Like Matt Walsh, I remain baffled at why the slaughter of concert-goers in Las Vegas a few months ago, and the almost total lack of evidence or data on the killer’s motives and actions, haven’t caused much in the way of a media/political firestorm, contrasting with events of recent days:
If you recall, dozens upon dozens of people were gunned down in Las Vegas on October 1. There were 58 fatalities in total. Another 422 injuries. That’s 480 casualties â 480 casualties â and I’m not even counting the hundreds more injured by trampling or shrapnel. It was the worst mass shooting in modern American history by a mile. It had more casualties than Orlando, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and Parkland combined â times two. And it was carried out in the middle of a major American city.
Yet that terrible massacre seemed to fade from the headlines rapidly and inexplicably. The country had almost entirely moved on by the beginning of the following week. It seemed to me that we had forgotten about it within three or four days, but I’ll say a week just to be safe. The media is so obsessed with Parkland that several of its survivors are now practically household names. Does anyone remember the names of a single one of the Las Vegas survivors? Did any of them do media tours? Did CNN hold a “town hall” about Las Vegas? Was there an extensive conversation about potential law enforcement failures in Las Vegas, as there has been about their failures in Florida? We’ve all had quite a bit to say about the police officer who waited outside while kids were gunned down, but what about the police officers and armed security who made it to the shooter’s hotel room while he was still raining shots down on the crowd, but stood outside the door for an hour before entering?
From my vantage point, it seems that fairly early on, the media seemed to give up a hunt for explanations and for holding various people to account. Consider this point: Vegas hotels are famously packed with CCTV to foil thieves and crooks of various descriptions. And yet a man was able to get a large cache of weapons into a room and do what he did.
The trouble with even writing about this topic now is that I feel that I sound like a conspiracy nut, which I am emphatically not.
All very odd.
One point that Walsh’s article should stress just a bit more than he does is the youth of the dead and the shooter in Parkland. Kids count in our emotions for more than an equal number of adults. Walsh briefly and indirectly alludes to it in one of his maybes, but if I had written the article then it would be much the same as his except for covering that point more fully. As it is, I expect such PC notice as he gets will seize on it.
That said, all Walsh’s points are valid, and the relative numbers of dead and injured are so disparate that even after my caveat the question remains well worth asking.
The excuse that “investigations are still continuing” has worn out in the case of the mass murder in Las Vagas. If the United States had a real press, rather than a Death-to-Donald-Trump “School of Journalism” main-stream-media, they would be all over this case.
The American media (including Mr Smith the head of the “hard news” side of Fox News) only care about Trump bashing – nothing else (not even a case of mass murder) has any interest for them, if it is not of use in bashing Donald Trump.
I don’t think it was a conspiracy. It just doesn’t serve “the narrative”.
A Vegas hotel is about as safe a space as one could hope to create. If the Dems manage to turn America en masse into as surveiled and policed a territory as that hotel was, they’d be pleased with themselves. Yet an atrocity still happened. So it doesn’t advance the cause of authoritarianism.
What’s more it was a country music festival, whose fans tend to be political conservatives. So there will be a dearth of crying mums who are willing to appear on camera holding a picture of little Jimmy while calling for gun control.
Finally they’ve not been able to find a SJW-relevant motive for the shooting. So far as we can tell the shooter didn’t hate blacks, gays, Muslims or leftists.
So the leftist media have gotten bored and moved onto something else. What right wing media there is prefers not to talk about shootings at all for fear of handing the Brady bunch “ammunition”.
Of course they have been willing to use this to call for the banning of bump stocks. Weirdly they’ll often eschew naming the Vegas shooting while doing so. It’s like no one wants to mention it.
Too many of the survivors in Vegas who were interviewed expressed pro-gun sentiments for the press’s taste. Add to that their attendance at a Country and Western concert (horrors!), and the progressive reporters simply couldn’t hold much sympathy for them.
Plus, the shooter was rumored to have attended a Vegas anti-Trump rally shortly before – there was video that some said showed him – hotly contested, even though it was a small rally and no one else has been identified as being the individual shown – and he had hit a brick wall in trying to bring his girlfriend’s family in from the Philippines.
Frankly, we expected this story to disappear as fast as did the story of the shooting of Congressman Scalise and four others by the deranged anti-Trump gunman, and we were right.
Like you, I feel like a conspiracy nut just for having typed this. But is it paranoia if they really are out to get you?
I’ve spent a LOT of time in Vegas over the years (sales kickoffs, F500 company) and while the surveillance is pervasive it is designed to protect the casino, casino employees, and lastly guest safety.
And a *lot* of stuff is carefully overlooked in Vegas hotels: prostitution, drugs, off-books gambling, etc, etc.
I believe I could “smuggle” a howitzer into a Vegas hotel if I were willing to (a) tip the hops and (b) get a room big enough to hold it. If I thought I was going to have any problems getting it in, I’d hire a bunch of sexy men/women and get a filming permit.
Remember, you can go on a “helicopter gunship” trip in Vegas for under $2K USD.
-XC
I’ve heard two semi-reasonable theories. One, The victims of the Las Vegas massacre were country music fans and therefore not as sympathetic in the view of media. Two, influential Las Vegas interests didn’t want too big a thing to made of the matter and hurt tourism. I don’t find either of those theories to be entirely sufficient.
The drive to ban “bump stocks”, of which most of us had probably never heard before the Las Vegas massacre, continues apace. Just yesterday Trump said he would do it on his own if Congress wouldn’t act. (How he could do that, if the uber-left-wing and anti-gun Obama administration concluded that it lacked the authority to do so, remains unclear.) In my state one city is trying to pass a local ordinance against them (illegally, I hasten to add, but that doesn’t seem to deter its mayor), and there are bills pending in the legislature to do the same thing state-wide. And yet Las Vegas is never mentioned in those discussions, as JadedLibertarian has already noted. Curious, no?
As JL and bobby b say, it’s not paranoia, it’s just that it’s something unpleasant (Country and Music fans) that’s best ignored. I can almost picture a typical journalist thinking, ‘It was horrible, but they were Country and Western fans, and it’s kinda the sort of thing they support coming back to bite them, what with the Second Amendment and, yes, it’s very sad but it’s probably, deep down, it’s what they would have wanted for people like me… ‘, before leaving that train of thought unresolved, and finding something to go on about.
Compare and contrast the Parkland and the Vegas coverage and ask whether Vegas is normal and Parkland excessive or is Parkland normal and Vegas undercovered? There, no conspiracy, just a quest to figure out what’s normal in this new crazy mixed up world of ours.
Vegas hotels are famously packed with CCTV to foil thieves and crooks of various descriptions. And yet a man was able to get a large cache of weapons into a room and do what he did.
Yeah, and “some longish boxes on a luggage cart” aren’t exactly a Red Flag Alert thing.
IIRC he spent several days slowly moving stuff in.
(Remember, the hotel CCTV isn’t focused on the hotel halls very much – it’s all about the casino floor, where the everyday criminal action is.
If security even glanced at him in the halls, it was … “some guest pushing a bellhop cart with some luggage or packages on it”, 100% anodyne and ignorable. It’s only if someone was watching him specifically over days to see a weird pattern that anything would stand out, and who’d even do that? That’s the kind of thing you need automated computerized facial recognition and pattern detection systems for, and that’s real low on hotel security priorities, because it’s a black swan thing.
All the CCTV in the universe doesn’t matter if you look harmless to the camera.)
The killer simply played his cards too close to his vest. He wasn’t an angst-y teenager nor an ideological or religious zealot, either of whom would have left more of a social media trail. Whatever evil he succumbed to, he kept within his own mind. That leaves little for us to go on, and speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.
Others including have already said something similar, but my instant take on this was that it is because the survivors of the Las Vegas massacre are likely to be less malleable to media coaching than high school students.
Simple story here. The shooting was from a MGM Resorts Hotel. Those of you who know the stories of Clark County and Kirk Kirkorian and his very interesting business associates over the decades will know exactly why the story was buried. No bigger conspiracy here just the usual small one that pervades everything in Los Vegas. The LVPD, City and County will allow the business interests to suppress anything that might leave them liable to future lawsuits. In any other state the hotel would be looking at multi billion dollar negligence liability lawsuits down the line. I’d be very surprised if MGM Resorts pay out a single dime in damages anytime in the future. Because thats how Los Vegas works.
Not sure I see why they should.
Indeed. What duty did they breach?
I suppose someone will try to stretch Rylands v Fletcher (if it applies in Nevada).
‘…unusual, extraordinary, or inappropriate…’ use of a hotel as a fire post.
I agree that there is a temptation toward conspiracy theory here. But I honestly think it is rather simpler.
In the Las Vegas thing there is basically no information. The motive seems utterly opaque, and it was conducted in the sterile, temporary, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” city that it is. So afterward the victims largely dispersed, there was nothing to say on the shooter side, and what little was available was throttled by the big corporation. And I think they were probably smart to do so since they did nothing wrong, but were quickly surrounded with a salivating pack of lawyered up wolves who “just want to know what happened”, or so they say as they hold out their hand for a big pay check.
But the Florida thing is different. First of all kids dead in such a perfunctory manner makes us all share to some degree in the experience. All our kids go to school. MSD was apparently an excellent school, so no brushing it off as “inner city crap, so glad I moved to the suburbs”. Dead kids in situations that our kids could just have easily been in resonates very deeply with people. Add to that that some of the kids interviewed afterward were just extremely impressive and articulate (this is before the hysteria happened). Plus there is just WAY more to say about it all. Details of the shooter, info about the FBI and police. Also, they all live in the one place, so it is far easier to get them together. Add to that the the students do seem to have had a spontaneous reaction to “do something” and group together to act. That is part of the naivete of children that is also so appealing to us. And finally, this comes at a time when it can most readily be used to beat up on the much hated President. With the case against him falling to pieces and bouncing back on his accusers, they seem to need to throw everything including a kitchen sink full of bump stocks at him.
Of course I’m not saying that the tragedy hasn’t been exploited by some rather slimy people, but there are pretty good reasons why it has more sticking power as a story.
Where you really see the bias is the continued push for gun regs when the real story here is just utterly appalling. The FBI had two EXTREMELY specific warnings with months of advance notice. The police visited the guy dozens of times and got a huge number of warnings. The school also was warned and warned and warned. And despite that the slimy Sheriff still had the audacity to stand in from of the camera and lecture us “if you see something, say something.” One might well ask, in this case, why bother?
In an interview the Sheriff said that they had 19 warnings and 17 were handled correctly, and they were investigating the other two. The utter naked irony of such a stupid thing to say was entirely lost on him. But let me spell it out, if the 17 where handled “correctly” that is to say “according to protocol” then the protocol is plainly deeply broken and needs to be fixed. And that is something landing squarely at the feet of the ridiculous sheriff.
Add to that the fact that the police didn’t even go into the school even though an armed guard was there, and several more turned up until the shooting stopped (and another, apparently better trained PD turned up a little later — kudos to the Coral Springs PD.) Add to this the publicity seeking sheriff, the slimy politicians, the greedy foster parents, the utter failure of the social services, the perfect villain, and so many other things, it is like the freaking Keystone cops. This shooting was preventable. Not by gun control laws but had the police and other government agents been even mildly competent. Yet, we are lectured, that we need to give up our guns and trust the government. Again, the irony is laughable.
One other point worth asking. The OP asked why this is not more compared to the LV shooting. I think a more interesting question is why is it not compared to the daily massacre of schoolchildren that goes on every day in Chicago. After all, not only dead children but dead black children. Of course much of the answer is that Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and that it has been controlled by a cabal of democrats (including an Obama alum) for most of its history.
OK, rant over. I have said my piece. I’d say something about the CNN town hall, but, really, why bother? Who was surprised by that (except perhaps Dana Loesch?)
I’d sort of disagree about the contrast between the two incidents. On the one hand, you COULD make excuses for Cruz – his troubled childhood etc. (and indeed his lawyer tried that in his first court appearance) and – every one in chorus – “Lessons have been learned”. But Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter had everything, appeared boringly normal and was not known to the Ploice.
If I wanted to push an anti gun agenda, I’d have said something along the lines of “OK, the system failed Cruz and he should have been picked up by the system and something done about him. But Paddock was a normal guy. If a normal guy can go off it and do this, then how many other normal guys are likely to do so? Let’s prevent all the other normal guys who could potentially do something like that from having guns”.
An analogy that I’d use is that every man has the equipment to be a rapist but only a vanishingly small number actually do rape. So what makes you believe that all those men that do not succumb to their baser instincts and become rapists will suddenly go mad with a gun?
I have read a lot of stuff on blogs and commentary about both the Las Vegas and school shootings and I am more and more becoming convinced that the public are being systematically lied to. It isn’t as if it hasn’t been going on a long time – after all, in the UK the 1920 Firearms Act was a panic measure to prevent armed revolution but was sold as a crime prevention measure.
Watch this space carefully – many smart folks are.
The bodies were not cold and the FBI said, “No terrorism” Really? How could they know that in nanoseconds?
https://twitter.com/Thomas1774Paine/status/967053567000489985
Headline from above:
“We gave FBI chances to do the right thing in Las Vegas massacre probe. THEY DIDN’T. We will Expose what they’re hiding. This cover-up makes Watergate look like a children’s birthday party. SOON. (RT and share cause Twitter doesn’t want you to). SUPPORT US”
Reminds me of the London Police who said recently that they can’t figure out why London rapes increased 20% year over year. You are either stupid or lying if you can’t figure that out, Sherlock.
Mr Ed, I haven’t given Rylands v. Fletcher a thought in 40 years. But I can’t see how it is applicable. The hotel didn’t bring in a murderer, or a pile of guns, for its own purposes. And it did nothing to create an extraordinary risk, upon which strict liability was premised there. I’m just not seeing it. (I’m not saying that some “enterprising” (snark) lawyer might not file suit against the hotel, merely that I can’t see any basis for it.)
Its worse than that. Alex Jones (admittedly info-tainment) is being framed and railroaded off YouTube for showing videoed interviews with students who all agree that there was more than one shooter at parkland. Note that these interviews were made by a Houston Tx reporter sent to Florida to cover baseball, and his news station inexplicably refused to air them, so he posted them on his Twitter. Jones posting these already released videos (And suggesting that he believes them) is being called “bullying”. CNN, the Wall street Journal and others are out to destroy Jones. How pathetic is that?
If you bring a lion, or a tank of poison gas, or a dammed-up lake onto your property, you are its keeper, and you take on a duty to the world to keep it from escaping and injuring others.
Not so when you bring on to your land a person who, unknown to you, seeks to do harm. If you know he has guns and is homicidal, that’s different, of course.
bobby b and Laird,
I agree with your analysis, it’s just that in some States, tort law seems to have burst the bounds of that ‘whore Reason’ as Luther might have put it.
1. The Defendant allowed the Killer sole and private access to a room with a view ‘the room’ over the city and the concert area. The Defendant openly boasted about the view its rooms offered, and thus made itself an obvious destination for a shooter intent on harm.
2, The Defendant allowed the Killer the room, ensured that it was secure, and took no steps to ensure that the room (with its view) was checked for an unnatural and exceptional accumulation of firearms and ammunition.
3. The Defendant, despite the obvious use of its rooms with a view, took no steps to ensure that no firearms or ammunition were brought into the room, despite having control of the entrances and exits of its premises, and a contractual right of access to its own rooms, e.g. for housekeeping, fire safety etc. The Defendant could have ensured that guests are checked for such items as are likely to be used to cause harm to the deceased and injured….’
Tangentially related point: the media frenzy whenever there is a school shooting is at least partly casually related to there being further school shootings. A disturbed loner with no friends sees surefire way of, however briefly, being the most famous person on earth.
I’ve been wondering if a voluntary code of conduct for the press might be part of the solution. You could enforce it with Twitter mobbing and boycotts. It would be nice to see these tactics put to good use for a change. #DenyThemFame
As a suggestion:
I can see that this would be perceived as violating the first amendment, which is why I suggested a voluntary code. And the thing is, these salivating media hounds aren’t reporting anything we don’t already know. Every damn school shooting:
By refraining from reporting this very obvious set of contributing factors, perhaps we can stop there being further shootings? If you no longer got famous from school shootings, and the teachers were armed so you had a good chance of getting killed before you’d killed anyone, maybe they just wouldn’t bother?
If the shootings were displaced to something like a mall shooting (not covered by the boycott) you’d basically know that the fame as motivator theory was correct.
I keep seeing this suggestion, and I keep disagreeing (until something convinces me otherwise)
I am sure that’s the case with some of these individuals, but I am far from convinced that it applies to all or even a majority of them. And even when it does apply, I think the importance of the public having information about them supersedes the possible usefulness of that suggestion. All that before I even mention the impossibility of implementing such a ban, either voluntary or not, without running the risk of leaks, mis- and disinformation, speculations, etc. I think this is one of those issues where sunshine is the best disinfectant.
There’s reporting and there’s reveling Alisa. The American media loves school shootings. Every detail, no matter how microscopic, is poured over again and again.
I’d be happy to treat this as an experiment. Arm teachers and stop reporting the shooter’s names. If the shootings keep happening, I’m wrong. If they stop I’m right.
@bobby b
”
âIâd be very surprised if MGM Resorts pay out a single dime in damages anytime in the future.â
Not sure I see why they should.
”
Well given just how closely monitored absolutely everything in those casinos is you can be sure that there was plenty of pre attack surveillance media that shows out of the ordinary behavior, even for LV, in that room. The guy was well know to them, he was comped lots of stuff in the past, so not just another idiot punter. People like MGM Resorts keep very close tabs on big spenders. Its their business. For a start I’m sure they we keeping a close watch on just how much money he had. Its not just Equifax who will sell that info to all comers. They knew exactly how much he had to spend and how much he had left.
From a negligence liability point of view the most interesting point is the very deliberate delay in the LVPD being allowed access to the building and the failure to pass on the very accurate info the hotel security had on the shooter from the get go. I am 100% certain that from the moment the first shot was fired till 10 mins later when the last shot was fired the only goal of hotel security and management was to protect at all costs MGM Resorts interests. So CYA at all times. If the shooter had been operating from a normal hotel in a normal city the response would have played out very differently, as would the subsequent investigation.
If you want to see capitalism at its very very worse no better place to see it than LV. An utter cesspit.
You want a conspiracy? You can’t handle the conspiracy!
I’m with Alisa (February 28, 2018 at 8:58 am), not JadedLibertarian (February 28, 2018 at 7:50 am): the downsides of unreporting (voluntarily or otherwise) information exceeds the upsides, and I agree that shooters may well not all be alike. More attention to tone – expressing the points JadedLibertarian makes rather to mock the shooter than to make them a perverted hero in a copycat’s eyes – would be welcome, but in a free speech environment that will never be universal even in a society where the PC tendency to invert villain and victim roles were less common than in ours.
On a lighter note, the minor typo in
reminded me of a former life in a department where it was the subject of not infrequent complaint that there seemed to be not a secretary in the world who would not turn “causal relationship” in the submitted paper into “casual relationship” in the printed proceedings.
Sorry Niall – I’m using swipe input on a smartphone and it does stuff like that đł
America is not unique in its access to firearms, but it is pretty much unique in having a problem with kids shooting up their schools. If it’s not a legislative problem (which it can’t be because of similarly gun heavy societies that don’t have this problem) then it must be cultural or psychological.
Cultural or psychological problems require cultural or psychological solutions. I don’t think there should be any need to pass new laws to tackle this. I do think it should be socially unacceptable to glory in this problem, dispatching the news chopper at the first sign of shots fired, interviewing survivors before the thousand-yard stare has even faded from their eyes.
Other countries don’t do this. The British media is awful, but their tone in covering mass killings is notably different, or at least it was.
A reporter with barely concealed excitement getting closeups of blood on the playground shouldn’t be welcome in polite society. Instead they in all probability get a promotion for their “hard hitting” reporting.
FWIW, I very much agree with your last comment, Jaded, but it is materially different from your previous, quite specific suggestion.
I agree Alisa, and to be honest the idea of being censorious leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I’m trying to think of actually doable solutions that have a chance to work.
It’s all well and good saying America has a cultural problem, but how do you change that culture? One way is to use the power of social media to say “this is unacceptable”. It’s done every day, for largely imaginary problems, and with alarming success. Can’t we deploy it in response to this very real problem?
Although I suppose I’m giving society, the media and politicians too much credit. I’m assuming that if they tried this, and it didn’t work, they’d admit the underlying hypothesis to be wrong and try something else. Past experience suggests this is unlikely.
I understand and even agree, but one of the main problems with this is precisely that it is not doable.
Indeed.
The FBI is politically partisan and as we now know, they will leak anything they like to help the leftist cause. The leftist media sit by and wait for these leaks to push anti-gun stories whenever there is a mass shooting. The chances that the FBI didn’t leak AND that the media didn’t want to use it to run anti-gun stories? Zero. Some aspect of this really, really hurts the leftist cause. The FBI are keeping it secret and the media have been briefed off the record not to ask questions or draw attention to it. Neither of them give a shit about any day to day concerns that normal people would keep in mind, like tourism or confidentiality or victim impact. If they are silent it’s because it hurts The Cause.
I’m with Mr Black. Something about the Las Vegas shooting came to light very quickly that would hurt an establishment narrative in some way, and it was buried.
It never does, Laird. Some years ago, I made the mistake of pointing this out in our city. I still can’t get a permit for anything.
Back on topic – At the risk of looking like I’m wearing tinfoil headgear, I’m going to agree with Mr Black & Tim N. There’s something that hurts the narrative and they all want it buried.
I still hear a lot about “bump stocks” in gun control debates, which I didn’t pre-Vegas. It’s not forgotten per se, but there’s no breaking news on it any more, and the media has a huge bias towards novelty and shock.
Also, no conspiracy theory needed. He carried guns up in bags – a guy coming up with a suitcase every few hours is not likely to attract attention in a place as busy as a Vegas casino/hotel(especially given shift changes, etc.), and ten trips with regular suitcases is more than enough to carry up the equipment he had in his room.
What’s interesting about this Florida school shooting is that events are revealing themselves in such a way that not even the most statist of gun controlling media types are able to spin the narrative to their ends. The old adage that “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away”…well, that’s a pithy line, and it hits home. It also assumes that the police *are* minutes away. Not in this case. In fact, the police were seconds away, yet they didn’t intervene. In Parkland, it wasn’t that the state couldn’t protect you – no, it could have. Actually, the state wouldn’t protect you. You were on your own.
What message should the ordinary citizen take away from this? That it is clear and painfully obvious they need to protect themselves.
Best justification for the 2nd Amendment in my lifetime at least.
The Islamic State claimed the Las Vegas shooter was one of theirs, not once but 2 or 3 times. They have not claimed Nikolas Cruz. The FBI said nothing to do with terrorism within hours in Las Vegas.. No investigative body does that unless they are lying or covering up. Mr. Black above is correct. The FBI is a joke. It is not just the Leftist political appointees on the 7th floor – it’s the whole agency. Read this from the Leftist Press:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a-lie/390897/
This is so true.
When CNN implies on national TV that the NRA doesn’t care about dead children the NRA must reply with the exact same accusation against CNN and the media.
“What happened in the FL school shooting is terrible and tragic. No law-abiding citizens had guns except the police. How will replicating this scenario across the United States help the situation? Don’t you care about the dead children? If you care about the dead children then you should want to create situations in schools across the USA that are the opposite of what happened in Florida, which means making sure law-abiding citizens have guns. As we saw in Florida, when only police and bad guys have guns children die. You care and you want to replicate the situation in Florida all across the USA which seems counterproductive to us. We care and that’s why we want to never give nut jobs the opportunity to commit this kind of atrocity ever again.”
Instead first thing out of the mouth of NRA spokespeople are apologetics and waffling and compromises and saying that the children have the right to have their opinions “respected”. Talk about scoring an own-goal.
Yeah, and âsome longish boxes on a luggage cartâ arenât exactly a Red Flag Alert thing.
I wish more people would realise this. While it’s true that the hotel is riddled with security cameras, unless the shooter is (a) already known to be dangerous, or (b) carrying the guns up by hand, absent any packaging – or (c) if the maids went thru his luggage – then how the hell would they know what he was sneaking into his room?
But, re: Fraser Orr – “In the Las Vegas thing there is basically no information.” Isn’t it the job of reporters to uncover that information?
I’d go further than something simply hurting the narrative, I suspect they are implicated in some way. There has still been no explanation for the obviously automatic weapons fire, this bump stock nonsense is misdirection. If I had to guess, I’d say the guns were government weapons intended for something else and explaining how they got to a Vegas hotel room would be very damaging.
@twinkletoes42069
âIn the Las Vegas thing there is basically no information.â Isnât it the job of reporters to uncover that information?
Sure, but sometimes there isn’t anything to uncover. Why did this guy do it? AFAICS there has been lots of investigative journalism on this and the well has come up dry. Fox news really has been pretty hard core on it, but nada. Whereas this looser in Florida, there are bucket loads of information, you just have to turn over a rock to find another utterly dreadful failure of another government agency. So sometimes, there just isn’t much to find.
@Mr Black
There has still been no explanation for the obviously automatic weapons fire, this bump stock nonsense is misdirection. If I had to guess, Iâd say the guns were government weapons intended for something else and explaining how they got to a Vegas hotel room would be very damaging.
I see no reason to believe that, in fact it sounds a little “we didn’t land on the moon” crazy to me. I think that often we want to assign complexity when the truth is horrible simplicity. We don’t want Lee Harvey Oswald to be some guy who one day decided to kill the President, and then just did. There had to be a complex web behind it.
I hadn’t really heard of bump stocks before so I did some research. The video linked below is an excellent explanation. To me, the firing of that weapon sounds exactly like it did on the videos of Las Vegas.
BTW, the other thing to learn from this video is that banning them is just virtue signaling. These devices are very simple, simple enough that you could readily make one in a 3D printer. So banning them will do nothing to stop someone who wants one (and doesn’t care about the law) from getting one. Though it might spoil a few people’s fun.
Video is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2IOZ-5Nk5k
I’ve shot with bumpfire stocks. They make the gun horribly inaccurate, but fast. Probably good for spraying fire in a general direction, but not much else.
But why bother? You can do the exact same thing, but with more accuracy, with one small rubber band.
The sounds were entirely consistent with bumpfire use. And, if you were simply spraying fire out into a crowd and weren’t trying to hit individual targets, the accuracy degradation of a bump stock wouldn’t interfere.
@bobby b, very interesting video on the rubber band thing. Thanks for sharing. Obviously it is time to protest outside of Office Max. Don’t you know they are killing our children with their evil office supplies?
Fraser, it’s not just Office Max. The US Post Office uses thousands of those rubber bands every day! Clearly they’re enabling terrorists.