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Las Vegas Shooting Leaves at Least 50 Dead, More Than 200 Wounded (wsj.com)
Readers share a report: At least 50 people are dead and more than 200 wounded after a shooting late Sunday at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). Police said they were first alerted to reports of an incident at 10:08 p.m. and then determined there was a shooter on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino who was targeting the nearby Route 91 Harvest Festival. Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in a briefing that officers responded and shot dead the suspect. He said the suspect was a local resident but declined to identify him, citing the ongoing investigation. Police are also trying to locate a female companion, who they named as Marilou Danley, who was traveling with the suspect.
No, this is not terrorism (yet). There is no ideological or political separation for discriminating between the victims and the perpetrator(s). If the shooter has left some manifesto or similar behind it may be classified as an act of terrorism later, but nothing of that sort has as of yet been discovered.
Why would you call this terrorism? Why is it relevant?
OK Mr Internet Tough Guy ..
If I was there and I had a gun, I would have stopped this after 6 people died. That's the magic number where I flip to Rambo mode and start randomly spraying bullets in a futile effort to stop the shooter.
You do know that the shooter wasn't in the crowd and was in fact on the 32nd floor of a hotel a good 300 to 400 yards away? Your puny hand pop gun (if you actually have one) would have done jack shit in this case.
I think we need to execute Mr Stephen Paddock.
You're too late.
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Except everyone is innocent until they're not. It's about prevention. Don't see why having stricter requirements is considered "punishment". I don't want to die because of your silly hobby.
It's amazing (but not surprising) how little the lack of meaningful background/facts on this dead guy, his act, his purported "companion" and his motivations matters to those who are already spinning up complex narratives to serve whatever agenda they're usually selling. Doesn't matter who we're talking about or which ax they're grinding. It's just remarkable how consistently the early period following something like this is full of what turns out to be misleading, or outright fictional information. But the speculation and misinformation (it's not even misinformation, it's something else ... just fabrications in the absence of anything solid to go on) now fills in all of the social and traditional media cracks so early and so thoroughly that whenever real information emerges, it can never shake off some of the "facts" that circulated early on.
That indelible quality to whatever gets said first (see, for example, the perfectly incorrect Ferguson story that's still impervious to reality) is well understood now, and creates a sort of awful race to get into that "first mover" narrative position because that's now all that matters. It's not a new observation to say that the 24 hour news cycle generates endless blathering by talking heads looking to fill broadcast time, but the social media frosting on that cake has added an even worse and in many ways far more toxic new layer.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If I could mod your comment into the depths of hell I would. You are making assumptions where there is no information to make such, and showing your own political bias and agenda. And not a very hard attempt either, because the other side of the political spectrum could make the same assumption that he is a Trump support right wing second amendment loving nutjob, since we all know the left is anti gun and this guy had numerious firearms. We also know who he was, a 68 year old native resident of Nevada, which more than likely also makes him a Republican..
But unlike you, I won't jump to conclusions yet to, otherwise I would be a total dick... You should probably do the same else everyone will think you are a total dick.
And yes, while this is not exactly news for nerds, it is still an important event that should be covered.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
He said rifle. Do you have a reading comprehension problem?
No I don't. I also don't make up shit on the internet to sound tough.
The only type of person capable of taking out that shooter from the crowd at the critical moment would be a fully trained and equipped sniper with combat experience, and who was also expecting the threat and was in already position.
Now do you want to bullshit some more about how you can shoot into specific hotel room from 400 yards away with a civilian rifle, which you just happened to be carry to a music festival?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
a 68 year old native resident of Nevada, which more than likely also makes him a Republican..
Right, all those Nevada Republicans who kept voting Harry Reid in year after year.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I don't want to die because of your silly hobby.
Silly hobbies like driving vehicles or cooking pot roast with a pressure cooker? That sort of thing? I don't want to die in a crowd of 80 other people because someone who's been allowed to drive has decided today to run down a bunch of pedestrians. Or die because someone who thinks I'm insufficiently obedient to allah has decided to use $50 worth of kitchen tools and hardware store supplies to slaughter a crowd full of people. Prevention is the key. No more passenger vans or pressure cookers, obviously.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
And even if he did have a rifle.. at night, with hotels that are lit up like christmas trees, good luck figuring out which window in a hotel with 43 floors, and almost a hundred rooms per floor, the shooter was firing from. And even then, the security and the police on the ground would have more than likely assumed that you (the good guy with a gun) was actually one of the perpetrators.. so you (again, good misguided idiot with a gun) would likely have been killed.
The whole good guy with a gun theory is completely asinine, it just adds to the confusion, and rarely if ever has a good outcome.
But good luck getting the gun nuts to agree with that.. You cannot argue with a stupid person with a big dick.. I mean gun in his hand.
And for the record, I am not anti gun, I grew up with them, I enjoy shooting them at the range when I get a chance. I am however against stupid and irresponsible people with guns and am for major changes and strengthening of gun control laws.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
No, this is not terrorism (yet). There is no ideological or political separation for discriminating between the victims and the perpetrator(s). If the shooter has left some manifesto or similar behind it may be classified as an act of terrorism later, but nothing of that sort has as of yet been discovered.
Why would you call this terrorism? Why is it relevant?
If Trump can call anything terrorism without waiting for any facts showing it to be so, why can't we? Because the perpetrator is white? As a white gun owner myself (also a freely admitted anti-Trumper since the birther days), Trump's (relative) silence on this attack speaks volumes. He's sent out what, 2-3 condolence tweets? No stream of tweets decrying terror and how we have to act now, how great the first responders are, etc.
This attack can cause big trouble for Trump. If he takes steps to prevent acts like this he angers his base (even though we sorely need some practical gun control), if he does nothing then he shows the rest of the country and the world he cares only about his base, in which case his ability to govern and compromise, already damaged, ends up beyond repair. Best case for Trump at this point is the shooter turns out to be a registered Democrat, in which case the right-wing media plays up their favorite talking point of how Democrats have been violent since Lincoln was assassinated, conveniently forgetting the ideological shift in the mid 20th Century.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The weapon was fully automatic, which is very tightly regulated. It is likely the shooter either modified a weapon illegally or obtained one on the black market. That is no normal "assault rifle".
I slowed down one of the eyewitness videos and used a tap-counter to count how many rounds were fired. I counted 80 rounds in a single burst. He was either using a belt-fed automatic weapon, or some specialized extremely high capacity magazine. The standard magazine you can buy for an assault rifle is 30 rounds.
For all of the commentators saying this is what America gets for guns being legalized, I would like to point out that in Europe there have been far more attacks using fully automatic, illegal weapons like what just happened in Las Vegas, than in the USA. In fact, Europe still holds the record for the most people killed in mass incidents of this kind. This was a premeditated attack using specialized weapons by someone so incredibly deranged and unhinged that they would obtain several thousands of dollars of gear ahead of time, then open fire on a crowd of innocent people over and over with a fully automatic weapon.
Better known as 318230.
Lets face it.. if killing 20 toddlers in a school did not change the laws, nothing will. It's a sad truth, but a reality because in the US, money reigns supreme, and the NRA has a metric shit ton of money that they throw around, not just to prevent changes to gun laws, but even to prevent research being done. Did you know that the CDC is not permitted to research gun violence (they did a study once a few years back by using some weird data gathering mechanism to avoid running afoul of some random rules the NRA has managed to get the Feds to agree to) because the NRA has effectively blocked federal funding into any gun research.
Yeah.. this country is currently fucked...
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Less than 12 hours and the political blame game already well underway.
Can we all just agree the guy was a fucked up human.... I just wish people that miserable would just use one bullet into their brain instead of killing innocent people as well.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
To be fair, the AC also said "in a futile effort to stop the shooter" which kind of indicates they know it's a ridiculous reaction and that's the point they were making - I don't read the original ACs post as anything other than sarcastic and perhaps lightly trolling.
Traditionally, "terrorism" was violence or threats of violence intended to change nation-state policy. For example, an eco-terrorist attempts to change laws around deforestation by planting metal spikes, which halts deforestation and raises awareness of the issue. Middle east "you know what" terrorists try to alter policies around involvement in the middle east. The key is how the action relates to nation-state policy and public sentiment. So if for say the 9/11 hijackers had merely wanted a thrill ride, then the "exact" same act wouldn't be *terrorism.* Of course, the modern word has been thrown around so much, it has basically turned into a catch-all for violent acts.
Except that now he had two options. Truck and gun. Leaving him only one (like in most sane countries) is a good start.
More than 90% of gun violence is not done with registered guns.
So leave people, innocent civilians, who register their guns, alone please.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
tl;dr: I don't have the answer either.
It seems like a tricky area to do reliable research on. It's not like you have two virtually identical countries and can ban guns in one and not the other and see how it all pans out. Australia's changes to gun laws following their Port Arthur massacre might be cited to show restrictive legislation can work, but then again it's very difficult to control for other influences (IIRC gun related violence was already on a downward trend, but with the trend seeming to accelerate after the new legislation).
Then there are nations with both restrictive legislation _and_ high rate of gun ownership, that do not have these issues. So one could argue that might be the way to go. For example, in my own nation (Norway) we have a high rate of gun ownership, but "for protection" is simply not a valid reason to buy a firearm. You buy one for hunting, or for sports. For handguns you need to pass a safety course and be an active member of a club for a minimum of six months, at which point you can buy a safe approved for firearms storage (requirements being designed to prevent the firearm from being stolen) and then _apply_ for a permit to purchase a handgun. Typically you'll get approved, but the police does check with your club so if you've been behaving like an idiot and ignored safety protocols and such, they'll let the police know. In other words, this serves to instill a mindset of safety with regards to firearms.
Do I think that's the holy grail of how to sort out gun violence? To be honest, no. It works for us, because we are us. We're a society where people do not in general view firearms as something you need for protection. We don't sit on our back porch taking potshots at bottles (hey, I'm entitled to at least one stereotype here, I figured). Where police are still not generally armed. How can what works here be expected to work in a nation like the US, where the primary argument for gun ownership seems to be protection from your neighbors and your own government? Where there's a very real risk of a traffic stop turning into a shootout?
Now, I do think the US legislation and culture when it comes to gun ownership is nothing short of bonkers. That doesn't mean I can claim to know what might work to help solve it. Although I don't see many ways of making it worse, so just about anything seems worth trying.
Can we all just agree the guy was a fucked up human.... I just wish people that miserable would just use one bullet into their brain instead of killing innocent people as well.
Despite how divisive politics is these days, once you make the jump to go on a killing rampage the only real allegiance you have is to violent authoritarianism. Whatever perceived injustices that led one to commit that kind of atrocity is more like the window dressings that surround a deranged mind. People like James Hodgkinson, Stephen Paddock, and even Timothy McVeigh have a lot more in common than they do separating them apart. It's really important that we stop trying to project these people as extensions of the left or right. It makes it too easy for people to start demonizing anyone that doesn't agree with them.
It is their members who show up without fail to every election. Especially the low turn out local elections.
Till Democrats motivate their base to show up in every little election, we will lose. Always.
It is not money. It is lack of motivation by our base.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Speaking as an outsider, these days it feels as if all discourse in the USA exists only within the narrative of Red Team vs. Blue Team –and it doesn't actually matter what those teams represent or what they do. Even things like the well-being of the country are secondary to the question of which team "wins". That is deeply troubling –especially since the USA have nuclear weapons and a propensity to project their power wherever they want. An unstable USA is in nobody's interest.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
You're wrong about the "good guy with a gun" theory being asinine but it is very much misunderstood and people seem to often think it means more than it does. a good guy with a gun stops shit all the time in this country. It happens regularly but it doesn't in some way confer super powers on these people and you can be a good guy with a gun and never have a chance just as easily (if not more often) as you can be one of the first to go down. What didn't happen here is a bunch of concealed carry people didn't go bat shit crazy and start shooting one another trying to find the killer. Good guys with guns wouldn't have made a lick of difference here but they also didn't make the situation worse either. That's better than it could have been.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
It's just downright scary as fuck anymore to go to any public event. I look at the school shootings from the late 1990's and 2000's, that 'joker' impersonator who took lives at the Batman movie premiere, Boston marathon bombings, the Ariana Grande concert in London as of late, and now at a fucking Country music concert at Las Vegas? Talk about wanting to just stay at home anymore. Living in the United States or not, I think anyone is going to start second-guessing
It isn't even remotely that scary. Your odds of dying while driving to a public event far exceed your chance of getting shot there. If you're afraid of going to a public event, then you probably shouldn't go anywhere near your automobile.
t's a sad truth, but a reality because in the US, money reigns supreme, and the NRA has a metric shit ton of money that they throw around
Actually, the NRA has two things. Money is one of them, as you have said.
The second is a rabid following who will vote for anything that the NRA says is gun control. No matter what else that particular politician does.
Politician A fights to keep your industry alive, lower your taxes, rebuild the roads you drive on every day, but wants concealed carry to require a permit.
Politician B fights to end your job, raise your taxes and destroy all infrastructure, punch you in the face every Tuesday, but wants concealed carry without a permit.
NRA supporters will always vote for Politician B. No matter how much they are hurt by all the rest of the policies.
This is bullshit. There is no such right. The 1st Amendment protects them from government prosecution — one can not be jailed for making a statement. It does not protect them — nor anyone else — from the disgust of their fellow citizens. Private employers may fire assholes — indeed, just the other day y'all were celebrating firings of the folks (accused of) taking parts in KKK marches...
Consistency much?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I know it's going to be pointless debating anyone online/here about this, but I just wanted to drop some points for thought.
Not all liberals are anti-gun. This liberal owns several. But that's because I also own fire-extinguishers, and not because I'm trying to play fireman/cop. I own them because I recognize and accept that it's my personal responsibility to control an immediate emergency as best I can until the pros arrive. Which can be 30-45 mins in rural areas. I hope I never have to use either.
I also recognize that I have a 1-in 110,000 chance of dying in a mass shooting, as terrible and sad as events like this are. Meanwhile I have a 1-in-113 chance of dying in a car accident. So I try to live my life with some perspective and control my fear/paranoia.
How about this, then? Allow the CDC to study gun violence in the US? Currently, they are prevented from doing so. This leads to any gun control legislation being well intentioned but reactionary at best. If the CDC were allowed to study the issue and issue a report, that could be used to craft gun control laws that wouldn't impact the vast majority of law abiding gun owners while decreasing the incidence of mass shootings like these. Or the report might show that no amount of gun control law would solve this, in which case, we could move on to other possible solutions.
To use your Equifax example, we don't just shout "Put up more firewalls" if a company is hacked. We examine how the hack occurred. Did software not get patched? Did employees fall for phishing scams? Was a laptop with passwords left in an employee's car? Once we figure out how the hack happened, we can take measures to prevent future hacks. In fact, oftentimes companies will pay people to "hack" into their systems. These intrusion detection companies will find the holes in your computer defenses so you can address them before a hacker exploits them just as the CDC could find the "holes" that are allowing mass shootings to happen so that we can fix it.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.