Las Vegas Priorities

mtn said:

So what is the qualifier for terrorism? This sure seems like it, even if he was working alone. 

The usual definition is "Using violence or intimidation to further a political agenda." And so far, there's been neither any statements from the criminal or any notes left behind indicating he had any sort of political agenda, and the target itself had no obvious political significance unless it was meant to be an attack on all America. Right now, we don't know if he wanted to deter America from meddling in Middle Eastern politics, thought he'd get in Jodie Foster's pants, decided he wanted to be remembered as one of the worst mass murderers in American history, or just really hated country music fans.

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

Yeah, but only a white guy will still automatically get the benefit of the doubt even after ISIS claims a connection to him.

What I find disconcerting about all of these shootings is the frequency in which the shooter also takes their own life. It leaves us nobody to question, research, study, or potentially learn from. 

There is a deep dark rabbit hole I'm not sure I care to go down originating with NOHOME's idea that this wasn't ended with a suicide, rather it was painted to look that way. Certainly changes the why with this and other similar shootings. *removes tinfoil hat cautiously*

At this point with what we seem to know, Nohome's story actually sounds plausible.  Or at least a possible scenario that is worth investigating by checking video records - assuming the hotel has such records that could potentially identify someone leaving the shooter's room.

Bobzilla said:

In reply to mtn :

If the point is stupid, than Indiana would also have similarly high crime rates, yet it doesn't. 

Actually, it does. 

Violent crime rate in 2015

Gary: 407.3

Hammond: 364.4

East Chicago: 484.1

Chicago: 504.4

U.S. Average: 207.7

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Gary-Indiana.html#ixzz4uSlvRipG

Also, Where do the guns come from, if not Chicago? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/01/29/us/where-50000-guns-in-chicago-came-from.html

Chicago can have tough gun laws all it wants, but as long as someone can buy the guns nearby (read: anywhere outside of city limits, other than Morton Grove), it doesn't do anything. Oh yeah, Morton Grove IL has arguably stricter gun laws than Chicago. Their Violent Crime Rate? 25.5. That has to be because of the gun laws, right?

It is just a bad argument. No alcoholics in a dry county, right?

EDIT: One more thing, source: https://www.chicagocriminallawyerblog.net/2017/09/where-do-all-illegal-guns-from-chicago.html

According to the FBI, roughly 60% of guns used in crimes in Illinois were from out of state.  The overwhelming number of those guns flow into Illinois from states that have much less restrictive gun laws.  Most of those out of state guns came from Indiana, which is next to Illinois.

A problem with comparing gun sales with alcohol sales.  Booze is purchased and consumed, firearms are a durable good.  A gun manufactured more than 100 years ago should still function perfectly well and with at least 300 million of them in circulation, trying to stuff that particular genie back into its bottle is a non-starter.  So instead of recycling the same tired discussions about the tool used we (as a culture) have to figure out what is causing people to commit atrocities.  Until we get a handle on that this cycle is going to repeat itself with new a different tools until the end of time.

And in reply to Gameboy:  it will be many decades before all the large trucks currently on the roads are replaced with fully and solely autonomous vehicles.  Again, will and way.

In reply to mtn :

Indiana... not east chicago. In fact The FBI lumps those outliers into the Chicago area. Look at Ft Wayne, Lafayette etc an hour away from that epicenter of fail and they drop dramatically to 288 and 292 respectively.

Interested to know where your numbers came from. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/table-6 

KyAllroad said:

So instead of recycling the same tired discussions about the tool used we (as a culture) have to figure out what is causing people to commit atrocities.  Until we get a handle on that this cycle is going to repeat itself with new a different tools until the end of time.

 

 

Second this. If we ban guns, they just use knives, or trucks, or fertilizer, or pipe bombs, or pressure cookers, or drones, etc. It's not the weapons that are the issue (although I'm not personally against limiting access within reason). It's the desire to do harm.

Bobzilla said:

In reply to mtn :

Indiana... not east chicago. In fact The FBI lumps those outliers into the Chicago area. Look at Ft Wayne, Lafayette etc an hour away from that epicenter of fail and they drop dramatically to 288 and 292 respectively. 

Ok, then look at Bloomington IL (231). Your point is that Chicago gun laws don't work. My point is that Chicago gun laws don't matter because the rest of Illinois has weaker gun laws, and Indiana's are far weaker still. 

Oh, and Illinois has 3.84 violent crimes per 1000 residents. Indiana? 3.88. https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/il/crime and https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/in/crime

Again, I'm not making an argument for or against gun laws. I'm just saying that you can't claim they don't work because Chicago has them. That would be like claiming they do work because of the aforementioned Morton Grove case. 

I am less concerned with the media sensationalizing the news, the with the media sensationalizing the news for a political agenda. 

I listened to several hours of CNN coverage last night.  It seems like every single sentence spoken was advocacy for gun control. Zero counterpoint at all.  

Its the news.  They SHOULD report it.  But they should not create it.

You can't damage 500+ people and kill 59 of them in a few minutes with a knife. It's the scale and ease inflicting carnage that makes it the preferred tool of madmen. It's also a cultural icon. No one directly wields fertilizer or pipe bombs. No one stands in front of a mirror talking E36 M3 to themselves holding a jug of mustard gas ingredients  - they are not attractive to the type of nut that pulls a trigger for some reason. They ARE tools of the terror crowd but not the lunatic "take the world with me" type of broken mind. I think they like to personally inflict. And to solve that guy's scenario you have to figure out how to alleviate the national symptom that drives men and boys to mass murder suicides or take away the access to the boomsticks altogether without deliberate, rigorous vetting.

The US will do neither of those things and we will have this thread again when a new record is set.

http://babylonbee.com/news/tragedy-forces-every-american-ask-can-bend-facts-support-preferred-narrative/

Citizens across the nation went so far as to confirm that as soon as news of the violence broke, they immediately began secretly hoping that the shooter was the type of person who would fit perfectly as one of the antagonists of their worldview, whether that be a Muslim, Christian, atheist, American, foreigner, Antifa loyalist, racist, liberal, conservative, or anarchist, as they frequently refreshed the home page of their favorite news source which is unabashedly biased and exists to support their own specific opinions.

We can all go on Facebook, GRM, etc and spout off all we want to make ourselves feel better.  WE -each of us, individually- are not going to do bupkiss about this.  The people we voted for, who make laws- they'll try, or make it seem like they're trying, but they're not going to do much, if anything, either.

It's going to happen again.

There's 300 Million guns in this country.  There's more and more mental health issues found every day, and more and more people suffering from them.  Drugs, TV, Internet, Social Media, Video Games, etc etc etc are all contributing.  Poor health, fast food, lack of exercise are all factors.  Shoehorning people on top of each other into big compartment boxes.  Poison in the air and water.  A government that tries to control, rather than lead. 

Nothing short of a huge, profound cultural shift is going to change any of this.  And if you're looking for what's going to cause that shift- good luck.  Mankind is predisposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable.  Righting itself takes effort.  And there's stuff on TV.  

SVreX said:

I am less concerned with the media sensationalizing the news, the with the media sensationalizing the news for a political agenda. 

I listened to several hours of CNN coverage last night.  It seems like every single sentence spoken was advocacy for gun control. Zero counterpoint at all.  

Its the news.  They SHOULD report it.  But they should not create it.

Media in this country is a for profit business run by a handful of billionaires. Unbiased truths are not the goal of for profit businesses. Billionaire businessmen often have other agendas and interests in addition to holding near monopolies on how information is offered to the public.

It is perfectly legal for a business to donate as much as it wants to government officials and not disclose it under some circumstances.

It is now legal for the US government to make stuff up and disseminate it via public media outlets. The origins of which are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. See section 208(B) of the Smith-Mundt Act, and Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016. 

 One could draw various conclusions about the motives of the news and reliability of the information provided to us given those tidbits of information. If one were so inclined.

volvoclearinghouse said:

There's more and more mental health issues found every day, and more and more people suffering from them.  Drugs, TV, Internet, Social Media, Video Games, etc etc etc are all contributing.  Poor health, fast food, lack of exercise are all factors.  Shoehorning people on top of each other into big compartment boxes.  Poison in the air and water. 

Yeah, but those are all now listed as pre-existing conditions...

Driven5 said:

volvoclearinghouse said:

There's more and more mental health issues found every day, and more and more people suffering from them.  Drugs, TV, Internet, Social Media, Video Games, etc etc etc are all contributing.  Poor health, fast food, lack of exercise are all factors.  Shoehorning people on top of each other into big compartment boxes.  Poison in the air and water. 

Yeah, but those are all now listed as pre-existing conditions...

Great, so my health insurance can't be cancelled if I chose to go on a shooting rampage?  

Can I use my Obamacare subsidy to purchase firearms?  

Huckleberry said:

You can't damage 500+ people and kill 59 of them in a few minutes with a knife.

For reference, you can damage 140+ people and kill 35 of them in a few minutes with 8 separately wielded knives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack

Divide and that's an average of around 18 injuries and 4 deaths per attacker, which from what I can find exceeds what any single attacker with a knife has done.

Compared to a vehicle attack, so far this shooting has produced more injuries than the Nice truck attack, but it might be too early to state that it hasn't caused as many deaths:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_attack

Driven5 said:

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

Yeah, but only a white guy will still automatically get the benefit of the doubt even after ISIS claims a connection to him.

Or you can view it another way: Only a white guy will be presumed to be completely nuts instead of being assumed to have a comprehensible reason and a sense of meaning to his actions.

If this guy had been black, given the other details about him (retired, rich, and hardly any known religious or political interest) I'd have drawn the same conclusion, though. Not exactly prime ISIS recruiting material.

Exactly. The media outlets only speak to their base. So they spout out what they believe their base wants to hear.  

Just a few points:

One, it's a tragic event and everyone's looking for answers and justifications.  I would argue that our natural tendency as humans is to initially think of people outside our norm (terrorists, ISIS, etc) as opposed to someone within our very large circle of society.  For example, on a smaller scale, when something bad happens to a friend or family, we naturally assume their innocence.  Perhaps the collective jumping to terrorists is simply that condition on a larger scale.

Two, looking at this article ( Wiki US Crime Rate ) shows that murder and manslaughter events are at some of the lowest rates since 1960.  Perhaps our ability to have immediate information (via news outlets, social media and the internet in general) simply make it seem more widespread or an increasing trend.  Again, I'm not trying to downplay or take away from the tragic event, just trying to show some perspective.

Three, I'm on the fence about the gun laws.  I want things like this to stop and have troubles understanding the need for any gun that has auto fire capabilities.   However, what I fear is the knee jerk reaction right after an event like this.  Take Wally's story above after 9/11 where you had tourists being harassed and property being seized for taking his picture.  It's THAT extremism that begins to wear away at our rights and abilities, which we would probably never get back, that scares me most of all.

-Rob

rob_lewis said:

Two, looking at this article ( Wiki US Crime Rate ) shows that murder and manslaughter events are at some of the lowest rates since 1960.  Perhaps our ability to have immediate information (via news outlets, social media and the internet in general) simply make it seem more widespread or an increasing trend.  Again, I'm not trying to downplay or take away from the tragic event, just trying to show some perspective.

While murder and manslaughter in general are down, mass shootings are fairly constant, and spree killings with guns (excluding those related to robberies and gang violence) in particular are increasing:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/12/17/graph-of-the-day-perhaps-mass-shootings-arent-becoming-more-common/

In reply to Huckleberry :

I totally agree. There is something about our gun culture that makes it the preferred weapon. Lots of people have access to vehicles and knives and all other types of tools of terror in the USA, but more often than not, they select a military derived semi-automatic magazine-fed firearm. 

And yet, we defend those specific weapons because they are "used for hunting." 

I want to go hunting with hand grenades and bird hunting with surface to air missiles. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Define "mass shooting". 4 seems awfully low threshold for "mass" to me. But, like always, statistics are just numbers to be manipulated to prove/disprove a point. 

Bobzilla said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Define "mass shooting". 4 seems awfully low threshold for "mass" to me. But, like always, statistics are just numbers to be manipulated to prove/disprove a point. 

4 is the legal definition in the US. It would be interesting to be able to set your own threshold and see how the graph changes.

In reply to pheller :

I did buy my AR to double as a Coyote gun and for plinking. The only thing it's shot is steel and a coyote. And because EBR's are so terrible.