As discussed in the Terrorism P&R thread, I think it’s appropriate to split this out into its own topic. I kept it in P&R, because I strongly suspect that it will evolve into a discussion of gun control. From what we know, the individual shooter had multiple fully automatic machine guns. Something that no civilian should be able to possess.
Currently, CNN is reporting at least 50 dead and 200 injured. That’s the largest mass casualty incident due to gun violence in the United States. How will the country respond? How will Trump respond?
TBH the stagnation or ossification of our conservative politics has made action impossible. What they want is to not act and to justify not acting by downplaying the scale and severity of events. Republicans today don’t want to do anything,imo. They don’t want to pay taxes, or spend money fixing things after natural disasters, or in any way change course. In Texas new laws have just come into effect reducing the license fees for handguns. Trump’s administration has been essentially trying to unravel government’s ability to act and their accomplishments amount to undoing rather than doing.
I think the way forward somehow involves pulling their heads out of the sand.
More and more it sounds like he had a cache of weapons but two were used, one either fully automatic as purchased, or modified to be that way. It is also assumed it is a high velocity round, thus the guy on the 32 floor was able to still cause so much loss of life, compounded by the large distance and angle which caused heavy ricochet.
I await further details on the news, but the huge question is what motive a 64-year-old had to do this? Just a fuck you before he checked out? Some crazy hatred of people or the music festival? Just plain crazy?
It’s sad and horrible, and I’m assuming this will dominate the news and only empower other crazed people that think about things like this.
My wife had the same immediate question. It doesn’t fit the profile of the typical terrorist / mass shooter.
When I found out that concert was a country music festival, I was also surprised. Rightly or not, I associate conservative, right-wingers with loving country music, so I feared he might be associated with the fringe left. Or be like that guy who shot at the Republican congressmen.
I’ll also admit to being a bit prone to overreaction. When I woke up and saw the “50 dead, 200 injured in Las Vegas” notification on my phone’s lock screen, I turned to my wife and said, “This is how The Handmaid’s Tale began”. I remain both curious and scared about how Fox News, Breitbart, and Trump will spin this. I outright sighed with relief when I saw the shooter wasn’t Muslim / brown.
This is horrible. Sadly, I’ve been wondering when someone would plan a shooting like this from an elevated position against a huge crowd of people at a concert or sporting event.
Definitely. Beautifully shot, and a powerful story that’s incredibly well acted (see their Emmy haul this year). The story doesn’t literally begin with a mass shooting in Las Vegas, but a mass casualty incident (I won’t go into details to avoid spoiling you) that prompts creeping restrictions on civil liberties which culminates in the world of the Handmaids.
Suspect barricaded himself in the 32nd floor room of the hotel. How they found him: so much smoke from firing his weapon that it set off the alarms in the room.
They also blew the door with a breach charge, that audio was going this morning. And I’m not sure if it’s crazy or not but all I could think of was Rainbow Six/Rogue Spear going through my head.
Actually there is a bit of logic to this. When you want to live in a deregulated society where government is strangled and deprived of resources and authority then self-defense in a heavily armed society does make sense.
The crazy thing is that’s is the goal and not an unintended consequence. These people really do want to live in a world where it’s all up to you. And increasingly… because they’ve been in power for decades, we do. Many of the people i know in Texas would scream bloody murder if someone tried to restrict gun ownership. They’d rather live in a society where they’re in constant fear of being shot, and own guns, then live without fear of being shot and not own them, such have guns been fetishized. We’re likely to see another round of “automatic” buyups because Crazy Liberals are going to take our valued, cherished automatics from us for sure, this time, so better buy them all while you can.
