Gunman kills at least 58 people in Las Vegas; over 500 injured

[Anyanka Bunny Slayer]

Las Vegas shooting death toll rises to 58, no apparent connection to terror


At least 58 people were killed and 515 were injured in Las Vegas on Sunday night when a gunman opened fire on a music festival crowd from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. It was the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.

The "nonstop gunfire," according to one witness, sent more than 22,000 country music fans scrambling for their lives. Police say the lone suspect had at least 10 rifles when he was found dead in a Mandalay Bay hotel room.

Terrified bystanders ducked, ran, then sprang into action -- frantically caring for the wounded. As ambulances rushed to the scene, concert-goers made makeshift stretchers out of police barricades. They plugged wounds with their bare hands and used their clothing to try to stanch eachother's bleeding. At least one man described a stranger dying in his arms.


I watched the news coverage last night, which showed cellphone videos of the shooting. The gunman was using fully automatic weapons, which is pretty horrifying.

 

[EarthLogic]

It's horrendous. Fully automatic is banned right? It does baffle me how even semis are still legal in the US. What possible justification can there be for their use in civilian life?

 

[Fuffy Baith]

This is just terrible. Why would someone do this? It's definitely very worrying. My niece goes to a lot of concerts in Vegas, I'm glad she wasn't there. But it's so sad for those poor people.

 

[Mrs Gordo]

Words fail me. Fully automatic is not legal in US but I am told it is fairly simple to make semi automatic fully automatic. We don't have all of the facts in this case yet. I wish we could outlaw them all :/. But gun reform never makes any headway. Its very depressing.

 

[Taake]

It is insane how many people one person can injure, just because... well I guess we don't know why? And I'm not sure it matters. My thoughts are with those who just went out for a night of fun and will never make it home again, and the people who'll miss them. It's all so senseless.

 

[Priceless]

This is absolutely awful. The loss of life is appalling. As a European I can't help thinking after Sandy Hook, there really is no hope and this will keep happening. Senseless

 

[The Bronze]

Horrendous. Every time you turn on the news something awful is happening. I love going to festivals and have had family visit vegas a few times, just makes it hit a little harder.

I don't know what this says about the availability of weaponry in America. Obviously nothing will change, too much money in guns. I'm not even sure if it could now given the amount available. It does show how ridiculous the argument of having everyone armed for safety is.

As for why? Because he was an asshole or had serious mental health problems. Exactly the same as anyone else slaughtering people.

 

[white avenger]

Fully automatic is not legal in US but I am told it is fairly simple to make semi automatic fully automatic. We don't have all of the facts in this case yet. I wish we could outlaw them all :/.

That's another myth perpetrated by Hollywood and a news media far too eager to advance their own agenda. Semiautomatic weapons can be made to fire continuously, but they will almost never function that way for more than a few rounds before the action overheats and they either jam or blow up in the shooter's face. True so called "assault weapons," not the semiautomatic civilian replicas are actually "select fire," which means that they can fire either one round each time that the trigger is depressed, or in short 3 or 4 round bursts, and have very different internal action components to counteract the overheating problem. I know that for a fact, because I was an armorer in the U S Army for two years, and small arms were my specialty.

Even if the rifles used actually were actual assault rifles, it would be far easier, and cheaper, to buy them illegally from agents of Mexican gun dealers. (Ironically, President Obama "sold" several hundred thousand American M-16s and literally tons of ammunition to the Mexican government, but wound up being delivered instead to Mexican drug cartels) which is already illegal, so passing any more laws would be redundant. (making drug and gun smuggling more difficult be restricting the existing easy access across our borders by beefing up our Border Patrol department makes far more sense, but seems to be for some reason politically incorrect these days)

What happened in Las Vegas was a tragedy, made far worse by the fact that it was almost totally unpreventable in any practical matter, something that the law enforcement agencies there in Las Vegas have already affirmed, by any means short of literally hand checking every man, woman, and child who has access to any site suitable to mount an attack like this. This is how terrorists, whether organized groups or individuals with some obscure agenda, are able to carry out this kind of thing, whether here in the United States, where citizens are allowed to legally own firearms, or elsewhere, where the ownership of firearms is highly restricted or restricted altogether. If they can't get guns, they use explosives, something far easier to obtain or manufacture themselves, or simply drive an automobile into a crowd of people.

To update an old standard, "Guns don't kill people, terrorists do."

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Guns don't kill people,

But they do fall on you whilst climbing on them on stage.

 

[Fool for Buffy]

All the natural disasters going on right now and now this. Our country is going through a rough time. Thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims. I know I should feel sympathy for the shooter as well, as it takes something truly terrible to lead someone to do such a thing, but I'm struggling to. I hope this is a wake-up call for the country and not an example, because I'm really worried.

 

[redruM]

It's horrendous. Fully automatic is banned right? It does baffle me how even semis are still legal in the US. What possible justification can there be for their use in civilian life?

Apparently, this drum mag has been legal in Nevada for over 3 years (or so a random internet stranger told me on reddit). Skip to 47 seconds

We won't know details for some time while the investigation occurs. but, gun laws vary state by state. Here in the northeast/new england we have some of the stricter laws, especially in Connecticut because of sandy hook. I believe New york recently banned AR-15s as well.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

If you are keeping score, this is the 273rd mass shooting in the US this year where mass shooting is defined as four victims or more. Get used to it. This is the new normal. The Second Amendment rights would require a 2/3 majority to change and that is never going to happen. If you think the Democrats could do something, keep in mind, the only change to gun legislation in Obama's time was that you could concealed carry in national parks where you couldn't before.

 

[Anyanka Bunny Slayer]

Of course, now we have celebrities talking about gun control. Again. Stricter laws regarding the purchase of firearms won't prevent mass shootings. If somebody really wants a gun, they'll buy it illegally.

 

[Bop]

I don't understand how the man could have possibly done this by himself, getting hold of all those weapons, carrying them to his room. How did he get away with that? Doesn't help that his brother says he had no military training or access to that many weapons. Of course he could be lying, but it's still a question. I hope they figure out if this guy was really a lone wolf or not.

 

[brinkster130]

I don't understand how the man could have possibly done this by himself, getting hold of all those weapons, carrying them to his room. How did he get away with that? Doesn't help that his brother says he had no military training or access to that many weapons. Of course he could be lying, but it's still a question. I hope they figure out if this guy was really a lone wolf or not.

He checked into the hotel with numerous suitcases; which is normal for Vegas. He was local so it’s not like any of his bags went through any type of security. It was probably very easy to get all the guns to his rooms.

 

[white avenger]

I don't understand how the man could have possibly done this by himself, getting hold of all those weapons,

The shooter has been described as a millionaire, so he obviously had no trouble buying whatever he wanted. The police have found, in his home, about 19 other guns, a large quantity of ammunition, and explosives, which leads me to believe that some, if not all, of this stuff was bought illegally, which would be a better explanation for the fully automatic rifles than simply modifying existing semiautomatics, something that is, as I said previously, more difficult that it would appear, according to the media.

 

[Anyanka Bunny Slayer]

Scary how accessible those weapons can be if you have money 🙁

Everything is accessible when you have money.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

People tend to think in terms of archetypical characters when they think about their national identity. One of the leading archetypes, peculiar to the US, is the gunslinger. He is the hired gun who comes to town to solve a problem. A personnel problem. He gets paid to kill someone.

Another uniquely American word is "troubleshooter", originally derived from "troublehunter", a word originally used to describe linesmen who took care of telegraph lines. Since a "shooter" needs a target, a trouble shooter is used to refer to anyone who kills off some personified trouble.

When Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964, one of the things he was proud to say to people was that he met Wyatt Earp (who lived to be an 80-year old man, born March 19, 1848 and died January 13, 1929) in his younger days. The Western as a movie or TV series has gone out of favour now but it still has its fans and most importantly, it has a place in the national psyche. Asking Americans to give up their guns is like asking them to give up their identity, their history and their culture. It will never fly in the US.

By the time a child exits his teens, he has typically witnessed 11,000 gun-related killings on TV. Very few shows elucidate what really happens. In military combat, soldiers use jacketed rounds that do not break apart on impact. This was part of the Geneva Convention but also makes it less likely that a gun will jam. Domestic shooters usually use lead rounds with no jacket. The fragments fan out and often hit the spine. In a similar conversation on another forum after Sandy Hook, one poster gave a list of names with "P" or "Q" after them. This was not from the saying, "Mind your P's and Q's" (meaning pints and quarts). He meant paraplegics and quadriplegics, a very common fate when unjacketed ordnance is used. I can think of "Ironside" where a police detective is confined to a wheelchair due to a shot that fanned out into his spine. But usually, the idea of a permanent crippling injury is never seen on television, so people have this romantic notion of "only a flesh wound".

 

[vellavu]

 

[white avenger]

A big concern with this shooter is the number of firearms that he owned, apparently all legally purchased, the amount of ammunition and explosives that he had amassed, not all legally, and the number of guns that he actually had with him in the hotel room. None of those factors contributed in the slightest to what he, as a single shooter, did. He could have accomplished the same amount of damage with only two or three, or even a single, rifle. Granted, having several weapons made it somewhat easier to expend as many rounds as he did in so short a matter of time, but, considering how long it took for the SWAT team to actually locate his position and breach the door, he could have actually done more damage with a scoped rifle, carefully picking his targets. Of course, if he had done that, there wouldn't have been the excuse to rant about semiautomatic rifles modified with Bump Stocks and high capacity magazines.

What happened in Las Vegas was certainly a tragedy of the greatest proportions, the highest mass killing in US history, but it could have been far, far worse. The evil here is the mad man squeezing the trigger, not his weapon of choice, and until we concentrate on finding a way of defending ourselves against a threat that no amount of rhetoric or well meaning if unrealistic legislation can possible prevent we aren't going to be making any progress whatsoever.

Background checks would not have worked, more gun control laws would not have worked, outright banning and confiscation of any and all firearms would not keep someone with the resources and the determination, as Paddock obviously had, from attempting something like this. The closest thing to a real solution is going to be, ultimately, having everyone simply crawl down into their own fortified bunker and live like a bunch of hermit crabs. At least that way, when they come for you, they can only get one at a time. Anything short of that is going to be some sort of acceptable compromise between reasonable security and relative freedom. Expecting some sort of miraculous solution to come from making it harder for honest, responsible people to own any particular type of firearm simply will not work. Just ask the families of the victims in London, Paris, and any of a dozen or more terrorist attack sites in countries where the private ownership of any sort of firearm whatsoever is difficult, if not altogether impossible,