What were the guns at Las Vegas and did this man own them legally?

I confess to being irredeemably addicted to facts.  Linda (an old colleague) can testify to that.

Every time some nutter kills people with firearms I always ask the same questions;  what guns were used and were they legally obtained and possessed.

In the US, one may not own a fully automatic weapon (shoots many times when you pull the trigger) unless one possesses a machine gun license issued by the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms federal police (ATF).  To get such a license requires heavy vetting by the ATF.

Therefore these questions of mine must be answered before one can know if it was flabbiness in the law or its execution that allowed the nutter to have whatever weapons he used.  This is particularly true if a fully automatic weapon was used.

Thus far I have heard nothing in the left wing anti-gun media that answers my questions.

Nevertheless, CNN, MSNBC, etc. were "all over" the WH press secretary today trying to drive Trumo toward gun control legislation.

And then there is Hillary, who tweeted today some nonsense about "silencers."  IMO as a practitioner of war it would have made no difference whatever to the occurrence of this horrible crime if the shooter nut had had silencers on all his weapons, whatever they were.  pl

Comments

[Allen Thomson]

Could those here who have more first-hand knowledge of such things than I comment on the sound of the firing? It certainly sounds like full-automatic fire to me and if I had to guess (I don't, but of course I will), it might be something in the M-16 family/upgraded AR-15.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRt6_LmnSSc starting at 0:48

[Laura]

Here is the Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Nevada

As to the "pure evil" argument...the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
THIS IS WHAT DOING NOTHING LOOKS LIKE:

In case you were wondering: Nevada does not require a permit to purchase firearms. Nevada does not require firearm registration. Nevada does not require an owner license for firearms. Nevada does not require concealed carry permits for long guns. Nevada does not ban the sale of military-style assault weapons. Nevada does not have magazine capacity restrictions. Nevada pre-empts local restrictions on gun sales.

[Tyler]

A buddy of mine said "I'd never have imagined we'd be hearing automatic rifle fire in Vegas like that." Concur.

The Left seems tone deaf as ever on how they're coming across as a bunch of ghouls fighting over the still warm bodies for the choices joint.

[Laura]

Colonel -- I just read this article which explains a lot about fully automatic weapon ownership/sales in the US. All news to me...did anyone else know this? (Yes, it is from a liberal site but the facts should be easily checked.)

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/2/1703426/-Las-Vegas-gunman-had-at-least-one-fully-automatic-weapon-may-never-have-faced-a-background-check

[Macgupta123]

Our attention is drawn to mass killings like just happened in Las Vegas, and to inner-city gun killings. This may be a distraction This is what we are told applies in the US of A:

1. The incidence of suicide among people who have access to firearms is much higher than that among people who don't have such access.

2. Access to a firearm is a better predictor of suicide than depression or drug abuse.

3. Nowadays, two-thirds of the gun-related deaths are suicides.

4. The gun-related suicides are >90% white, and predominantly male.

So it would seem that, apart from the occasional collateral damage, the Second-Amendment-justified lax gun safety laws are just a white-male-suicide pact. Dancing about the legality of a particular gun or about suppressors seems to be besides the point.

[howard nyc]

Every time a nutter does this I ask the same question, but I also ask, 'what pharmaceutical antidepressant meds was he prescribed.' Also, was there an intermittent pattern of taking them (starting and stopping the meds?). Frequently this is a factor, rarely discussed. Some of these meds are even required to put on the label warnings, 'may cause violent behavior', both taking the drug or sudden cessation of the med.

[Eric Newhill]

Sir,
These are said to have been rifles in 5.56mm and 7.62mm. Recordings from the shooting are definitely full automatic fire, though the rate of fire seems a wee bit slower/choppier than an actual M16 or AK - doesn't sound like the slight difference was due to trigger finger style either. More than one source says legally purchased semi-auto versions that had been converted - illegally - by various means to mimic full auto fire; "bump" fire mechanisms being one such methodology (which would explain the odd rate of fire/choppiness, I think).

You didn't ask but my guess is either ISIS is correct and this was one of their brothers recently converted (there is an Islamic Center in Mesquite, Nevada + the Filipino GF maybe?) or another leftist. The country music fest seems like it was more than a target of opportunity. Typically such an event would be packed full of deplorable Trump supporters. That would be the same profile as the man who shot up the GOP baseball game.

[b]

The WSJ just put out a piece that answers some of the questions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/las-vegas-suspect-likely-used-automatic-rifle-in-massacre-1506966716?mg=prod/accounts-wsj
Investigators found 18 to 20 firearms in alleged gunman’s hotel room

/quote/
Investigators found 18 to 20 firearms, some fully automatic, ... The weapons included AR-15-style and AK-47-style rifles as well as a large cache of ammunition, the official said.

[The terrorist* possibly used] a trigger crank or a Bump Fire, which uses a combination of forward movement and recoil to engage the trigger rapidly. Such accessories are far cheaper and easier to obtain than an automatic weapon.
...
Many local law-enforcement officials refuse to approve the transfer of machine guns ... As a workaround, gun owners have obtained them through the use of trusts, legal entities that don’t require permission from sheriffs or police chiefs.

The number of gun trusts jumped from 840 in 2000 to 40,700 in 2012, as they became more widely known and promoted, prompting ATF to update its regulations.
/endquote/

*Under Nevada law definition this incident was undoubtedly terrorism and the man a terrorist.
-
Nevada is rather lax with any gun control.
The man had no past crime record and was a reasonably well off retiree (acc. to WaPo). He likely would have past ATF scrutiny. He also had enough money to buy some old but expensive registered full automatics.

[steve g]

You mean “two window” Lee Harvey
Paddock??

[turcopolier]

b

"He also had enough money to buy some old but expensive registered full automatics" If he got the rifles through any of these paths he still would have needed a machine gun license to possess them personally. It may be that we need to ban possession of any automatic weapons by any civilian or civilian group without exception. I listened to the audio several times today and whatever he was firing it had a very high cyclic rate of fire. A "bump" trigger is a real possibility. A weapon fired with one sounds like that. pl

[Quartered Safe Out Here]

Colonel, the difference between semi-automatic and automatic fire is not as distinct as it seems to be. Or as it should be. Here's a link to a demo of a bump fire stock which looks like automatic fire to me, especially when the young lady empties a drum into car body in just seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7DTjSla-O8
And they're legal and affordable. As you said, we don't know what all this fruit cake had with him. But something like these could account for what some witnesses described as rapid fire.

[turcopolier]

Laura

All of those things are equally true in Virginia. pl

[turcopolier]

MacGupta

IMO people should be free to kill themselves if they wish. pl

[Macgupta123]

Shooting from 400 yards away, with the victims listening to amplified music, would suppressors really have made no difference?

[robt willmann]

Here are two stories from the Sun newspaper in Britain that contain videos that are allegedly of gunfire at the time of the event--

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4591682/las-vegas-shooting-mandalay-bay-video-concert-attack-death-toll-latest/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4527652/las-vegas-shooting-gunman-stephen-paddock-accountant-gambling-pictures/

After the video plays, to replay it, you might have to refresh the web page as the design may then shift to a different video on a different subject.

I do not have an ear to discern much about automatic weapons shooting, as I have not fired them, but if the videos are authentic, the sounds are a brief example of audio at the scene. Two of several questions about the audio are whether the sounds overlap and whether they change in tone.

[Macgupta123]

I think the point is that most people don't really want to kill themselves but the presence of a firearm makes succumbing to a momentary impulse way too easy. In other cases the logistics of offing oneself cause enough delay for the impulse to pass. These are not well-considered end-of-life decisions that one might make on e.g., learning one has terminal cancer. That is what the research on suicides seems to show.

A society that doesn't attempt to scotch these seems particularly heartless.

[Allen Thomson]

> I listened to the audio several times today and whatever he was firing it had a very high cyclic rate of fire. A "bump" trigger is a real possibility. A weapon fired with one sounds like that. pl

There are several freeware signal analysis programs that should be able to provide insights into what was going on in the audio.

[Bill Herschel]

This comment raises two interesting questions.

First, how many people should be given free access to take us with them when they decide to commit suicide. I think one death is enough. This fellow, who committed suicide, took a lot of people with him and maimed many more. Should he have that opportunity. At least the Malaysian pilot had to go to flight school and rise up through the ladder to trans-oceanic flights before he could kill over 200 people during his suicide.

Second, did Paddock do this? Given the description of Paddock, one might hypothesize that someone else did it, killed Paddock, and fled in the confusion. I opt for this latter scenario. If Paddock had shown up in an operating room, held everyone at gunpoint, and performed a craniotomy removing a brain tumor, and then it turned out he had absolutely no medical training or even wanted to be a doctor, we would be entitled to guess it was someone else behind the mask.

[Bill Herschel]

I'll check again, but at my local AARP chapter we don't have a Fully Automatic Conversion Club meeting every week. There is something truly fishy here.

[Todd Hoyle]

Btw, you catch this story today?

CBS fires executive for 'deeply unacceptable' post after Vegas shooting

CBS Corp. fired a vice president in business affairs Monday for comments she made on social media regarding the mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas.

Hayley Geftman-Gold, wrote on her Facebook page that she was not sympathetic to victims of the shooting because, she claimed, most country music fans are Republican.

Geftman-Gold also wrote: “If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing. I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country music fans often are Republican gun toters.”

The comments were deleted but not before they were picked up on a number of right-wing blogs and websites. A petition was posted online that called for her firing.

A CBS spokesperson confirmed that Geftman-Gold was dismissed because of her comments.

“This individual, who was with us for approximately one year, violated the standards of our company and is no longer an employee of CBS. Her views as expressed on social media are deeply unacceptable to all of us at CBS. Our hearts go out to the victims in Las Vegas and their families,” the company said in a statement.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-las-vegas-shooting-live-updates-cbs-fires-executive-for-deeply-1506969657-htmlstory.html

Hayley Geftman-Gold bio:

https://everipedia.org/wiki/hayley-geftman-gold/

[walter]

My non-expert assumption is that crazy, resentful, bullied, lonely, religiously delusional people have existed throughout history, but at least one huge factor seems to have changed: the hightened negative emotional climate in our society that the Media creates via its emphasis on crisis, violence, conflict, disaster, etc. Lots of normal people I know talk openly about "when the shit hits the fan", "when it all comes crumbling down", etc. My good friend, a surgeon, is purchasing a large boat armed with ARs to escape the island when North Korea attacks. Psychological hysteria. I wish I had the discipline to shut it all off. Once again, Stephen Pinker empirically proves the dramatic decrease in violence that is occurring over time despite the Media depiction which makes it appear to be to the contrary.

Personally, I think something should be done about our Media...but I have no idea what. It seems that the news is fake when its virtually all negative and sensationally negative and ignores all the good things going on in the world.

[scott s.]

Macqupta123

Yes, it is well known that handgun is the method of choice for white male suicide. What's not known is how suicide rates would differ among this group if handguns were not available.

[scott s.]

Colonel:

There are 3 taxes involved with NFA firearms: The special (occupational) tax levied on licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers, the "making" tax levied on any entity/person "making" a "firearm" (i.e., includes both for sale by a licensed manufacturer or for personal use by an entity), and the "transfer" tax levied on entity/personal receiving (transferring) a "firearm" (all references to "firearms" means as defined in the internal revenue code National Firearms Act). The 2016 rulemaking adds a new requirement that "responsible persons" for an entity (such as trust) must submit 2"x2" photo and fingerprint cards (as individuals have had to) as part of the Form 1 or Form 4 application procedures. Additionally, all applicants (responsible persons and individuals) must notify the CLEO (prior to this individuals had to receive CLEO signature prior to submitting the forms to BATFE).

[David E. Solomon]

Colonel Lang,

So why can't congress manage to enact just such a ban?

Haven't enough people died?

[David E. Solomon]

I also think people should be free to kill themselves if they desire.

Better yet, I think we should have legal euthanasia for those who are suffering greatly.