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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.
Wut?
This is what happens when you don't have enough guns. If some of those poor people in the crowd had had rifles, they could have taken the shooter out before so many died.
So is this called Terrorism? Will people of the same skin color now be targeted? Because that would be bad.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Stuff that matters...
Or, just the opposite..
Half the audience was carrying! Why didn't they turn around and all point BOOM! right between the eyes!
Right! - Right!
When Reagan was negotiating the Machine Gun Ban of 1986, he refused to allow Congress to confiscate existing machine guns in circulation. So, existing machine guns were grandfathered in.
We can put an end to this controversy once and for all.
They said not to ban it. They said we needed more of it. They said not to limit our rights for the sake of a few.
Now look where we are.
It's finally time, once and for all, to put an end to country music.
$100 bucks this is a white baby boomer (political aff irrelevant).
Yeah, this is obviously not news for nerds. Slashdot is a political propaganda machine. The string-pullers are easily concealed as the new owner is both private and an LLC.
This dude could have killed thousands if he had just thrown pipe bombs. Easier to carry, and an order of magnitude more damage. He was a radical leftist nutjob. You know, the type that CNN supports. I wonder whether the Slashdot editors will somehow tie this to conservatives and Russia and spam how guns should be banned for the next six months.
This.
They could have shot back and only some of the people would have died.
As a first responder, this is the kind of stuff we train for and pray we'll never have to respond to. I was doing active shooter training at my town elementary school just last month, and our typical gallows humor was on wide display, the only way we can deal with what would be a horror show in the best possible circumstances and only goes downhill from there.
This kind of thing never happened when I was a kid. How have we as a society come to this? And more importantly what's the answer. Ban guns? I don't personally own a gun and have little thoughts about them one way or the other, but with millions of guns on the street would this ever make a difference? If you ban automatic weapons, are not many regular weapons relatively easy to modify? And much like the war on drugs, I can't help but feel that a war on guns would have much the same effect - people who want them can still readily get them and our prisons are filled to bursting with low-level offenders. Maybe we ban all brown people from coming into the country, except this guy in Vegas wasn't brown, has lived here all his life, and from his profile it seems unlikely he is a jihadist (further information pending). Perhaps this is the fault of our frayed medical safety net which leaves people with serious mental illnesses more or less to fend for themselves, but you can't force people to get mental help or take their medication regularly when they do - as a guy with a bipolar sister, I can swear to that.
Meanwhile politicians will go on TV and spew whatever talking points support whatever their tracking polling tells them, and people out for a night on the town will continue be shot en mass. Anyone have any new ideas, or can convince me that something old will sound somehow new and fresh this time around?
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.
Breaking news: Brian Ross to go on the air shortly, to announce which Tea Party group the shooter was a member of.
You know old angry white guy just screams liberal.
The flowchart is never wrong.
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The shooter reportedly used an illegal weapon (a fully automatic rifle), therefore this attack is false.
Europe has relatively stringent gun laws. AKs aren't legal. Therefore Charlie Hebdo attack was false.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
The guns the guy used were illegal.
Gun laws won't stop crazies.
Psycho gun killers are Democrats or on antidepressants.
Guns stop zillions of other attacks.
99.9% of gun owners don't massacre anyone.
They still kill each other in DC (or gun free zone of your choice).
We need guns to protect ourselves against New Hitler
We've all heard them a million times before.
The fact is, whenever the news of a "active shooter killing spree" comes out the very FIRST thought people have is "Oh, where in the US is it this time??".
Trying to argue for a bit of sanity there is like trying to convince North Koreans that Dear Leader does actually poo, it's an almost impossible task.
Hey, a whole classroom of kids got slaughtered at Sandy Hook and they did NOTHING. This won't be any different.
The cannon fodder have been conditioned far too well. Not only do they willingly walk to the slaughterhouse, they protest the rights of the slaughterman to kill them.
Just like their second rate healthcare system, and their lack of a social safety net, the ones at the top in the US are only interested in profit. Guns are big business, like healthcare and private prisons. Lots of money to be made, and votes to be had. It's only the little people that carry the burden, so that's ok.
There's no point in rebutting the same old points they raise over and over again. It's just water off a ducks back.
So, now it's time for more "thoughts and prayers", no meaningful action, and some collective amnesia until we read about the next American mass murder obscenity in a week, or months time.
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.
...and have effectively no barriers to mentally deranged people getting hold of enough weaponry to start a small war !
What could possibly go wrong ???
Oh, wait.....
Expect swarms of people to demand that our freedoms be curtailed so that "this can never happen again!" Expect the same swarms of people to be just as stupid and reaction-driven as they were every other time a bad thing has happened in the United States. Let's not address the source of the problem, let's make sure they just have to do the bad deeds in a slightly different manner with the same degree of success.
Well, aren't you just a bastion of solutions? Fucking unintelligent Europoor.
It needs to be banned until we can figure out what's going on.
This is a whole new level of insanity I just cannot wrap my head around. I just don't understand the mentality or whacked-out level of disgruntlement, depression and motive it takes to want to walk into a concert and mow human beings down with an assault rifle (I presume), then have your own life taken. That in itself, minus the news-fed death toll that's rising as I type this, is a tragedy.
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
Point I'm getting at is, one life or a million lives, this insider-thread-homeland or organization-led terrorism shit happens every day on scales that blow my mind. I wish that it all made headlines so we'd, as a world of people, would figure out how to handle it. Because it's not right or just, and even though this is making huge headlines, we sure don't blink more than once at headlines for any war-torn country where a car bomb erases hundreds of lives --- and that's just as terrorism-led and tragic. We need to stop minimizing it and come together to end this type of behavior.
It's honestly sad and I'd be the first one to say, the more and more this happens, the less and less I seem to find an answer to any of it.
Healthier than you, wealthier than you, happier than you, freer than you, longer living than you, better educated than you, safer than you.
And no, not European.
Now, go carry my bags boy, there's a nice shiny new nickel in it for you !
There's a good lad !
Europe is a continent, dickwad, not a political idea
I'm posting anonymously, so I'm pretty sure not one single claim of yours can be substantiated, especially since you're also posting anonymously and didn't reveal your magical unicorn location.
He was usmc and showed what can be done from up high.
lee harvey oswald also usmc got off a lot of rounds with that old gun as well.
It's pretty obvious if Stephen Paddock's name was something like Abdul Fatah, the entire right would be screaming "Terrorist!" (which is how Breitbart started their coverage). It looks like it was an old white guy with an Anglo name, though, which complicates things. If it turns out Paddock was a lefty...Terrorism!!! If Paddock was a conservative, the blame will fall on mental health issues which weren't addressed because Obamacare.
I'm betting on a different motive: the guy was a music lover.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
If you believe that a 68 year old lone pensioner single-handedly killed 50+ people, you are delusional and the media controls your brain. That feat would take a belt-fed machine gun, i.e. Rambo himself brandishing an M60 or two and wrapped in ammunition toe-to-chin like a mexican highwayman from the gang of Pancho Villa.
Can you imagine the power of recoil from firing hundreds of full rifle caliber bullets, not some puny, reduced power load "assault" cartridges of the M16 / AK47 types? There is no way a 68 year old can take that beating while maintaining an aim good enough to reliably hit even a stadium. His shoulder blade would be broken quickly, since osteo-porosis is one of the foremost side effects of aging.
To summarize, this event was as much a lone perp incident as JFK was. I mean Oswald of the schoolbook warehouse fame supposedly fired 3 accurate shots against a moving target in under two seconds with a telescoped bolt-action rifle. That was some grassy knoll for sure!
Like Baltimore and Chicago.
Works well, doesn't it?
Why do gun grabbers always seem to also deride the "War on Drugs" for not being realistic?
duh, another old white man goes on a rampage killing innocent men, women and children. Probably a huge supporter of MAGA too.
What the hell is this site turning into? Don't we have enough other news portals to cover these stories? Anybody knows another site which is more like slashdot when it was about news for nerds..?
My name is Jon Katz, and I approve this message.
Did you listen to the audio of the shootings
Multiple bursts of full auto fire.
These are illegal, I guess he was not a law abiding citizen, maybe a false flag shooter, zoned out on SSRIs.
We will see. The patsies always kill them selves or are police suicided. There will be no trial, no inconvenient defense attorney asking embarrassing questions to the government narrative. No ballistic forensic investigation on how may types of guns were used if there were a second shooter....
But we have to ban more guns....,sarc.
‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
History is informative here. Despots for hundreds of years have used "mental health" to strip rights from political opponents. There are plenty of progressives who view the desire to own a gun a sign of mental health issues and would use that to strip people of their rights.
Since this story involves guns, this will be one of those submissions with 1000+ comments before the day is out.
There will be everything from both sides, lots of hate, shit slinging and probably even a few conspiracy theories and / or how it's Trumps or Russia's fault. Democrats and the anti-gun crowd will blame it on lax gun laws and the ability to buy / own guns, Republicans and the pro-gun folks will blame the guys mental health. Responsible gun owners will just sit at home and :facepalm: at all the stupidity that will be forthcoming. The Social Justice Armies will be out in full strength on both sides.
One things for certain, there will be lots of hate and blame over the next month or so. Knee jerk legislation will be forthcoming from a few of the idiots in Congress to ban everything under the sun. It will probably go nowhere, which will generate even more hate for the current administration for " doing nothing ". There will probably be someone who will start a movement and give it some silly name prefixed with a hashtag.
In the end, we'll learn the guy was probably on LE radar for quite a long time before he finally snapped and took out his anger on the world. Folks will want to know why nothing was done and we'll probably end up with fewer rights down the road than we have today because of it. ( As they say in politics, never let a tragedy go to waste. )
What strikes me odd is the guy's age ( 64 ) and what possibly could have caused a melt-down like this that created the anger necessary to randomly kill as many people as he could.
All I can add because American _culture_ is insane. This is a dead society just waiting for Uncle Sam's corpse to hit the ground. No sanity from the Republicans. No sanity from the Democrats. No groundswell of citizens rising up to say "Enough!" So, whatever. Nihilism reigns. "New record!"
The problem we have in America is a lack of tolerance for anything. We can't just agree to disagree, we have to invoke violence to take out our aggressions. It's going to take a while to figure out why this guy did what he did. But whatever it is it won't justify this. The fact the gun he used hasn't been legal in decades in the US only proves its very hard to control a crackpot who wants to kill. Gun's don't kill alone, you need a wacko with a will to kill to pull the trigger.
Healthier than you :
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-17/australian-healthcare-ranked-second-best-in-developed-world/8716326
Wealthier than you :
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-10-countries-with-the-highest-average-wealth-2016-11
Happier than you:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/20/norway-ranked-worlds-happiest-country-as-the-us-gets-sadder.html
Freer than you:
https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index
Longer living than you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Better educated than you:
http://www.oecd.org/edu/education-at-a-glance-19991487.htm (results are mixed though, education spending per student is higher than the US, about the same number of tertiary educated professionals, but costs per degree lower than the US....not a clear winner but overall ahead as university doesn't leave Australian grads with US levels of crippling student debt).
Safer than you:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Australia/United-States/Crime/Violent-crime
Wow...US has 57 the murder rate than Australia.....who knew ?
I don't blame you though. Having lived in both countries it's always amusing to see that moment when the light bulb goes off in Americans heads when they finally work out they've been lied to for a very long time. Of course, it's a self confirming sample but a straw poll of my American friends currently here in OZ would reveal their thoughts on going back permanently to the US "Fuck no, go back to that mental asylum?..are you crazy?"..
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go water my Unicorn.
Because hurr hurr durr statistics matter in determining individual characteristics.
So much for better educated... amirite? Retard.
Do it! But no, you love to shoot people.
Because if not, owning a gun means fuck all. A handgun is sometimes carried in the streets of a US city, as long as you're not black or arguing with a cop, but nope, not rifles. Except as an NRA protest or similar arranged situation. As a normal everyday thing? Nope. Owning a rifle that is 14 miles away really doesn't mean jack or shit.
But those against 2 are highly motivated and armed and will refuse to let anyone in who would enact #2, whilst the donors are against #1.
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 understand the inclination to never let a good disaster go to waste for an agenda, but
Given someone chooses to do this, there are many tools to choose from.
Guns are just one option in one subcategory.
Eliminating them would cause the crazy to pick another tool.
Eliminating thru a law is problematic because the automatic weapons used are likely already illegal.
To fix this problem you need to understand and address what would make a person want to kill this many innocent folks and then themselves.
What is this guy's background.
Were there any recent events in his life which might have pushed him over the edge.
Who was he in contact with before and during the incident.
Has this always been a problem, or has society changed to make this more likely now.
These may all be arguments for abolishing the Second Amendment. But, so long as it remains the law of the land, it must be obeyed and all the laws limiting weapon-owning and carrying are just that: unconstitutional. And I'm not talking about just guns either — in NJ, for example, it is illegal to possess even a slingshot!
And, no, "licensing" requirements are not constitutional either: because it is not a right, if exercising it requires a government's permission.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Wut?
This is not stuff that matters. It's a political story for views. I don't have modpoints for the FPoster, so I will repeat the message.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
What were the police doing during this?
Why couldn't they at least return fire?
Above and beyond all arguments this tragedy will create, to me, this is the number one talking point.
WTF were the cops doing?!?
http://www.express.co.uk/news/... Much sadness as the war against humanity continues.
The tree of low-paperwork gun ownership must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of innocent bystanders and law enforcement officers. Is it safe to assume the country folk at this concert would've been happy to sacrifice their lives for the cause?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
We were intended to have a militia as opposed to a standing army. We re-thought that idea after the militia failed to prevent the Capitol from being burned, but did not revise the Constitution. One of the problems with starting the first modern democracy was that we didn't know what that would look like, and the Founders had somewhat romantic ideals there. It was envisioned that we would be a nation of citizen-farmers, self-sufficient men defending their own soil. This is still a popular idea, but in practice not everyone is capable or interested in living off their own land, and there isn't really a good substitute for the professional soldier. The consequences of 1814 seem to have been the 2nd Amendment dying the death of a thousand cuts, and the creation of the most powerful military in history.
Supporters of the 2nd Amendment tend to ignore these inconsistencies. I think we should try to resolve them. Either "shall not be infringed" should be interpreted more literally, and the military disbanded, or we should revise the Constitution to reflect the current state of affairs.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
only the rich will have guns. Kinda like drugs. Is this really what we want?
you think Americans are brainwashed into being gun lovers?
Like our Founding Fathers, who believed that the only way to keep this Country free is to enshrine the Right to keep and bear arms in our Constitution, so that people could defend themselves from any threat.
But let's ignore the fact that it Is our Right.
You are obviously against the idea of Americans being able to defend themselves. so, in your own words, what do you feel should be done to prevent this kind of tragedy, and how do you envision actually enforcing this in such a way that would actually prevent this.
And, while you're at it, what do you propose to keep people safe that doesn't have them sitting around for minutes or hours waiting for SOMEONE WITH A GUN to show up to defend them from a bad guy?
And, again, while you're at it, what method do you propose that would protect the Rights of the People from not only invading forces, but from their own government? A government that is ALREADY attempting to usurp (and in some States HAS infringed!) not only our Second Amendment Rights, but many others.
Read the constitution, don't get your talking points from MSNBC
You wrote
""as part of a well organized militia" bit. Emphasis on "well organized","
The wording is well regulated militia. Back in the days of the founders, well regulated meant working or functional.
The bill of rights were meant to prevent the over reach of a tyrannical government (king George whom they just defeated at great cost).
"THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution. "
A shooting is when some asshole intentionally shoots a target.
A terrorist attack is killing many people at random with whatever means necessary.
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.
This was a concert? The 'goers already had phones out taking video. I bet there will be hundreds of shaky videos of this event surfacing in the next few hours. Some Quite graphic.
This ones going to be viewed from every angle for months.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Islamic state claims Las Vegas shooting, says attacker recent convert to Islam
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgocq5mq-36QwAOo964SFhZuufIcVxX0S
nothing to sea here, move along.
One can't take a well defensible, higher ground, position, lock himself up there and keep lobbing cars or pressure cookers at thousands of people half a mile or more in the distance.
Nor can one ambush those thousands of people with a car. Or keep running over people once they realize that the driver of said car is running people over.
Purely based on a fact that a car is a lot more visible and avoidable than a bullet.
One can dodge a Dodge but one can't bullet a bullet.
And while one CAN ambush people with a pressure cooker... Constructing one, then hauling it and placing it without blowing oneself up IS a tiny-winy bit trickier than point and click effort of using a gun.
One can't just bang-bang-bang at a crowd outside one's window with a car or a pressure cooker cause one is suddenly and gravely disappointed in the effectiveness of those pills which promised that penis enlargement OR cause one is annoyed with loud music those pesky kids are playing.
One can't do either on whim - the way someone with a gun can.
Plus... Neither cars nor weaponized pressure cookers grow on trees, and it is easier to find a gun store in US of A than a store selling... well... anything other than gasoline.
There 14146 McDonald's restaurants in the US, 16708 franchised car dealers, 36536 grocery stores and 143849 gas stations... but 51438 gun retailers.
129817 gun dealers if you count in "collectors" (61,562), pawn shops (7,356), and importers and manufacturers.
And WE KNOW that Americans have a McDonald's problem.
But even if cars and cooker did grow on trees - one still has to find the said tree, pick the car, drive it to where people are, get enough traction...
I mean... look at that cunt in Charleston.
He had to drive AAAALLL the way from Ohio to South Carolina, only to be able to run over a single person.
It took planning. And work. And driving. And finding his way around a foreign town.
You can't just type in "People to run over with a car" in your GPS, you know?
Also, fenced venues such as open air concerts tend not to allow one to take cars OR weaponized pressure cookers inside.
But you can still squeeze off a couple of shots inside.
Just get yourself some high ground and... bang-bang-bang your way to that penis enlargement! Show the world you're NOT firing blanks!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Less than 12 hours and the political blame game already well underway.
Thanks, Trump!!
The actual meaning of the 2nd Amendment continues to be debated. Why not instead turn to addressing a non-Constitutionally-protected activity that killed at least 10000 people in 2015, an activity for which over a million people were arrested that same year?
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html
If we can't "fix the gun problem," maybe we can figure out how to agree on something less controversial.
I guess this guy was not a terrorist but some mentally unstable individual with issues. Call it like it is ppl.
Why doesn't the article mentions the race of the attacker? What is with all this political correctness. MAGA - we need extreme vetting for these people that commit all that mass killing in our country. I say we stop with being afraid of the cries of racsim and round all these people up and subject them to extreme vetting. There is a reason that people of certain races commit such violent acts.
There's another element. Rural people often have a great fear of the Federal Government turning heavily liberal and ruining their rural and/or religious way of life. They see guns as one of the few insurance policies protecting them from a run-away "Big Govt". The loss of life from mass shootings is not big enough to justify losing this "insurance policy" in their mind.
They do the math and conclude that sometimes "freedom is better than life". It is rational to THEM: the cost of the insurance policy (a lost % of life) is less than the perceived danger of the Big Gov't taking over. They are willing to sacrifice a few percent of the population to events like this to prevent 100% of everybody they know from being ruled by Big Gov't. Nobody can accurately calculate the odds of their "socialist doomsday" scenario, so their guess is as good as yours or mine.
It's similar to what you often see in the middle east: protecting their "way of life" is more important to many than (current) peace. They are willing to die to protect their way of life. NRA thinking is just a variation on this theme.
Table-ized A.I.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
The guns the guy used were illegal.
Gun laws won't stop crazies.
Psycho gun killers are Democrats or on antidepressants.
Guns stop zillions of other attacks.
99.9% of gun owners don't massacre anyone.
They still kill each other in DC (or gun free zone of your choice).
We need guns to protect ourselves against New Hitler
We've all heard them a million times before.
And you can't refute a single one.
Further, even if they were all objectively false, that wouldn't change a thing. The 2nd amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms. The government cannot legally infringe upon that right. I don't care how many people are killed, that right is fundamentally more important than whatever safety you imagine to be traded for it.
Yes, that "whoosh" noise. I'm not the OP, but anyone can see he was being facetious.
I mean, we could argue back and forth by what the OP meant by "if I was there" for instance. Did he mean down at the music festival? Or did he mean in the hotel the shots were being fired from? Maybe he meant right in the room, standing idly by "Well Stephen, I'm not gonna be an oppressor, so you do you boo. But if you kill more than 6, and I'll be counting!, i'm gonna flip Rambo on you and take you out, aight bro? We cool?"
I mean, come on, people want to go over this like the ONLY people who could possibly have reacted to this incident were those at the music festival.... instead of maybe right next door hearing a ton of rapid firearms reports suddenly. I mean, at the very least someone should have called Concierge to complain about the noise! "Yes, YES! I KNOW RIGHT, I CAN'T HEAR YOU EITHER! WELL GET THE NIGHT MANAGER UP HERE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT OR I AM LEAVING A VERY SCATHING NEGATIVE REVIEW ON YELP!" "OF COURSE , SIR, OF COURSE! WE'RE SENDING UP A BELLHOP TO ASK THEM TURN IT DOWN NOW, SIR!"
I mean, really...
This guy had to be amazing with the gun. I mean 50 USians is a pretty good body count. You at least have to admire the guy for that. I know the media is going to survey the political or racial affiliations of the dead and declare that he is a either a hero or a villain based on whether or not he killed more liberal or conservatives. On the other hand what is wrong with those 50 people for allowing themselves to get shot in such a sad manner. One thing we need to to is to start teaching kids and apparently adults how to move and shoot. No one should just go around walking unarmed. At the very least they should be carrying a sword. You never know when you are going to walk into a gunfight. There is no such thing as an innocent victim. There are only people who failed to adequately prepare for their defense.
We need to have mandatory weapons and martial arts training for all children starting at the age of 11. Why the fuck are we worrying about trigonometry, when some kids, especially on the east coast have never even held a gun. To me it is the height of irresponsibility. I know our schools can do more. I know some of you are going to be complaining about the lead in the bullets and how it is hurting the environment, but first things first. Let's keep an eye on the big picture and first realize that out children are not prepared to defend themselves. When we have all out children adequately trained in small unit tactics can we start worrying about replacing the led in bullets with something more environmentally friendly.
Nothing see here folks... Just another case of "Hicks killing hicks"...
For being supposedly so well educated you display an astounding amount of ignorance. All of those things are often stated. Which doesn't make them untrue. Gun laws are so strict in New York it's almost impossible to own a firearm. A state with close to the highest incidence of gun crime in the country dwarfed only by Chicago another shining example of the effectiveness of gun control. You could completely outlaw guns and you will still have this problem.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
SkyNet. What could possibly go wrong?
The US Government always has the option to vote/call for a referendum on repealing the 2nd amendment. Sure it might not pass, but there is always the option for it. The US Government acting alone cannot take away the right to bear arms, but the people of the United States can have the option to choose to do so if their leadership took it to the people in a vote.
Bad, bad, bad guns! Now let the bashing begin. Let us create a monument to the fucktards that shoot, blow up or run over innocent people. Because with out guns, cars, trucks and chemicals to make bombs with, there would not be any innocent people killed!
Now the real question: How do we modify / fix society so that stupid / fucktard people do not kill innocent people? I applaud and support the assholes that want to kill themselves, but ffs do it on your own and leave the innocent folks alone!
I was waiting for this article to show up. Gotta get that clickbait.
I hope we can find out motivations and such....and I definitely hope he burns in hell for his actions.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Hayley Geftman-Gold, a legal executive at CBS, wrote on Facebook,
If they wouldn't do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that the Repugs will ever do the right thing. I'm actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are republican gun toters.
"not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are republican gun toters"? What kind of ethics are taught at law school these days?
I'm happy to say that CBS fired her.
Hi US people,
I noticed that you are a) trying to guess which party the gunman voted for and b) discussing the merits or either better or worse availability of guns as a solutions.
As per gunman's voting record, I would suggest to you that it is irrelevant: Your political side won't score any points nor get any additional votes, even if it turns out that the gunman voted for the other party.
As per the availability of gun: It is not viable solution. It has been studies and the gun laws do not correlate in any manner with the number of deaths in these types of events. So there, gun laws are not a working solution. Hence, I would recommend that you look in to something that might work: Having better availability of mental health services.
Finally, I have a sad observation to make. You are not interested in discussing the merits (or the lack there of) of mental health approach because it does not involve political divide. You have forsaken your country. Petty political point scoring reigns supreme.
Sincerely yours,
A guy from Finland
It's terrible what happened to the banana republic of north america today. I guess the answer, courtesy of the NRA, and helped by all brain-deprived muricans, will be moar guuuns! As the ahole in chief would say, sad.
Perfectly explained.
And yet for all your blather my rights are greater than your feelz.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
It's not just an issue of a well person buying a gun and then developing mental health problems. The US gun lobby doesn't even want to restrict sales to those who already have mental health issues.
That depends on the mental health issue.
I don't know of anyone - even the most extreme gun-rights advocates - who has a problem with disarming a person who has been adjudicated by a court of appropriate jurisdiction to being a danger to others by reason of mental problems.
But many "mental health issues" are not associated with an increase in risk of attacks on others - and many are actually associated with a DEcrease.
For instance: Depressives are drastically LESS dangerous to the general population than the average person. Meanwhile, disarming anyone who has ever been treated for depression would disarm over half the adult women in the United States.
Psychiatrists are some of the strongest lobbyists AGAINST such laws. This is because they both make it less likely that people needing treatment for mental issues will seek it and open confidential patient records to perusal by government functionaries and law enforcement.
Another recent trend is treating anyone who is a crime victim - rape, assault, robbery, stalking, etc. - for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Whether they want such "treatment" or not. Guess who is most likely to NEED a gun for self-defense? Guess when they are likely to get off their tails and go buy one?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Being from Australia, I can at least comment on the cultural impact of guns.
In the early 80's KMART were still selling rifles. There were heaps of guns around.... but, the primary use for our weapons was for taming wildlife, not seeing them as object of personal protection. In the USA I believe it is the reverse.
Australia was also becoming very urbanised and after the Port Arthur massacre, semi automatic weapons were banned. Now you can still buy guns, and every farmer has several, but:
- They must be kept in gun safes
- All guns are licensed
- Police do come and check your serial numbers against their records
- You have to be a member of a gun club or be on a rural property.
- You have to do a firearms safety course before being issued a license that must be annually renewed.
- There are strict background checks.
What I have noticed, is
- I never hear about kids accidentally shooting themselves anymore
- Rarely hear about gun suicides.
- Never see guns in public, except on Police
- No one here worries about getting shot, because generally when it rarely happens, its criminals shooting each other.
The USA will never change their gun culture in my lifetime: so massacres like this will just be the price of that culture.
46137
Good post Bruce/Sheila.
what do you know? there's a FBI angle with this shooter too. nothing to see here. it was only his dad... 19 guns, full auto and tripods, rumors of other shooters, locked exit doors, i would think that if someone went to this extreme just to kill people that they would leave a manifesto/letter. if we never get a reason i find that suspicious, because then the motive may live elsewhere. like the baby killing feds for instance.
It's not that tricky. Read "More Guns, Less Crime," written by a competent statistician, John Lott.
And as you know, Norway is not very ethnically diverse. In the U.S., some ethnic groups commit crime at much higher rates than others. If the least-violent ethnic group was as prevalent in the U.S. as it is in Norway, the U.S. would have a world-class low crime rate.
I'm not sure what sort of solution this suggests, if any. Increased police presence in rural areas (to maintain the same number of cops per square mile and thus the same response time) is probably unfeasible.
Why seek a solution, given that gun violence is not a problem in rural areas? As a previous poster pointed out, the worst per-capita murder rates are in these urban areas:
10 Camden, NJ: 42/100,000
9 New Orleans, LA 42/100,000
8 Detroit, MI: 44/100,000
7 Flint, MI : 47/100,000
6 Petersburg, VA: 49/100,000
5 Baltimore, MD: 55/100,000
4 St. Louis, MO: 60/100,000
3 Gary, IN: 65/100,000
2 Chester, PA: 67/100,000
1 East St. Louis, IL: 71/100,000
The fact is, whenever the news of a "active shooter killing spree" comes out the very FIRST thought people have is "Oh, where in the US is it this time??".
Actually it's "what's the ethnicity, religion, and political affiliation of the shooter(s)?"
It's distasteful, but they want to know because it's a really important question.
If the shooter is an Arab Muslim you're going to see a push for more Muslim bans, racial profiling, deportations, not to mention a jump in hate crimes.
If the shooter is a Mexican illegal you're going to see the end of DACA and a bunch of people getting deported from the only country they've ever known.
As it is, the shooter is white, his political affiliation and even religion don't really matter. His tribe, white people, is strong enough that they're at no risk of discrimination in the US. Thankfully we'll be able to spend more time mourning the victims this time around.
I stole this Sig
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Yes, we American value our freedom to own firearms more than we value other people's lives. And I'm okay with that.
Tell me if I am wrong, but from now on, every building in USA would require by law that Glass Break Sensors are installed in every window... at least that is what I want to believe: https://buythetop10.com/top-10...
I get tired of a tragedy happening and getting a flood of stories and commentaries from talking heads far removed from what is actually happening.
Instead of the cited CNN link from the initial post; how about links to local to Las Vegas news sources that are not skewing the report to fit an ideological doctrine.
http://www.fox5vegas.com/
http://news3lv.com/news/nation-world/former-fbi-profiler-brad-garrett-what-we-know-so-far-about-las-vegas-sniper
NRRPT/RCT
Obviously the gun nuts are out in force, but let us ask "When is it time to talk about removing weapons of war from our streets"?
My answer is: Every single time someone dies in the name of the NRA profits!
This is exactly the kind of story that I hope to avoid by reading slashdot, news about nerdy stuff, computers, internet, video games. Unless they're planning to take away our video games because of this, or they're planning to make a video game about it, it doesn't belong here. There's other websites to talk about normal news.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
It was an ar with a holosight, super high capacity magazine, and a bump stock to enable high fire rates. There was a picture in the telegraph. All purchaseble legally in my state at least. The ATF has specifically stated bump stocks are not fully auto parts because you are still pulling the trigger multiple times. I doubt they will revisit that decision, that would be admitting error. And in any case a shoe string and a keychain can make many rifles fully auto so it would be difficult to enforce. Full auto isn't even particularly lethal. Unless there is a huge crowd and you have no particular target and a high vantage point...
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.