Las Vegas Priorities

The one thing that has amazed me more than anything is how our town has come together to help in this tragedy. I can tell you that there has been no gun debates, no political lines, no race wars, none of that in the lines for the blood banks and other volunteer opportunities. They wait to give blood was 8 hours on Monday! The lines were full of every race and nationality Vegas had to offer. There has been such an out pour of help from around the country. Our EMS, fire, and police have been having meals sent to them (ordered out) from places like NYC and LA! It has made me very proud of our city. 

In reply to VegasNick :

That's a ray of hope, and is undeniably something for you all to be very proud of! 

In the vein of what started this thread

More questions. Is it legit that these bump stocks make the gun jam easier? I think, even if that is not true (and it sounds reasonable), then perhaps the multiple weapon deal was because typically those guns are not really made to rapid fire and would overheat and begin to fail.

Then going further, is it possible the rather long time between the end of the shooting (the last shots being fired apparently at the security guard through the door and wall) and the breach of the room was spent trying to clear jams? Did this wackagoogle kill himself accidentally while trying to clear a jam?

I heard he made videos of himself. That would be able to confirm or deny I think.

In reply to tuna55 :

Yes. The two I've used were unreliable at best. Add to that the surefire mags he was using and I'm surprised he got as much sustained fire as he did. Those two items together are almost a surefired way to get a jam.

GameboyRMH said:

Yeah I'm sure:

Source:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts

This graph also shows that there are a lot more responsible gun owners in the US than places like Argentina doesnt it? There are tons more total firearms in the US, but if you were to frame it in terms of deaths per gun, a place like Argentina's rate of violence per gun exceeds the US. Canada and Barbados would appear to have similar numbers to the US.

Id like to see a similar chart with suicide data removed. Suicide is tragic, but I don't consider it to be violent gun crime if a person chooses to take their own life without harming others. Violent gun crimes against others is really what we're talking about here, and 'Gun related deaths' is kind of ambiguous. 

In reply to tuna55 :

My understanding is the gun can jam due to over-heating since most of these guns weren't designed for such a sustained rate of fire.  Apparently the shooter knew this which is why he had so many guns rather than just a few and a ton of mags.

In reply to Ian F :

Right. So did he kill himself by accident trying to clear a jam?

In reply to STM317 :

IIRC, when you remove suicides that number drops from 33k to around 10k. 2/3's are suicides that would likely happen regardless. 

In reply to tuna55 :

no, with a handgun. S&W 646 IIRC. You don't clear an AR jam by putting your face in front of the barrel. 

In reply to Ian F :

it actually jams not from overheating but from cycling too fast. the hammer will follow the bolt and not catch feeding a round into hte chamber but not being cocked. Thats a simple fix of cycling the bolt manually and ejecting the spent round. The surefire 60-rd mags are much worse about actual jamming by popping rounds up at odd angles. 

In reply to tuna55 :

Unlikely.  Even a complete novice doesn't get in front of a long gun like these to clear a jam.  And with so many firearms to choose from, why bother?  I can't see every single one being jammed, even with this sort of use.

And the AR platform is a lot more robust than many people give it credit for.  I'd be confident of it cycling through several hundred rounds at full auto without a hiccup.  I know, I've done just exactly that.  The whole thing gets pretty hot though!

In reply to Bobzilla :

I know he had a handgun, but it's way over on the table and the rifle is in his lap.

I also know you never clear a jam by staring at the barrel, but everything else this guy did is stupid, why should I start assuming intelligence now?

In reply to KyAllroad :

Not as a retort, but a humorous story I had forgotten about until now, a novice on a trap and skeet range totally tried to pick dirt out of his shotgun by staring down the barrel. It was loaded.

STM317 said:

This graph also shows that there are a lot more responsible gun owners in the US than places like Argentina doesnt it? There are tons more total firearms in the US, but if you were to frame it in terms of deaths per gun, a place like Argentina's rate of violence per gun exceeds the US. Canada and Barbados would appear to have similar numbers to the US.

Id like to see a similar chart with suicide data removed. Suicide is tragic, but I don't consider it to be violent gun crime if a person chooses to take their own life without harming others. Violent gun crimes against others is really what we're talking about here, and 'Gun related deaths' is kind of ambiguous. 

You're also making the "more guns excuses more gun deaths" argument. I don't think that a near-perfect proportional relationship between gun ownership and gun death rates is reasonable. Guns generally don't kill on their own after all. Also, we don't know how those guns are distributed - I'd suspect that gun ownership in the US is more concentrated, as in there are more gun owners in the US with massive collections driving up the total, and there aren't actually as many people with guns as the number of guns would suggest.

In fact this article confirms that gun ownership in the US is sharply concentrated:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/19/just-three-percent-of-adults-own-half-of-americas-guns/

tuna55 said:

In reply to Bobzilla :

I know he had a handgun, but it's way over on the table and the rifle is in his lap.

 

I also know you never clear a jam by staring at the barrel, but everything else this guy did is stupid, why should I start assuming intelligence now?

I don't know if I'd call the guy stupid. The whole thing was too meticulously planned. He had installed cameras feeding an iPad to watch the hall outside his room.  Deranged? Likely. Stupid? No.

I recall police saying when they knocked the door down, they found him with a pistol by his side. 

Bobzilla said:

In reply to STM317 :

IIRC, when you remove suicides that number drops from 33k to around 10k. 2/3's are suicides that would likely happen regardless. 

Ok, and how would that change the data set? Would the US still be an outlier, or would it move closer to other countries? It's my understanding that the US has a higher rate of suicide by gun than most other developed countries as well. So, if my thinking is correct, that would close the gap somewhat between the US and the countries shown on that graph.

I was curious about gun homicides specifically, and found This article that compares gun homicides to the rates of other developed nations. Most of the data is a couple of years old, but it seems to indicate that the US still has more gun homicides per capita than other developed countries. It's not a revolutionary thought to think that more access to guns leads to more usage of guns.

Im not sure where to go with this. But intelligent, respectful discourse (which is a hallmark around here) should accurately reflect as much of the big picture as possible.

GameboyRMH said:

STM317 said:

This graph also shows that there are a lot more responsible gun owners in the US than places like Argentina doesnt it? There are tons more total firearms in the US, but if you were to frame it in terms of deaths per gun, a place like Argentina's rate of violence per gun exceeds the US. Canada and Barbados would appear to have similar numbers to the US.

Id like to see a similar chart with suicide data removed. Suicide is tragic, but I don't consider it to be violent gun crime if a person chooses to take their own life without harming others. Violent gun crimes against others is really what we're talking about here, and 'Gun related deaths' is kind of ambiguous. 

You're also making the "more guns excuses more gun deaths" argument. I don't think that a near-perfect proportional relationship between gun ownership and gun death rates is reasonable. Guns generally don't kill on their own after all. Also, we don't know how those guns are distributed - I'd suspect that gun ownership in the US is more concentrated, as in there are more gun owners in the US with massive collections driving up the total, and there aren't actually as many people with guns as the number of guns would suggest.

In fact this article confirms that gun ownership in the US is sharply concentrated:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/19/just-three-percent-of-adults-own-half-of-americas-guns/

You're not wrong. I just think it's interesting how stats and graphs can be interpreted differently depending on one's pre-conceived bias.

Bobzilla said:

In reply to STM317 :

IIRC, when you remove suicides that number drops from 33k to around 10k. 2/3's are suicides that would likely happen regardless. 

Quite the opposite, gun ownership greatly increases the likelihood of suicide:

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

The trouble is that a gun makes suicide quick and easy, which meshes perfectly with the fleeting will to commit suicide.

Ian F said:

tuna55 said:

In reply to Bobzilla :

I know he had a handgun, but it's way over on the table and the rifle is in his lap.

 

I also know you never clear a jam by staring at the barrel, but everything else this guy did is stupid, why should I start assuming intelligence now?

I don't know if I'd call the guy stupid. The whole thing was too meticulously planned. He had installed cameras feeding an iPad to watch the hall outside his room.  Deranged? Likely. Stupid? No.

I recall police saying when they knocked the door down, they found him with a pistol by his side. 

Up above his head with multiple bullet casings on top of the blood stained carpet. 

If the leaked photographs are real. One of the conspiracy theories I just read said the security guard that originally found the room was in on it. 

I love the stuff people come up with.

Full auto is not so much the issue with AR's, they can take quite a beating in that respect. Its the way the bump stocks work, its just relying on bouncing the gun around against your finger. Not firmly planted gun on shoulder makes it far easier to get a stovepipe or FTE. 

Here is a "cheap" upper being shot to failure. 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7cr9e3N6HEw

In reply to STM317 :

I view it like my work. I send 4-5k samples per week. One of my coworkers sends 1000 per week. We're held to the same standards for quality, where 1 mistake is considered too many. Now, statistically I'm 4 times more likely to have a mistake than my coworker. Should there be a different matrix we use for this? Same with the US, we are a unique environment in regards to not only firearms, but our history etc. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

according to most statistics I am a walking time bomb. I suffer from depression and own firearms. Therefor I'm "dangerous". 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Piggybacking on the last comment "meshes perfectly with the fleeting will to commit suicide."

I think this is exactly why when these tragedies happen people are so quick to jump on the guns vs. the mental health aspect. Obviously we have a massive mental health problem that isn't going to be fixed by overnight legislation; What I think people are hoping for is an acknowledgement that guns provide a very instant and effective way to perpetrate some very terrible things. I'm not suggesting that this guy in Vegas wouldn't have perhaps found another way to do what he had done, but maybe on the smaller scale instances (school shootings come to mind) NOT having such access to guns could allow somebody a little extra time to just 'be angry' and maybe think about what they're going to do. Maybe a little extra time to forgive and forget, to seek help, or to just ponder if it's really worth it. Is this a guarantee that no violence will ever happen again? Absolutely not. Is it worth trying if there's even the slightest possibility it'll prevent further violence? Absolutely. 

As an aside I don't know how to regulate or control guns better, but it seems very defeatist to hear people say that we shouldn't even try because it's too hard, or too subjective to even accomplish. I like to think that if I'm allowed to own old, unsafe, and inefficient cars that somebody else should be able to own guns if that's their passion. However it's hard for me to compare the two 100% equally because my unsafe cars are moderately dangerous sure, but from my perspective the sole purpose of a gun is killing. Be it animals, "intruders", or targets, a gun has no practical purpose. An old car can at least get me to work. 

GameboyRMH said:

I don't think that a near-perfect proportional relationship between gun ownership and gun death rates is reasonable.

Your argument would be much better supported if a "near perfect proportional relationship" was even close to what the data points actually aligned to show...But while it may appear to give the 'desired' output, doing nothing more than striking a first order trend line through a loose cloud of data points simply doesn't somehow magically turn it into that. 

Graphs like that are designed specifically to take advantage of the fact that most people don't actually know how to interpret graphs like that.  Charts, graphs, and other depictions that improperly represent data are a part of the problem, rather than a part of the solution.