by firing full auto with a bump stock, probably killed a lot fewer people than what anyone with military training could’ve done. I tend to agree. As horrific as this was, it could’ve been a lot worse.

      1. Stupid as compared to what though? You mentioned military people but compared with other violent attacks, it was very shrewdly thought out. With thousands of people there, he didn’t need to aim.

        You are right it could have been a lot worse. It was bad enough though and showed a level of planning unseen in the vast majority of terrorist attacks. Typical terrorist attacks lack creativity and I fear this event just gave them a blueprint.

        1. The fact that terrorists brains are broken helps reduce the carnage. It is their persistence we have to deal with.

          The real problem is those that think we should accept ‘tolerable’ terrorism because it’s some kind of human right?

    2. The police had rifles, M-4s or some other AR-15 offspring. One of my questions is whether any of them returned fire as you suggest, and if not why not. I didn’t notice any bullet holes on the hotel façade.

      1. In the videos, I kept looking for muzzle flashes or something from the building. I knew where to look but didn’t see anything. Could the police there even see where the gunfire was coming from? Blinding returning fire could have been bad. There were a lot of people in the hotel too.

        1. I’m thinking the echo off the other buildings would have made locating the shooter a bit difficult. A guy on Rush’s show today, who claimed to be there, located the direction of fire by paying attention to the direction of ricochets, but he didn’t figure out during the shooting that it was coming from an elevated position from the hotel.

      2. That would have been insane. They could have killed a whole bunch of people in the hotel.

        The real issue is that they apparently waited outside the room for 52 minutes before breaking in. Though, as I understand it, the shooter had stopped firing and probably killed himself before they got there, so there was probably no rush by that point.

      3. That could have been quite dangerous because of the risk of hitting innocent bystanders. A sniper with night vision would have been more useful.

  4. Two windows broken in Mandalay bay, two shooters?, this smells of false flag …. Cant have any precision at that range with a bump stock…. very strange….

    1. To some people everything smells of false flag / conspiracy.

      You don’t need precision when you’re firing into a crowd of 22,000 people.

  5. We know what happened. We just don’t know why.

    We don’t know what happened beyond the obvious. I would look much closer at the ‘suicide.’ Ten guns for one shooter? Cameras to spot police for a guy planning to off himself? Two windows knocked out?

    Full auto is normally used as part of combined arms. Although for this apparent intent of indiscriminate killing in a crowd it is somewhat effective (mortars and bombs would kill more effective but the gin ban crowd wouldn’t have an anti-gun talking point.) Imagine one daisycutter dropped on those 30,000?

  6. I would look much closer at the ‘suicide.’

    Do you see parallels between this mass-murder/suicide and the Germanwings Flight 9525 mass-murder/suicide?

    1. NO, because this guy owned planes. He could just as easily have suicided an aircraft into the crowd. The death toll would likely have been much higher.

        1. Fuel isn’t the only effective deadly explosive. We’re just fortunate the kind of people that do this stuff don’t have fully functional brains. Anyone commenting here could have come up with 100 times more effective means.

  7. I have a crazy idea that if you’re going to propose a policy or law in response to a tragic event, you should have to explain how it would have actually prevented that event.

    This is really good advice for all proposed policies.

    With the gun banning crowd, they don’t care about any specific incident because they don’t hold the individuals responsible for their actions but transfer that guilt onto their political opponents. So regulations are not focused on punishing the guilty individuals or regulations that would prevent a specific incident but rather on punishing those who they have transferred the guilt too.

    They can’t deal with the real world so they create a new reality.

  8. It’s the “A attacking B gives C the right to attack D” fallacy: A being in this case the Las Vegas shooter; B being his victims; C being “liberal” gun grabbers; and D being peaceful gun-owners . . . which is to say, about 99% of gun owners.

  9. One thing I idly wondered about this afternoon after learning the shooter wired about $100,000 to the Philippines in the days before the attack, and that his girlfriend hadn’t visited there in four years, is whether he was giving her family ransom money to be paid to Abu Sayyaf or some other ISIS linked terrorist groups because they were holding someone important to her.

    But he was probably just crazy.

    1. Ya, those will be outlawed before the month is over. Not sure why the ATF granted them legal status in the first place since they mimic an actual automatic weapon so closely.

      Not having a bump stock wouldn’t have prevented this event because the bump stock isn’t what motivated the shooter. If he didn’t use one, it might not have even made a difference in the end. But banning them would actually be a policy closely related to the incident, which would be a first for people who want to ban guns.

  10. Bump stock ban points the way….

    Ban guns from using 3/32″ screws.

    Guns will have to use 5/64″ screws. Then, it’s simple. You simply ban 5/64″ screws and voila, no guns! No 2nd amendment violation. There’s nothing in the Constitution that guarantees a right to own a 5/64″ screw.

    Guns killed via the death of 1000 cuts.

  11. Get your bump stocks now, kids! And remember: if you can afford it, have two armories–the real one, and the one you tell the storm troopers about.

    1. if you can afford it, have two armories–the real one, and the one you tell the storm troopers about.

      Somewhere Dianne Feinstein is smiling thinking about that idea and how the rubes always fall for it.

Comments are closed.