A gunman fired upon thousands of people attending a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Sunday night, in a brutal attack that is blamed for at least 58 deaths, police say. In the mass shooting and panic that ensued, 515 people were injured. At least one of the dead is an off-duty police officer who was attending the concert.
Editorializing: Interesting how media always emphasize ISLAMIC terrorists, but downplay domestic terrorism as psychologically disturbed individual lone-wolfs.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by jmorris on Monday October 02 2017, @05:06PM (21 children)
I know this story has to go up but it will be sound and fury signifying nothing.
Somebody will call for gun control and be flamed to a crisp. Somebody will (already has) bring up the terrorist angle and the painfully obvious narratives will be trotted out and be argued again. The reports that the shooter was at anti-trump rallies will make it here and another flamewar will ensue.
We won't actually know much for 48 hours because we never do. Even in the information age we still don't begin to sort out all the conflicting reports from these horrible incidents for a few hours.
We have destroyed social cohesion, leaving millions feeling isolated and disgruntled. Then we allowed so many terror attacks that violence is mainstreamed. This shit is going to keep happening, that is the bottom line. Plan accordingly.
(Score: 4, Informative) by meustrus on Monday October 02 2017, @05:24PM (9 children)
Resulting in yet another run on gun stores by nutjobs who think this is their last chance to get that handgun they will never even learn how to use. Highly profitable for the gun industry that controls politicians through the NRA.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @07:03PM (8 children)
Erm... that never really happened. Now .22 shells being all but unobtainable did.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday October 02 2017, @10:05PM (7 children)
What Happens After Calls for New Gun Restrictions? Sales Go Up [nytimes.com]
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @10:31PM (6 children)
Sales going up does not quite equate to "a run on". It's still fairly hard to find .22 shells for sale though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:49AM (5 children)
TMB, you compete firearm novice, what are you talking about? .22 is a caliber, not a "shell". And the "shell" is not quite descriptive enough either, it is only the empty casing once the bullet has been fired. So did you mean .22 short rimfire? Or .22 Long rimfire? Or possibly, and the most likely, .22 Long Rifle rimfire? Could you be referring to the Winchester Magnum Rimfire in .22 caliber? Or any of the centerfire configurations in the same bore diameter? .22-250? .222 Remington? .223 Remington (also know as the NATO 5.56mm round) .224 Weatherby Magnum? .225 Winchester? I was sure there was a Roberts round in this caliber, but it escapes me at the moment. '
'
So which of these "shells", oh Mis-aiming Artillery Buzzard [google.com], are you referring to, and do you have any actual evidence to support your scurrilous assertions? Or are you once again hoist on your own petard, but, actually, a .22 is a rather small petard, so perhaps you failed to be hoisted?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:12AM (1 child)
It's funny to see you expose your Achilles Heel while trying to take someone else to task over firearm terminology. Not worth a +1, Funny mod, but in a sad sort of way.
You should try getting out of the house and finding a safe place to fire a .22 for yourself. Just ask for a "twenty two" to shoot; the folks behind the counter will know how to set you up right.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:37AM
So, just as ignorant as the TMB, I take it? You should be more careful. Chambering the incorrect cartridge, even though designers try to make such a thing difficult, can result in breach failure or a barrel banana peel.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 03 2017, @10:49AM (2 children)
And here I thought you'd be able to tell that I meant all ammunition of a .22 caliber. There's been almost none to be found at any given moment for a decade now.
Just a quick P.S. FYI: almost all .22 caliber weapons will fire any of .22 long rifle cartridges, .22 long cartridges, and .22 short cartridges at a minimum. If yours won't, it's up to you to know that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday October 04 2017, @12:22AM (1 child)
Answer the question, Buzzard! What shortages, other than those created in the minds of ammosexuals by the fact that a black man was president of the United States?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 05 2017, @02:49AM
Uhhhhh - the .22 shortage began BEFORE Obama was elected. I don't do a lot of shooting anymore, to be honest. My sons started talking about how hard it was to find .22 ammo. When they were younger, it wasn't uncommon for them to purchase a "brick" of ammunition. They, and their cousins, could burn through the whole brick pretty quickly. During Bush's second term, the "shortage" was being talked about. Obama's terms saw that "shortage" get worse. Almost no one would sell a whole brick of ammo. Instead, when a shipment of ammo came in to the retailer, there were a bunch of people waiting to buy up what was available. If the ammo didn't sell out immediately, word of mouth brought customers in quickly to deplete the retail store's stocks.
I never ran out - the half dozen boxes that I hid away stayed hidden. 300 rounds, available if/when I decided to use them. That's not a lot of ammo, but it's enough for a long time if you're not just burning through it for fun.
Personally, I seldom had money to buy ammo when I was a kid. I used a single shot, and made every shot count. I had friends who used semi-automatics, and fired more rounds on a weekend than I did in a year. Funny thing about most of them - they couldn't place their shots like me. The saying, "couldn't hit the broad side of a barn" didn't quite apply. They could fire a hundred rounds pretty damned quickly, and SOME of those rounds would hit the barn.
From my point of view, people who are wasteful of their ammunition shouldn't be surpirsed if ammunition becomes hard to find.
I've always had enough ammo laying around for whatever purposes I had for it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by choose another one on Monday October 02 2017, @05:44PM (3 children)
> The reports that the shooter was at anti-trump rallies will make it here and another flamewar will ensue.
Before anyone starts that flamewar, those reports are already debunked and appear to be based on a misidentification of the shooter as one Geary Danley.
See e.g. here: https://thinkprogress.org/gateway-pundit-geary-danley-5280ad08276f/ [thinkprogress.org]
There are also reports that ISIS have claimed him (the real shooter not the fake news one) as one of their own and that he was a convert to Islam.
His brother is now on record, all over the internet (google Eric Paddock) as saying he had _no_ political or religious affiliations, no mental illness alcohol or drugs problems, he had plenty of money and gambled high stakes but no one yet knows if he had money problems or big losses.
IMO it'll take more than 48hrs to get real reliable information on motive, religions etc. - if indeed we ever find out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @07:02PM
Hmm, perhaps blackmailed into it? "We need another mass shooter, people aren't as afraid as they used to be." "Ok, lets threaten some guy we have easy leverage over muahaha."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @10:19PM (1 child)
Here is most of what we have so far: https://i.redd.it/n5le2zvuqgpz.png [i.redd.it]
There was also a facebook page -- not handy to me at the moment -- that had a bunch of "not my president" stuff, Rachel Maddow's show, and similar.
So it's pretty certain that this guy was liberal/left/democrat. He shot up an event that would tend to attract Trump supporters.
There is also a potential connection to ISIS via his wife/girlfriend/roommate Marilou Danley. She's from the Philippines, where ISIS is active in the south, and was there when the shooting happened. She was also in the Middle East last year, having traveled to Dubai at least.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @11:10PM
I'll grant you that any country music (Dixie Chicks aside) concert is going to trend more red than blue but, while reliable, it's by no means a landslide.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @05:47PM (6 children)
Based on what I'm hearing from the local PD's that executed the search warrant, they found evidence he had installed emacs about a week before the shooting.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 02 2017, @06:10PM
Psh--it takes way longer than a week to be indoctrinated into the One True Editor. If he only installed it a week ago, he wasn't serious about it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday October 02 2017, @07:05PM
Based on what I'm hearing from the local PD's that executed the search warrant, they found evidence he had installed emacs about a week before the shooting.
Stop spreading fake news bullshit.
I'm sure he was a Windows 10 user. You can't trust those people. They should all be rounded up and put in asylums.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday October 02 2017, @07:35PM
"How do you write code using an editor of this kind?" - Yoda on emacs.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 02 2017, @07:44PM (1 child)
It took him that long to figure out the key combinations to shoot.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by rylyeh on Monday October 02 2017, @09:53PM
"There's no dam Meta key on there!!!!!"
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @10:46PM
It's not for nothing Emacs is called the Swiss Army Knife of editors. Violence is inherent in the software!