Same suite. Report came out today he broke the second window to shoot at some airplane fuel storage tanks.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into the Aussie banning of assault guns/semi-automatic weapons.
First of all 13 mass shooting over a 15 or 18 years for Australia with a population of 6% of the US in 1980, now 7%, is small.
On per capita it is in order of .005 mass shootings per 100K population, Depending on how you define a mass shooting the US number is an order magnitude higher for the most restrictive definition and 30x higher than least restrictive definition
I love how Atlantic author cherry picked the data by mentioning New Zealand but missed a key point.
Subsequently, a study by McPhedran and Baker compared the incidence of mass shootings in Australia and New Zealand. Data were standardised to a rate per 100,000 people, to control for differences in population size between the countries and mass shootings before and after 1996/1997 were compared between countries. That study found that in the period 1980–1996, both countries experienced mass shootings. The rate did not differ significantly between countries. Since 1996-1997, neither country has experienced a mass shooting event despite the continued availability of semi-automatic longarms in New Zealand. The authors conclude that “the hypothesis that Australia’s prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported… if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia (and conversely, if prohibiting such firearms explains the absence of mass shootings), then New Zealand (a country that still allows the ownership of such firearms) would have continued to experience mass shooting events.”[61]
In other words, New Zealand eliminated mass shootings by making no changes to guns laws!
If we look more broadly at the Australian ban on semiautomatic weapons and subsequent buyback/confiscation,
we find some interesting things. Overall gun deaths decreased at the same or faster than the US, However, overall homicide rates decrease at a slower rate than the US. The one significant change was a drop in a fire arms suicides. Which would be good except the overall suicide rate remained the same, and the number of suicides by hanging increased sharply.
So overall in an emotional reaction to a single mass shooting, which were killing on average about 5 citizens per year the Australian government spent over $1 billion (AUS) to forcefully buyback guns from Aussie. In doing so they pissed off sportsmen, and made life harder for farmers. The only definitive result is Aussie men shifting from blowing their brains out to hanging themselves.
Even if they could definitely prove that banning semiautomatic stopped massed shooting, spending a $1 billion to save 5 persons a year is a colossal waste of resources, that fact that New Zealand achieved the result by spend $0 is exactly why Leah Libresco, the 538 researcher, would conclude this. " Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths."
The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–20101
Conclusions. Yada Yada we could not determine causation, Yada Yada. FIFY
This reminds me a lot of the research that was popular especially after Columbine showing the correlation between playing video games and violent behavior. Most of the researchers was careful to suggest that that correlation isn’t causation, but a hell of people weren’t careful.
At first glance, it sounded plausible violent video games caused teenagers to act violently and spun properly people who did not play video games it sounded convincing. California even passed laws regulating video game violence.
But by the end of the end of the century, you had to actively ignore the data to believe that video games resulted in violence. Violent crime was significant down, the numbers of folks playing video games had exploded. The group that showed the biggest decline in violent crimes, were young men 18-25 which is also the same group that was the most avid video game players. Now that doesn’t mean video game reduced crime. But simply showing some correlation between video game and violence doesn’t cut it, you have to show causation because the big picture data is really against you. Or as Micheal Moore said in Bowling for Columbine, maybe it was bowling.
The same thing is true in guns today. Gun sales are up considerably. gun laws are more relaxed than ever, violent crime is down overall as is gun crimes and firearm homicides. Using a correlation as justification for enacting an expensive policy just doesn’t cut it when the long-term trend is moving in the right direction.
You conveniently ignore the research done by CDC in the 90s, dismissed by the NRA as junk science and subsequently banned by congress.You are wrong Strollen, AEI and National Review is wrong, the NRA is wrong, that op-ed in WaPo is wrong. Just like climate change is not a problem in the world of conservatives is wrong, just like reducing taxes on the wealthiest American’s benefit everyone is wrong, just like insisting the fat people in America are responsible for soaring healthcare costs is wrong, just like insisting there isn’t racism in America is wrong.
“Gun sales are up and violent crime is down.”
Condensed version.
Is there any value for the public in portraying him or displaying his name, biography etc… ? I would try to implment following rule: If something like this happens, do not make the murderer public in any form, no names, pictures or biography. Let him stay unknown. These nutjobs should know in advance that their name will be forgotten and their actions will not be known.
This does not cost anything to implement, for me personally it is of no importance if John Smith killed 59 people in Las Vegas, why are we making them infamous? I do not need to know how he looks etc…
Don’t give those people a platform.
Somwhere I read, that these amok runs are to be seen as extended suicide. Maybe it does not prevent anything, but don’t give them a platform. Same with this norvegian mass murderer … why would I want to know his stupid name, biography? I am not going to write a book on him, let this information be accessible to reasarchers, which maybe have an actual interest in this stuff.
just my opinion from Europe …
I was going to mention folks who talk about gun suicide but my post was already long.
Folks like Caroline who take about overall gun suicides or even more euphemistically firearms related deaths are being disingenuous.
Naw scratch that she is being a MOTHERFUCKING LIAR and it is sickening.
MrGrumpy if you are even being the least bit intellectually honest, you know that average QT3 person, much less the average ill inform American aren’t upset about some poor guy blowing his head off with a 38. What American care about is the tiny percentage of folks who get a bunch of guns and try and often succeed in murdering folks. It is emotional.
You know how I know this, because suicide (the line between suicide and accidental ODs is blurry one) by ODs have doubled, tripled, in the case of Fentanyl gone up 540% in three years and nobody gives a shit and I know that because my Opiod thread has 7 posts and this thread has 543. So please don’t insult my intelligence by bringing up gun suicide BS.
Because when you do that, I’m really tempted to show the very strong negative correlation between countries with low gun ownership, and high suicides. Hint Japan and Korea have some of the lowest gun ownership and the highest suicide rates. Which means I could generate a great chart showing if you want to save lives buy more assault or some such BS.
Actually, there is a lot of merit in this. There is a lot of copy copy killers. Especially among the younger shooters, a lot of them had a desire to be famous. I also hate when the media say the largest mass shooting in modern history, WTH is this some type of competition.
If I was King. I’d make it a federal crime to reveal the name or any information about the shooter or mass murder. No discussion of his jobs, age, religion, etc. If somebody posted his name on twitter, and you retweet you’d go to jail, brought his name up on a discussion board jail. In the case of media companies, I’d levy a fine equal to 1% of their annual revenue per day which I use to compensate the victims families. ISIS could claim all the responsibility and we’d just say nope wasn’t a terrorist, just a nut case.
I’d also require any news stories that discussed the shooting to spend twice as much time/words discussing the victims as the shooting.
I figure the first murder would require me jailing thousand of people, the second hundreds, the third probably a hundred, but by the end of the year only a handful. I’d bet we would see a huge drop in mass killing within a year.
*Obviously this would unconstitutional AF, but if we are going to trample on the constitution let’s at least do something that’s effective.
Fucking bargain.
Sportsmen? Who the fuck cares. Farmers, I could get behind their dissatisfaction, but they seem to be doing just fine with bolt actions.
Probably because it also reminds you of 9/11 at the same time you are feeling sad because of Las Vegas.
More details coming out. Paddock has rented an AirBnB overlooking another festival a week earlier. Not sure why he ended up skipping it.
And sheriff said there were indications he had plans to escape.
It’s the kind of “guilt by parentage” we would like to shy away from … but his father was diagnosed as a psychopath. Maybe… it just runs in the family. Psychopaths are also thought to be over-represented in successful businesses, and he was a pretty successful guy.
The note he left (apparently visible in those leaked photos) was apparently written after he realized he was trapped, and is not a suicide note, whatever that means.
He purchased 33 firearms in the last 11 months. Did anything odd happen 11 months ago…?
Fear of a Clinton Planet, among others.
What everyone is getting bogged down in is technical solutions to cultural problems. You’re not going to find a mechanical way to make guns safe or to make them less useful in mass shootings, because bumpfire and trigger cranks and all that were designed specifically to be outside the wording of legislation. It’s not a balanced thing, in order to legislate you have to be the one to commit to the phrasing, and to get things passed you have to compromise at some level.
“Rate of Fire” What does that even mean? In whose hands? Over what period?
“maximum 10 rounds before reload” We already did this, for a decade. During that period the modern mass shooting era started.
The difference between Australia and the US is that Australia underwent a cultural shift after a shooting. They became less macho about guns and ultimately decided they weren’t going to be a gun country overall. The bans and buybacks were, by the numbers, mostly ineffective, catching something less than 20% of available weapons. But culturally they stopped being a gun culture, and that made all the difference. How you do that in the US, I have no idea.
And don’t get me wrong, you can ban ARs and semiauto pistols and do a buyback right now and I won’t give a squeak, I shoot revolvers and Olympic guns these days, my sports will be unaffected. But as long as the culture of guns and fear and other and blah blah blah exists we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing.
The thing is that I think the cultural shift has already happened in the us, maybe not for an outright ban but definitely for tougher gun control across the board. A large majority of Americans favour it, just as a large majority of Americans do not own a gun or aspire to gun ownership.
This is another fundamental point of view of gun advocates, along with the ‘cat out of the bag’ argument. The statement that gun control would only inconvenience law-abiding sportsmen and do nothing against criminals. It doesn’t hold up for more than a moments thought.
First of all, a lot of guns are purchased legally and then used in crime, which is so blatantly logical it needs no data to support. A bad guy in Chicago hops on the bus to Indiana ($2 fare each way), buys a hand gun with cash (no permit required), then uses it to rob a store.
Second, as clearly evidenced by Vegas, not everyone who uses a gun in a crime is already a criminal. It’s entirely possible that if all Vegas-shooter could get was a bolt action gun, the number of fatalities would have been much less. Yes there is a counter-argument, that if there was a complicated approval/permit process, he might have done it. Say a training course, an interview, and reference checks, and forms. But maybe not. Or maybe the interview and reference check would have rubbed the permit-guy the wrong way, so he says no. But we’ll never know.
Third, if you’re a law-abiding sportsman or hunter, what’s the big deal? Say a long gun bolt action requires a two-day training course and a couple of forms, and the government/police knowing you have a gun. How is this ‘totally unacceptable’? It’s a deadly weapon, isn’t some form of inconvenience entirely reasonable? Most gun owners think it’s ok to inconvenience themselves at home by putting their gun in a case with a lock (except maybe gun owners who home-carry, not sure if that’s anyone here but if so, you’re just too far gone, sorry). For normal gun owners, what’s the big issue with extending that inconvenience slightly to the acquisition stage?
I was deeply annoyed this morning; the news had the “No way this guy could have done it on his own” mantra going in full force.
Yes, he easily could have. There was no special collaboration needed. I understand in a way it’s comforting to assume some cabal is out there because it psychologically isolates the danger, but we as a people need the opposite. We need to recognize that our culture and laws have combined to make precisely this kind of incident a very real danger at any time.
Ah ha, but what if someone needs to defend their home from an evil black man at a moment’s notice? See, you can’t wait 2 days for that. Think of the children!
I saw that too. Why do people automatically assume that one man can’t do this stuff? These are weapons that are meant to kill many people quickly. That only gets easier when those people aren’t aware you’re going to be shooting at them.
I was looking for a “Five day waiting period?! But I’m angry now!” But I guess I’ll take what I can find.
Yeah, bump stocks will be the sacrificial lamb the GOP will offer up. Wonder how much the NRA will fight it?
I doubt they’ll put up much of a fight about it. There’s no money for them from the manufacturers of bump-fire devices. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re almost enthusiastic about a bump-fire ban because it’s such an easy scapegoat solution.