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Erm, yes Hills

Others believed Monday was precisely the correct time to start the conversation. Mr Trump’s challenger in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, said it was essential that America confronted the NRA and demanded the regulation of weapons. “The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots,” she wrote on Twitter. “Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.”

I know little of weapons but doesn’t a silencer significantly reduce range? Hmm, maybe that wouldn’t make much difference at 700 to 800 metres but…

125 thoughts on “Erm, yes Hills”

  1. So Much For Subtlety

    More to the point, she has no idea what a suppressor does. She only knows what Hollywood tells her about guns. I have no idea what this ar$e was using but if it was something in the M-16 family, a suppressor would reduce the sound to about the level of a jackhammer.

    I think people might be able to hear that.

    In the meantime, it is legal to buy a copy of the De Lisle Commando Carbine in the UK. Someone in Scotland sells them if you have a desire to sneak up on Nazi guards and kill them with minimal sound. Oddly enough I have never heard of one being used in a crime. I guess that suppressor works *that*well*.

  2. Philip Scott Thomas

    Silencers aren’t ‘silencers’. At best they are suppressors. The tiny ‘pew’ you get in the movies is a myth. Hillary is a dotard.

  3. There is actually no such thing as a ‘silencer’. They are now universally called ‘suppressors’ in the trade. Suppressors reduce the muzzle blast sound signature (high pressure gas emerging from behind the bullet and hitting the surrounding air). Some can do this quite markedly as the gas expands behind the bullet inside the baffles of the suppressor. But they can do nothing to reduce the crack of a supersonic bullet (which is a shock wave being dragged along by the nose of the bullet). Only subsonic (ie slow) bullets can be truly quiet. If you put a suppressor on, for example, an assault rifle the user will experience less noise but the supersonic bullet cracks are still very loud.

  4. ‘Reduce range’ doesn’t mean much beyond ‘reduces the range at which you can reliably hit a point target (ie hit a single target you’re aiming at).

    He’s firing in a crowd and even if the power and accuracy are cut by 25% its still going to be enough to hit *someone* in a group even if its not the one the rifle is aimed at and it will be enough to put a hole in them.

  5. The events in Las Vegas show us just how much damage a semi-retired accountant filled with hate, bile, anger and envy can do if given access to power.

  6. In the movies, people use plastic coke bottles as impromptu ‘silencers’.

    Apart from needing to drink 1 1/2 litres of coke really quickly, how practical do the experts on here think that would be?

  7. Hillary has a Hollywood fantasy view of reality? Colour me astonished.

    There is actually a good reason for silencers, ie. suppressors, to exist, and that’s to stop shooters getting hearing damage. Supressors don’t silence bullets, but they supress the sound enough that it makes hearing damage less likely.

  8. SMFS: “More to the point, she has no idea …She only knows what Hollywood tells her about guns. “

    But she’s been under sniper fire, hasn’t she…?!?

  9. We don’t know what went on. Yet.

    The few threads so far suggest he could be another leftist prick like the one who opened up on Republican senators recently.

    His father was apparently a bank robber, a diagnosed psychopath and on the FBI’s top ten wanted list at one time.

    He sounds ideal for a false flag operation to me.

    There have been rumours such an event was at hand.

    Were I Trump, Killery’s mouthings–esp hypocritical considering she and Billyboy have a count of mysterious deaths around them twice the number of yesterdays dead–would “trigger” me to order her arrested , charged and held on remand while her antics were sorted out. If it took decades.

  10. With automatic weapons, the heat produced from rapid fire can cause them (‘silencers’) to melt so it is unlikely anyone with experience with guns would use one.

  11. “He’s firing in a crowd and even if the power and accuracy are cut by 25% its still going to be enough to hit *someone* in a group even if its not the one the rifle is aimed at and it will be enough to put a hole in them.”

    Assuming 5.56 caliber, a 25% drop in power would cut the likelyhood of a fatal wound very, very significantly. Perhaps 50% or more.

  12. “Assuming 5.56 caliber, a 25% drop in power would cut the likelyhood of a fatal wound very, very significantly. Perhaps 50% or more.”

    There’s no drop in power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeWL3EL1ymM

    I’ve fired one of the modern repro De Lisle carbines. Wasn’t that quiet at all (but then they do have an unported 12″ barrel in them, so the muzzle velocity was somewhat higher than the originals. Quiet enough to fire comfortably without hearing protection, but faaaaar from silent. Comparable to a particularly noisy 12 ft.lb airgun.

    I’ve also fired a Welrod. Also not silent (but then the wipes were ancient), also of the “loud airgun” level.

  13. Solid Steve 2: Squirrels of The Patriots

    Her other tweet was even more ham-fisted:

    Our grief isn’t enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again.

    In case you didn’t see it, because Hilldog’s slicker than Michael J. Fox’s juggling act:

    WE CAN AND MUST PUT POLITICS ASIDE, AND IMMEDIATELY USE THESE CONVENIENT DEATHS TO IMPLEMENT MY POLITICAL AGENDA

    How did this brilliant woman end up losing by a landslide? It’s a real headscratcher.

  14. Why is it the NRAs fault that some lunatic decided to murder dozens of people?

    Woman’s a ficking idiot as well as an evil fascist.

  15. They don’t drop power, and should not drop accuracy to any great degree. There might even be a slight increase in bullet speed, as the suppressor acts as a longer, but open, barrel.

    (Apart from a few very specialized setups like the MP5K, where a barrel is ‘ported’ with holes to release gas well short of the end of the barrel- and thus the final velocity is < than an equivalent barrel that doesn't have holes in the side- but that isn't a factor of the suppressor as much as the barrel.)

  16. Why do people believe so much hollywood bullshit about sound moderators? Plenty of youtube videos of them being used (but gunshot sounds don’t come across well on audio).

  17. abacab

    “There’s no drop in power. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeWL3EL1ymM

    Yes, which means there would be very little reduction in noise. The two are directly related.

    “I’ve fired one of the modern repro De Lisle carbines. Wasn’t that quiet at all ”

    The fact the De Lisle isn’t used for murders all over the show does indicate just how limited in a ‘slient’ weapon is.

  18. abacab

    “Why do people believe so much hollywood bullshit about sound moderators? ”

    Because for the large majority of people, this is the only exposure they have to firearms of any kind.

  19. “Yes, which means there would be very little reduction in noise. The two are directly related.”

    You can get the muzzle noise down quite a lot. But the supersonic crack from the projectile remains (and is more or less independent of the velocity, provided it’s supersonic). I certainly notice no difference between bullets going 10′ overhead fired from 100, 300, 500 or 600 yards – it’s much of a muchness.

  20. Bloke in North Dorset

    Wonky,

    “On balance, I would guess the terror caused by the sound of gunfire was a desired effect.”

    As has been pointed out above, the sound that is heard first is the crack of the high velocity round going super sonic. The infantry are taught to ignore that, by having rounds fired over their heads, because if they’ve heard it they are still alive. The time to worry is when there are puffs of dust around them. Then they concentrate on trying to locate the source.

    The average civilian will be in such a panic after the first cracks that the won’t even have the presence of mind to try to find the thump which can be heard after the crack.

  21. JuliaM said: “But she’s been under sniper fire, hasn’t she…?!?”

    It must have been silenced sniper fire because nobody panicked.

  22. Isn’t this part and parcel of living in a big city? Or does that only apply when RoPers drive trucks into people, blow people up on the tube or stab people in the streets?

  23. ‘here is actually no such thing as a ‘silencer’. They are now universally called ‘suppressors’ in the trade’

    Invented by Hiram Maxim, who called it a silencer, and patented it as a silencer.

    The trade leans toward “suppressor,” to avoid controversy, but is quite happy to talk “silencers.”

  24. “The trade leans toward “suppressor,” to avoid controversy…”

    Or. perhaps, to avoid people thinking that they ‘silence’ a gun’s noise rather then suppress it?

  25. Here’s the problem: 22,000 people gathered in a pen. 22,000 with no weapons. A single man opens fire, and no one can return fire. All it would have taken to shut him down would have been one person with a rifle. One out of 22,000.

    Gun control creates a terrorist’s dream.

    Note that the one out of 22,000 could have been a policeman. I assume that the police on scene did not have a rifle in their patrol cars. A common occurrence in many departments. Civilian governments go “Eeeewh, no,” when the subject of patrol rifles comes up. Pistols and shotguns are short range weapons.

    Terrorists have no such limitation.

  26. “All it would have taken to shut him down would have been one person with a rifle. One out of 22,000.”

    It would have been much more spectacular had all 22,000 had a rifle. OK, some of them might have got where the gunman was wrong, or maybe have not been that good a shot but that’s missing the point. Imagine if all 22,000 had opened fire on the hotel at the same time.

    It would certainly deter a suicidal gunman to know that he might get shot at.

  27. Assuming 5.56 caliber, a 25% drop in power would cut the likelyhood of a fatal wound very, very significantly.

    Of course (and ignoring the arguments above about whether a suppressor causes a loss of power or not), a person screaming in agony with a bullet wound is more terrifying to most people than a body silent because it is dead.

  28. Imagine if all 22,000 had opened fire on the hotel at the same time.

    I’m struggling slightly to picture the state of the hotel at that point..:)

    And, following which, of course, all the people in the hotel will also have been similarly armed, and….

  29. Imagine if all 22,000 had opened fire on the hotel at the same time.

    Hmm, yes. We’d still be talking about the largest mass shooting in US history, though. Just the victims would be the random civilians in the hotel, rather than the random civilians at the concert?

  30. “Gun control creates a terrorist’s dream”

    UK killings with firearms: – 50 – 60 per year

    USA killings with firearms: c11,400 on average 2001 – 2011

    (USA has six times the population).

    Without their existing firearms’ laws, the USA could perhaps become like the UK. Who knows.

  31. What Henry Crun said.

    Mad shooter: immediately, the cry goes out “We must restrict guns!”
    Mad Islamist in truck/with knife/with bomb: immediately, the cry goes out “We must import more Muslims”

    Progressives are madder than spree killers.

  32. Andrew C,

    Probably a good way to increase casualties – do I get the feeling you might have been a bit less than sincere with your reply there?

    Gamecock,

    I don’t know of a single case of a sniper-type mass shooter being hit by rifle fire, even once the police got appropriate weapons in place. This is probably because its bloody difficult to hit a person behind cover (say a window) from below. But the people firing would certainly have made identifying the location of the shooter more interesting, and perhaps deter the police who did the thing that is proven to work (kick the door in and try to shoot the bastard).

    The age old question also applies here – how many mass shootings, once they have started, have been finished by armed civilians without the aid of the police? I still know of no examples, so this sort of talk of armed response is stupid. Anyway, armed or not, if someone is taking potshots at me I’m staying in cover, not shooting back, if I know there are people whose job is to deal with him – it’s basic human risk assessment.

    And your one out of twenty-two thousand with a gun – what’s to stop that one person with the gun being the murderous psycho. I’m pretty happy that the risk of allowing people to bring guns into festivals and the like is far higher than forcing them to leave them behind – remember the vast majority of shooting deaths in the US are not mass killings (statistically very rare) but one-on-one incidents…

    So, regardless of your standing on allowing people to carry weapons, I can’t really see there is a case for allowing people to carry weapons to a festival (on private land, so the organisers should be able to choose, although no doubt there are intrusive laws on this, this being the US), and your argument here is flawed and a classic case of trying to build an argument on an extreme example. Wierdly you seem to be in the same club as Ms Clinton on this (although I somehow doubt you are actually “with her”)…

  33. “PF
    following which, of course, all the people in the hotel will also have been similarly armed, and….”

    The guests would have had to have been armed of course. How else could they defend themselves?

    There ought to have been at least half-a-dozen armed with the latest M-134 “JICYNK”* minigun. That would have calmed the situation down quickly.

    Yee-haa!

    (*Just In Case, You Never Know)

  34. “Watchman

    Andrew C,

    Probably a good way to increase casualties – do I get the feeling you might have been a bit less than sincere with your reply there?”

    Was it my final line that gave it away?

    “It would certainly deter a suicidal gunman to know that he might get shot at.”

  35. According to reports:

    “Law enforcement sources revealed that Paddock methodically took the guns up to the room over several days and set up at least two of them on tripods overlooking the concert site.”

    No-one noticed?

    I’m guessing anyone using the ‘Do not clean room’ sign in their hotel over the next few days might get an unwelcome visit from a SWAT team…

  36. “A single man opens fire, and no one can return fire. All it would have taken to shut him down would have been one person with a rifle.”

    It’s remarkable that both sides of the American gun debate routinely produce such stupid arguments.

  37. Christ almighty.

    “Is it ok to hunt feral pigs with a minigun?”

    Might be thought to be a question no one would ever ask. But someone did.

    And having asked the question, they answered ‘yes’ and put the video up.

  38. “UK killings with firearms: – 50 – 60 per year”

    What were the figures before the panic over Dunblane and t’other place?

  39. Meantime, part of me thinks we should offer such help as we can but another part wonders whether we should take into account the USA’s position in the Tax Justice Network’s secrecy league.

    Hopefully Spud will be able to pontificate on this when he goes to the US.

    Please.

    In a hotel stuffed full of redneck republican members of the NRA.

  40. @ BinD

    ‘The time to worry is when there are puffs of dust around them. Then they concentrate on trying to locate the source.’

    Well, they do try to locate it even if it’s only cracking off overhead…

    @ Gamecock

    ‘All it would have taken to shut him down would have been one person with a rifle.’

    I don’t know whether you’re serious or not, but this is so mad Richard Murphy might have written it. If the guy was standing back in the room you have virtually no chance of hitting him, much less locating him. If his weapon was fitted with a suppressor (which it might well have been, despite Hillary’s bullshit) you probably couldn’t even locate him (suppressors suppress muzzle flash, and while – as others have said – they don’t silence gunshots they do make it harder to pinpoint their direction).

    Very highly trained military snipers behind cover often have a great deal of difficulty in locating the enemy – trained soldiers under fire in many environments, inc urban, often find it next to impossible, esp at night.

    If you had a bloke in the concert with a Minimi or something, and he could locate the shooter, he might be able to put down some suppressive fire into the area around the room, but I don’t think that is a really serious option! If we’re putting blokes out and about so that they can suppress people in Las Vegas we’re in a lot of trouble, more than even I think.

    @Watchman

    There have been a few events stopped by armed civvies – one in a university a while back springs to mind – and a fair few one-on-one things have led to baddies being vittled up.

    But to me this is irrelevant to the question. You can’t realistically ban firearms in a country where there are 300 million of the fuckers circulating. I don’t like the cliche, but you really will just disarm the innocent.

    And while mass shootings get the headlines, they really shouldn’t. Chicago alone sees that number of dead in a reasonable week.

  41. “@dearieme

    What were the figures before the panic over Dunblane and t’other place?”

    Hungerford?

    Difficult to be precise as police didn’t used to keep details of the murder method. But UK murders used to run at pretty much 300 or so right from when they were first recorded (mid 19th century) up to 1960s when they jumped to 700+. Now back down to c550 a year.

    Number of firearms incidents have fallen a lot since the bans, particularly on handguns. But number of killings less so. Probably because it wasn’t that big a base.

    We don’t have a culture of killing because people ‘dis’ each other or because a 5 year old finds mummy’s Saturday night special.

    The trick was to get the guns out of circulation by buying them off the public.

  42. A couple of things…

    First: I can’t say how nice it is to watch politicians such as Hillary Clinton leap over still-warm bodies in an effort to score points with their supporters.

    Two: Let’s note Clinton’s cowardice in this matter. It isn’t “the NRA” that is preventing the sort of restrictive gun control she favors, it’s millions of voters who support, for whatever reason, the constitutional right to own a firearm. You know, “deplorables” and “bitter clingers”. For all her determination to get guns out of people’s hands, she can’t muster to courage to actually call them out…

    Third: Call it a silencer… All that proves is that you don’t know what you are talking about. What a suppressor does, at best, is knock a few decibels off a gunshot. It means you can go to an outdoor setting and shoot 22lr without ear protection. Try shooting a suppressed .45 handgun indoors or out sans ear protection. I guarantee you it will be at least two days before the ringing in your ears starts to recede.

    Fourth: The weapon used in the largest mass murder in U.S. history was a truck filled with fertilizer and an industrial solvent. I don’t seem to recall Clinton, or any of the rest of the gun grabbers, bleating about banning trucks.

  43. “Number of firearms incidents have fallen a lot since the bans, particularly on handguns. But number of killings less so. Probably because it wasn’t that big a base.”

    Bullshit. Sorry, but that’s total bullshit. Firearms incidents with legally-held handguns were miniscule before the ban.

    “The trick was to get the guns out of circulation by buying them off the public.”

    Err, you what? They knew who had what legally, so they banned them. Simples. Non compliance would have meant prison. They paid compensation, sure, but no money ever went to pay anyone for an illegally held gun.

  44. ” It means you can go to an outdoor setting and shoot 22lr without ear protection.”

    You can shoot unsurpressed .22lr outdoors just fine without hearing protection. It’s not very loud at all. Indoors it’s rather noisy.

  45. All it would have taken to shut him down would have been one person with a rifle.

    Oh God, the stupid… It hurts.

    And who the fuck is going to carry a rifle into a concert for personal protection? And what fucking venue is going to let you walk in with one? If you’re carrying, you’re carrying a handgun. A concealed handgun.

    The shooter was on the 32nd floor of a building approximately 1,000 feet away. If you can lay your hands on a duty size, compact or subcompact pistol without blowing your own balls off, try hitting a man size target at 100 feet.

  46. Andrew C–Bog standard anti-gun shite.

    It doesn’t matter if 500 people were killed. That is a infinitesimal fraction of the gun-based butchery wrought by political scum. And they won’t be disarming any time ever.

    It is a disgrace how the population of the UK accept their disarmed status., And how many apologists for cowardice and weakness crawl out of the woodwork every time a few bullets fly.

  47. You can shoot unsurpressed .22lr outdoors just fine without hearing protection. It’s not very loud at all.

    So what you’re saying is you know what the world sounds like to Pete Townsend.

  48. “If you can lay your hands on a duty size, compact or subcompact pistol without blowing your own balls off, try hitting a man size target at 100 feet.”

    30m? Piece of piss. Even with my tiniest, shonkiest 100+ year old bulldog revolver.

  49. AndrewC,

    It was a clue… Incidentally, in all fairness to the having guns good crowd, Switzerland and the Czechs have higher gun ownership than the US and gun violence rates similiar to the UK, so it’s not just about the guns. But I think we can be clear that high gun ownership in the US does lead to lots of deaths – the evidence is fairly indisputable – so the fact that other countries are somewhat saner in this respect (I am not going on record to describe the Czechs as sane generally) is maybe not relevant.

    dearieme,

    No doubt there are intelligent people on both sides of the debate (Charlton Heston can’t have been the last intelligent member of the NRA, and I know there are reasonable cases for gun control being made), but we don’t hear them because the idiots shout and tweet loudest, and we all get distracted by the idiocies and ignore the reasonable points.

  50. Mr Ecks,

    Are you advocating armed response against statist politicians? Not the worst idea (because it came from you not Hilary Clinton or Jeremy Corbyn – you at least care about people (even if you seem to want to shoot some of them)), but probably not great for society in the short term (civil wars being a bit like that) – or would only our side allowed guns?

  51. So Much For Subtlety

    AndrewC – “Without their existing firearms’ laws, the USA could perhaps become like the UK. Who knows.”

    Milton Friedman once pointed out that there was no poverty among Swedish-Americans. I am willing to bet there are very low rates of murder using guns among British-Americans as well.

    The presence of guns does not make for criminals. No gun speaks to someone, a la Terry Pratchett, and makes them commit a crime. America has a lot of crime because it has a lot of Blacks and quite a few Hispanics. Although they are less violent than the Blacks. So does Jamaica and South Africa. Britain will slowly catch up. You import Jamaicans, you import Jamaican crime as well.

    In the meantime Japanese-Americans are significantly richer than Japanese. And commit less crime. And can buy a gun if they please. By any measure they are doing well.

  52. So Much For Subtlety

    Dennis the Peasant – “So what you’re saying is you know what the world sounds like to Pete Townsend”

    I shot rabbits with a .22 rifle when I was a lad. I don’t notice any particular hearing loss. Not at the time. Not now.

    It did not have a silencer.

  53. @smfs – quite. Really not that loud at all. People don’t realise quite how quiet .22lr rifles are, particularly those with long barrels.

    .38 S&W in a revolver does give a little ringing in the ears though, but not too bad.

  54. “Switzerland and the Czechs have higher gun ownership than the US and gun violence rates similar to the UK,”

    Could there be any difference in the population of the US which might lead to higher rates of gun violence than Switzerland and the Czech Republic? Or is that just crazy talk?

  55. .223 remington in the garden is far from deafening, and neither is .303. Inside a hotel room I can imagine it would be different.

    Mansize at 100′ – no problem, but a head shot might be trickier to guarantee!

    But in other news, the lefties anti-gun ignoramouses would be out in force was about as predictable as well, anythig else that is totally fucking certain.

    I think it will be interesting to read about this story in a week when the facts are out as opposed to politically charged speculation and virtue flashing.

    I suspect it will all look a bit different.

  56. Philip Scott Thomas

    I still know of no examples, so this sort of talk of armed response is stupid.

    Here are twelve times.

    And here are some more from the Washington Post.

    I’m not saying that the same would have worked in Vegas. I doubt it would have for the reasons other have given above. But it has happened before.

  57. So Much For Subtlety

    Mr Ecks – “It is a disgrace how the population of the UK accept their disarmed status.”

    Absolutely. Men should be prepared. Men should be capable. Men should have responsibilities that they shoulder.

    One of those ought to involve being armed. Not because I seriously expect anyone would need it but because they just should. Just as Mormons should stock pile food. It is unlikely that there would be, say, a Zombie apocalypse, but if there is, men should be prepared and able to defend their homes and families. If they need to, they should be able to shoot a deer and not starve.

    Instead we cower behind security systems with bars on our windows and if a predator comes our way, all we can do is beg the police to come and save us – and they show f**k all evidence of being inclined to do that.

    There is a fundamentally different attitude in a population that can look after itself and another population that has to plead, on their knees, for protection against rapists and murderers. I think we should belong to the former.

    (Incidentally in the Sydney Street siege, at which a young Winston Churchill is said to have got himself photographed gawking, the police had to borrow guns from passers by in order to shoot back)

  58. “abacab

    Andrew – go look at the official stats here”

    Abacab – go look at the official stats here (which were published in August 2017 rather then those in 2011).

    http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7654/CBP-7654.pdf

    You’ll see that compared to pre 1997 when the figures were round about 11,000 to 13,000 the figure for 2017 was 6,375.

    Where I come from 6,375 compared to 12,000 would constitute a fall of ‘a lot’.

    And getting legal guns out of public hands makes it harder for them to be stolen, no?

    So, please, before you start bandying words like ‘bullshit’ around, at least use statistics that are in date (and even those showed a decline such that the last year they reported showed fewer incidents than 1997).

    If you want to start an argument on whether the reduction was caused by the gun ban or not, different question. But the numbers are there.

  59. Thinking about this over the last few days, It occurs to me that one of the biggest hurdles to some sort of solution to the US gun woes is the history of the Left using the thin end of the wedge technique to get what it wants (which in this case would be the complete disarming of the population). And gun owners will know this, and realise that if they give an inch, it’ll be used against them. So they fight against any changes, even ones that (perhaps) a majority of gun owners would agree to, because they know which way the whole thing would end up. There is zero they can agree to give up without knowing the moment they do their opponents will take that gain and start work on the next step towards a total ban.

    My suggestion (slightly tongue in cheek) would be a Constitutional Amendment that guarantees the right of the public to carry own and carry exactly the same amount of weaponry that is used to protect the US President (and indeed any public official). If the politicians and State employees are prepared to walk around without armed protection, then fair enough let them ban the public from being armed. Anything else is utter hypocrisy.

  60. In other news, when jet passenger planes have trouble and are coming down, they don’t make the sound of the Ju-87 Stuka. Even Stuka made that sound only because it had a siren specifically built in that the pilot could turn on to scare people.

  61. 30m? Piece of piss. Even with my tiniest, shonkiest 100+ year old bulldog revolver.

    Yes, Bloke, but ask yourself this: Are you representative of the shooter of average capabilities? I think not. In fact, it appears you qualify as an expert.

    Sure, a top 5% shooter can do it with ease… The rest of us just muddle by. On a good day I can hit a man sized target at 100 feet with some regularity with a handgun, but I suspect my accuracy would diminish in direct proportion to the stress level of the situation.

    I may be a daft cunt (as Interested would say), but even with a rifle I shoot well (my SCAR-16), I wouldn’t be trying to lay down suppressive fire on a hotel window on the 32nd floor of an heavily occcupied hotel that is 1,000 feet away.

  62. @smfs – quite. Really not that loud at all. People don’t realise quite how quiet .22lr rifles are, particularly those with long barrels.

    As I am more of a handgun sort of guy, I was thinking in terms of shooting 22lr from a pistol or a revolver. And when I shoot, I usually shoot between 250 and 350 rounds. You could get away with shooting 22 short (which would limit you to a revolver), or maybe even 22lr subsonic, but not regular 22lr. Not from a handgun. That said, upon reflection, I’d agree you that you can shoot a 22lr rifle without suppression or ear protection.

  63. Jim –

    What gun owners also know is that in areas where local gun laws are extremely restrictive, gun crime is out of control. Think Chicago and Washington D.C.

    Bottom line? There is no convincing evidence that restrictive gun laws reduce crime in the portions of ‘Merica where they have been implemented.

  64. Watchmen–In dear old Venez Maduro handed out shooters to his leftist buds and 80+ protesters shot dead so far. The left’s love of gun control does not extend to their own gang it seems..

    Our bearded pals likely have stockpiled firepower the wiser ones are keeping hidden. Why use them now when we are still allowing their armies to assemble? The guns will emerge later on–let the crazy fringe use trucks for now as a morale-basher, no need to show their hand prematurely.

    So it is likely the enemies of freedom and decency, prosperity etc, etc already have or can get whatever firepower they need. We know the scum of the state can.

    Time we wised up. And stopped flushing ourselves down the toilet to the accompanying chorus of cod-moral clichés.

  65. Bloke in North Dorset

    abacab,

    “30m? Piece of piss. Even with my tiniest, shonkiest 100+ year old bulldog revolver.”

    Even when he’s armed and firing back, with your heart pounding because of the adrenelin rush?

  66. Hawaii has some of the toughest (but hardly “draconian”) gun legislation in the US, still has 12-15% ownership rates, but has by far the lowest gun crime rate. Obviously, their isolation makes it tougher to smuggle guns from neighbouring gun friendlier states, but I think you could say that Hawaii is clear “evidence that restrictive gun laws reduce crime”.

  67. Solid Steve 2: Squirrels of The Patriots

    Even Stuka made that sound only because it had a siren specifically built in that the pilot could turn on to scare people.

    True. I saw one of them at the RAF museum in Cosford.

    There was a button in the cockpit labeled “Der Brauntrouserpooperspritzenzeit”

  68. No such thing as a silencer, but there are suppressors which reduce the sound greatly. They also reduce the muzzle velocity of the bullet and thus the range of the gun.

  69. Hawaii has some of the toughest (but hardly “draconian”) gun legislation in the US, still has 12-15% ownership rates, but has by far the lowest gun crime rate. Obviously, their isolation makes it tougher to smuggle guns from neighbouring gun friendlier states, but I think you could say that Hawaii is clear “evidence that restrictive gun laws reduce crime”.

    You could say that, but it would be wrong. New Hampshire has very lax gun laws and a murder rate even lower than Hawaii. One thing NH and Hawaii have in common, though, is very few black residents. Differences in demographics, not differences in legigislation, drive differences in crime rates between different areas of the US.

  70. Solid Steve 2: Squirrels of The Patriots

    Interestingly, the number of guns in private hands in the US has grown by nearly 60% since 1994.

    And the gun homicide rate is down by 50% over the same timeframe.

    According to the AEI anyway.

  71. @ Jason law,

    “Switzerland and the Czechs have higher gun ownership than the US and gun violence rates similar to the UK”

    “in areas where local gun laws are extremely restrictive, gun crime is out of control. Think Chicago and Washington D.C”

    “The number of guns in private hands in the US has grown by nearly 60% since 1994. And the gun homicide rate is down by 50% over the same timeframe.”

    You could say that Hawaii is clear “evidence that restrictive gun laws reduce crime” but that is cognitive dissonance talking, not evidence.

  72. JerryC,

    I remain to be convinced that the skin colour is deterministic here – poorer communities kept in poverty by state measures (so generally immigrants, or in the US the formerly systematically-discriminated-against black population) tend to have much bigger problems with gun violence than settled societies, probably reflecting a disengagement from the settled systems of dispute resolution in favour of establishing personal authority through force. This seems to apply pretty well to the left-behind white areas as well though (see the Appalchians, or on a much lesser scale poor suburbs of Birmingham or Glasgow). What I’d see as the cause is not simply race (obviously cultural background may make you more likely to want to shoot someone – personal honour and all that – but your skin colour does not determine your cultural background) but rather the fact that these communities are held together, held apart and held poor by the state, which means that leadership and status in these communities becomes separate from that in society as a whole, and something that can be competed for with violence.

    And as Solid Steve points out the homicide rate in the US is down, despite increased immigration. The much whiter US of the 20s and 30s (and even the 50s and 60s) was frankly much more dangerous in terms of homicide. I am also trying to think of a mass shooter in the US who was black – there must have been some, but it’s hardly a defining tendency.

    I’d suggest that racial profiling here is missing the point. The villains are not the people that look different from you (remember, you don’t know what I look like – might I be one of them? It’s fun being anonymous (or a dog)) but the people who look like you in the main who feel that keeping people in ‘communities’ is a good idea.

  73. This thread has actually been useful – it’s made me crystalise my thinking on gun ownership and actually realise my gut opposition is perhaps misguided, although I am not sure there is a point to liberalising the UK laws, if only to stop Ecks trying to lead a violent revolution…

    It’s also made me think that the role of the state in dividing people is the issue in increasing gun violence – basically creating mini-states. And all of this is unrelated to the actions of single murderous psychos.

    Anyway, thanks everyone for making me think. Always a fun thing to end up doing.

  74. @AndrewC
    October 3, 2017 at 1:36 pm

    Two datapoint fallacy. Any fall that was caused by the ban should have been immediate. I can pick two datapoints that show the opposite to what you show. Look at the trend. It went UP after 1997 before then falling.

    In any case the document you linked to contains no statistics pre-2008, so I’m not sure how taking one datapoint 20 years after the fact and one datapoint before the fact when there are other datapoints that contradict you is appropriate. Furthermore, the document I provided notes that you shouldn’t compare figures either side of a change in methodology (2002? without re-opening the pdf).

    Also, re. thefts: how many thefts of legal handguns were there pre-ban? In other words, citation needed.

  75. Solid Steve 2: Squirrels of The Patriots

    although I am not sure there is a point to liberalising the UK laws, if only to stop Ecks trying to lead a violent revolution…

    C’mon. It’d be better than telly.

    It’s also made me think that the role of the state in dividing people is the issue in increasing gun violence

    I thought a thought about this while in the queue at Marks and Sparks today.

    So there’s a few types of gun violence (and some overlap between the categories):

    * Terrorism – pretty much a function of how many Muslims you import, these days, but the recent attempted mass murder of Republican congressmen and general Antifa violence points to 70’s style Marxist terror making a comeback

    * Gang crime – largely, though by no means exclusively, the purview of black guys and Latinos in the US.

    * Psycho spree killers – largely, though by no means exclusively, committed by white men. Or whitish men, like the bloke in California who killed a bunch of men and women out of revenge at not having a girlfriend.

    The last category seems to be a fairly recent-ish phenomenon. Mebbe I’m wrong, but I don’t think school shootings and concert massacres happened in the first half of the 20th century.

    If I’m not wrong, the question is: for why?

    And the best answer I can think of is: people are more atomised than ever. And some lonely, strange people go insane and kill.

    In the olden days, we had intact family structures, people knew who their neighbours were, nearly everyone went to Church, you could expect to be married with kids by 25, and lunatics we’re locked up for their own good. There was a simple path for success in life: do your homework, go to Uni if you’re clever, get a job, get a wife, buy a house and fill it with springs.

    Nowadays, society is a horrible, confusing mess and many people lack a solid structure – familial, religious, community, or otherwise – to make them feel like they have a valued place in society. Even employment has become stressful and precarious for millions of people. Ersatz relationships on social media aren’t a fulfilling substitute for IRL interaction with friends and lovers.

    I’m slightly surprised there aren’t more spree killers.

  76. Solid Steve 2: Squirrels of The Patriots

    fill it with springs.

    I should add autocorrect to the list of modern inventions that make people go bonkers.

  77. Solid Steve 2: Squirrels of The Patriots

    Ken MacLeod wrote a novel called “Intrusion”, which theorised that modernity inevitably immolates itself.

    Because urbanisation inevitably leads to ever-more-intrusive nanny statism, which eventually leads to enough people being so hacked off that they either burn the whole thing down, or let barbarians burn it down for them.

    Not sure how convinced I am by this theory, but I reckon he has the makings of a point.

  78. @abacab

    “‪30m? Piece of piss. Even with my tiniest, shonkiest 100+ year old bulldog revolver.”

    On a range maybe. In contact? I could introduce you to some of the finest soldiers in the world who will happily admit to missing live targets at thirty feet and less when it matters. At 30 metres even in the best hands a pistol is a defensive last resort and not much more than a means of keeping the enemy guessing. (Ideally ducking while you move away.)

  79. Philip Scott Thomas

    …buy a house and fill it with springs.

    That is just genius. If you covered your floors with springs you could move around the house by bouncing! You’d have to say, ‘Boing!’ each time you bounced, though. Or sing, ‘The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers.’

  80. I agree with Interested about Steve’s comment.

    It’ll become more acute, I’m sure, in coming generations.

  81. “I agree with Interested about Steve’s comment.

    It’ll become more acute, I’m sure, in coming generations”

    Not the agreement becoming more acute, obviously.

  82. “Doesn’t look like the handgun ban made much of a difference, to be honest.” Thanks, bloke. That would have been my guess.

    In other words the reason that the British don’t shoot each other a lot is not the modern gun laws. It’s just that it’s not been a thing they go in for much. Whereas Americans rather like killing each other whether by gun or on the roads.

  83. Great comments Steve. I’ll check out that Mcleod novel; used to read his stuff but not recently.

    I am not convinced at all by the guns stop the state fucking with you argument. Gun ownership in the US didn’t stop the IRS fucking over Tea Party members, it didn’t stop the Marxist domination of education, it didn’t stop continued immigration from 3rd world dungholes, it doesn’t stop innocent people being victims of violent crime.

    I am glad we don’t have widespread gun ownership in the UK; we may still get fucked over by the state but we win on the not getting shot by some nutter, some dindu or simply by accident.

    That said, if I did for some crazy reason find myself living in the USA, I’d get tooled up sharpish.

  84. Reports are coming in that at least some of the shooter’s firearms had been illegally modified to fire at full automatic. Not that facts are going to matter to the likes of Clinton, Kimmel and the Cadre of Creeps, mind you.

  85. “Psycho spree killers – largely, though by no means exclusively, committed by white men. Or whitish men, like the bloke in California who killed a bunch of men and women out of revenge at not having a girlfriend.”

    ” I don’t think school shootings and concert massacres happened in the first half of the 20th century”

    Thats because they weren’t giving all the teens and pre-teens mood stabilisers by the bucket load back then. Plot the use of SSRIs vs teen spree killing and I reckon you’d have a pretty good match. Giving these drugs to still developing brains is a crime IMO, one day people are going to do time for allowing it to happen.

    In this case there is also the possibility (given his age) of early onset Alzheimers, which can induce extreme personality changes.

  86. What I find baffling is that on the one hand, we have lefties telling us they do not recognize the legitimacy of the current government and are actively resisting it, but on the other hand they want that same government to confiscate all guns by whatever means possible from the citizenry.

    Evidently the plan is for lefties to barricade themselves in the nearest Starbucks and hold off the Third Marine Division with spitballs and sarcasm.

    That should work well…

  87. One in 6 Americans is on psychiatric drugs of one sort of another, mostly SSRIs:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/one-6-americans-take-antidepressants-other-psychiatric-drugs-n695141

    Also far greater use in the white population than Hispanic and Black.

    To be honest there’s no surprise people are going postal more and more, they are messing with their brain chemistry in a way that the drug company’s have little idea of what the consequences of use by such large populations will be. A very small probability of bad reactions is going to equate to lots of people when the number of guinea pigs runs into tens of millions.

  88. @abacab.

    The number of firearms incidents today is smaller than pre 1997 and has been for half a dozen years at least.

    Maybe incidents went up immediately after the ban because people thought “fuck me better use this before it’s confiscated”. Or sold it to the local loony then cause there was no point holding on to it. I don’t know. Didn’t claim I did know. Nor do you know. All I said was there were less gun incidents now than pre-the ban. That’s all. Numbers. Facts. No opinions. Like I say if you want to start a different argument you can. But it isn’t one I was having.

  89. @Tel, October 3, 2017 at 9:31 am

    There is actually a good reason for silencers, ie. suppressors, to exist, and that’s to stop shooters getting hearing damage. Supressors don’t silence bullets, but they supress the sound enough that it makes hearing damage less likely.

    Correct. US Military are evaluating them for use in training & combat. Youtube Warthog channel.

  90. Reports are coming in that at least some of the shooter’s firearms had been illegally modified to fire at full automatic.

    It certainly sounded like full auto fire to my uneducated ear. WikiP seems to think that such weapons are legal in most states (including Nevada). Is that correct? (I didn’t think so, but what do I know?)

  91. Bloke in Costa Rica

    I’ve hunted rabbits with a suppressed .22LR rifle and Ely subsonic ammunition. It was quieter than an air-rifle (which has a fairly beefy spring and piston going ‘gloing’ when you fire it). But it would be bloody useless at 300m.

    The thing no-one of any prominence is prepared to admit is that if you subtracted out all the Community Service Murders committed by feral urban yoots in the US it would have a gun homicide level like Norway’s. Even things like the Las Vegas shooting are a statistical blip set against a year’s worth of shenanigans in Chicago and East St Louis.

  92. “Community Service Murders” is a good ‘un.

    Maybe they should be encouraged by sentences inversely related to the vileness of the victim.

  93. It certainly sounded like full auto fire to my uneducated ear. WikiP seems to think that such weapons are legal in most states (including Nevada). Is that correct? (I didn’t think so, but what do I know?)

    You can own a fully automatic firearm in ‘Merica as long as it was manufactured, sold and registered in ‘Merica pre-1986. That’s the year the ban on new fully automatic firearms went into effect. On the federal level, the firearm must be registered by serial number with ATF. On the state level, it varies from state to state. I don’t even know what the law is for one here in Ohio. I’ve only been around one full auto fireman, an unregistered (and therefore very illegal) Thompson submachine gun. As soon as it was decided that it was going to be shot I packed up my gear and left in a hurry. I’m too old to be picking up a felony.

    The full autos that are legal and do go up for sale usually fetch five figures, so I’d suspect the shooter simply bought some legal semi-auto rifles and illegally modified them. It isn’t terribly hard to do, and unfortunately there is always some gun nut asshole who will do the mod for money.

  94. The thing no-one of any prominence is prepared to admit is that if you subtracted out all the Community Service Murders committed by feral urban yoots in the US it would have a gun homicide level like Norway’s.

    Yes, but admitting that could lead to there being more African-Americans growing to adulthood, which is a definite no-no for white limousine liberals. LL’s love their darkies… but only the House Negroes and even then only at a safe distance. It’s why they love Planned Parenthood the way they do… most of the aborted are not white.

  95. Rather depressingly, this is yugely interesting thread. Sad.

    Anyways;

    From The Steve!
    “Mebbe I’m wrong, but I don’t think school shootings and concert massacres happened in the first half of the 20th century”

    Well, depends on what you’re counting, as the list of rampage killings on Wikipedia specifically excludes school shootings, but the earliest appears to be 1863.

    Surprised the hell out of me, I definitely sprang around the room perusing it. The floor obviously needs adjusting. Some people would probably mention that I should consider padding on the walls.

    Jim; “A very small probability of bad reactions is going to equate to lots of people when the number of guinea pigs runs into tens of millions”

    Yup.

    But given the wiki list referred to above, I’d be extremely wary of saying that SSRIs cause mass shootings.

    Additionally, the aforementioned list includes incidents in Colombia and Venezuela (pre-Chavez/Maduro by some way, for the avoidance of doubt), and we have Hungerford and Dunblane, the Aussies have Port Arthur. So, it is not a solely US phenomenon.

    AndrewC (& abacab); I think, from memory, that the rise in firearms related incidents post the Dunblane ban, was attributed to a rise in “gang culture”, since although it was firearms that were driving the headlines, with a particular focus on incidents in Nottingham, there was a huge increase in knife use as well. Notably, this rise in firearms use did not result in further restrictions on them, but in changes to the laws on knives.

    For what it’s worth; it appears that, in the UK at least, there were moral panics each time weapons technology advanced. F’instance, revolvers were initially viewed as not suitable for gentlemen, the choice of ruffians and other n’er-do-wells. The Tottenham Outrage happened around the time of the development of semi-automatics. It seems that the primary change in the approach of UK firearms law was in the early 1920s, roughly coterminous with the Wiemar Republic and the formation of the Freikorps.

  96. It should be noted that the US figures are for gun homicides, not gun murders. Over three-quarters of the deaths are suicides, and most of the rest are gangbangers blowing each other away.

    Not something that more restrictive gun laws will impact, and not, therefore, a reason for enacting them.

  97. MC;

    “I am glad we don’t have widespread gun ownership in the UK;”

    I think, if you were to take a gander at the numbers, you’d be, well, surprised.

    From memory, firearms certificate holders outnumber the police by about 3x. For shotgun certificate holders, it’s about 5x. That ignores the number of individual weapons actually held per certificate holder.

    Breaking down the numbers by region, it’s likely that the Devon, Dorset and Cornish constabularies still exist as effective forces only on paper.

    Ahem.

    UK “gun culture” does not exist in a way that is remotely comparable to the reporting of US “gun culture” by the UK media.

    As an experiment, have a butcher’s at the magazines displayed in the racks at a selection of newsagents in provincial towns. You’ll probably find Sporting Gun (a monthly) and Shooting Times in most of them (probably not in supermarkets).

  98. So Much For Subtlety

    dearieme – “Maybe they should be encouraged by sentences inversely related to the vileness of the victim.”

    For a long time, and perhaps still today, the lightest penalties for homicide were handed down in New Jersey. To young urban Black males who killed other young urban Black males. And this is the important bit – were represented by a public defender.

    That is, the system did not really give a sh!t about the murder of young Black men. They just wanted the cases off their desks and handled quickly. So they plead down to some bullsh!t manslaughter charge and everyone was happy.

  99. ‘Police took 72 minutes from first emergency call to reach Las Vegas shooter’

    A long range attack, while the police had no long range defense.

    ‘Fifty-nine people are confirmed dead and there are 527 reported injured.’

    Anti gun ownership people love to speculate about how horrible it would be if people had guns. These are real casualties, not speculative casualties. Reality trumps your speculation.

  100. So Much For Subtlety

    Watchman – “I remain to be convinced that the skin colour is deterministic here – poorer communities kept in poverty by state measures (so generally immigrants, or in the US the formerly systematically-discriminated-against black population) tend to have much bigger problems with gun violence than settled societies”

    Yeah but could anything convince you? No one is arguing that skin colour causes anything. There may be some link to both the skin colour and the violence. We don’t know.

    Asian Americans were kept in poverty. Discriminated against. Yet their gun violence rates are much lower. Lower than White people in fact. But then so are their average testosterone levels. Odd how a propensity to murder seems directly related to testosterone innit?

    “(see the Appalchians, or on a much lesser scale poor suburbs of Birmingham or Glasgow).”

    Sorry but what is the murder rate in the White suburbs of Glasgow?

    “but rather the fact that these communities are held together, held apart and held poor by the state”

    So the usual Blame-Whitey-First narrative. Hardly helpful even if true.

    “And as Solid Steve points out the homicide rate in the US is down, despite increased immigration. The much whiter US of the 20s and 30s (and even the 50s and 60s) was frankly much more dangerous in terms of homicide.”

    Was it? You are not taking into account improvements in medicine. People who were shot in the 1930s bled out. Now they are evacuated by helicopter to a major hospital in minutes. They are operated on by very expensively trained doctors with millions of dollars worth of equipment. So they live these days.

    “I am also trying to think of a mass shooter in the US who was black – there must have been some, but it’s hardly a defining tendency.”

    Black spree killers are more common than White ones. Asians even more so. The media just does not report Black crime.

    “but the people who look like you in the main who feel that keeping people in ‘communities’ is a good idea.”

    Sure. Blame White people. Great.

    Watchman – “It’s also made me think that the role of the state in dividing people is the issue in increasing gun violence – basically creating mini-states. And all of this is unrelated to the actions of single murderous psychos.”

    And how does that apply to Jamaica? Brazil? What you mean is that you have your prejudices and mere evidence is not going to change them. Not helpful

  101. So Much For Subtlety

    Gamecock – “A long range attack, while the police had no long range defense.”

    A shooter can shoot out the window. All the police had to do was take the elevator. All the time being fairly safe from the gun man.

    The 72 minutes is odd. I expect most of it was simply working out which room the shooting came from. Then the police could just use a back door, out of sight of the shooter, go up to his floor and then come into range by knocking the door down. That should not have taken long.

  102. Is there a role for big data here? If someone like a retired accountant can legally acquire over 30 high powered semi automatic weapons and presumably a lot of ammo, then shouldn’t someone in law enforcement be pinged on a database and go round and do a better check? I am sure that some in the gun lobby don’t want any central database, but as a tradeoff against a ban it might make sense.

  103. Mark T –

    A couple of things…

    First: There is a central database that gets mined all the time and the “gun lobby” (whatever the fuck that is) is fine with it… It is in the hands of the ATF. Any time you purchase a firearm from an FFL (a licensed gun dealer), your personal information goes to ATF for a background check. ATF ends up with both your information and the make, model and serial number of the firearm. ATF actively examines that data on a continuous basis and uses it in law enforcement operations.

    Second: If ATF decided to visit everyone who has legally acquired 30 firearms, what they’d be doing is meeting collectors of firearms, which is very different from tracking down mentally unstable persons with guns. I consider myself more of an enthusiast than a collector, and I still have around 25 firearms. When my father asked me to help him liquidate a portion of his collection, he had 85+. He collected 1911 semi-autos and Colt Single Action Army revolvers for the most part… and both are highly collectible. Owning 30 firearms is no more indicative of mental instability than owning, say, 40+ watches (which I do collect in a serious way).

    Third: Non-shooters always freak when they hear someone has a couple thousand rounds of ammo in their house. Let me explain it to you: The price of ammo fluctuates, as does the availability. During the Obama years getting 22lr at any price was a bitch, so when you could actually find it, you bought it. One day a couple of years ago I bought 2,000 rounds of it at Cabela’s because (1) they had it and nobody else in town did, and (2) they had it at $10 a hundred, which was $2-$3 cheaper than anyone else when they did have it. You buy ammo when you find a good price on it… not necessarily when you need it. Right now I’m sitting on roughly 5,000 rounds of everything from 22lr to 44 magnum to 38 special. Why not? I try to shoot every week and when I do I’m usually shooting 250-350 rounds (sometimes more). Shooting is expensive business (44 mag runs 80 cents a round, 5.7mm runs 49 cents a round, for example), so you buy cheap when the opportunity arises.

    The fact that the LV shooter owned a bunch of guns and a bunch of ammo didn’t set off any alarms, and it didn’t because owning 30 guns and a few thousand rounds aren’t really all that unusual amongst those deplorables who make up the “gun community” (whatever the fuck that is).

  104. Oh and another thing. Just seen the pictures of the inside of the room. Shouldn’t it be knee deep in spent shells?

  105. @SMFS

    ‘All the police had to do was take the elevator. All the time being fairly safe from the gun man.’

    Monday morning quarterbacking. I can’t be the only person who thought ‘ISIS’ when he heard the initial reports. I am 100% sure that that was in the minds of the cops, even if they also entertained the possibility that he was a lone shooter, and if it had have been ISIS then the chances were that there was a cut off man or team waiting to take on the cops. (This is going to happen more and more via Darwinism and them working out tactics and responses, which are a lot less flexible in the civilian world than on the battlefield.) You do not just ‘take the elevator’ to the floor where the shooting is coming from, and not just because there’s every chance that there will be some sort of explosive device planted somewhere designed to cause a fire which may well mean your blokes are trapped in a lift. (OK service elevators for firemen etc but still.) You go up the stairs, and you clear the floors below insofar as you can, particularly once the shooting has stopped. You leave men behind you as you go, because the last thing you want as you are standing outside the target room about to blow the door charges is some cunt opening up on you who has snuck up behind you.

    @Dennis

    Yes, you’re spot on about ammunition. I must say, one very confusing aspect of this is why this twat lugged 30-ish weapons up to the room, though. Assuming his plan was to blat through six hundred rounds in twenty magazines, I can understand why he would want more than one, because of overheating etc, but to take that many is odd. Not that the whole thing isn’t odd, of course.

  106. Would the Gun control lobby agree that Harold Shipman would have been more dangerous if he had carried the traditional (at least in novels!) revolver carried by doctors?

    Gun controls seems to be hugely effective in Chicago, etc. and London. I suspect that most gun crime in London is not reported, as this would reflect badly on persons of a certain colour.

    I wonder what the gun crime figures are for Africa? Are Blacks in Africa more dangerous than in say London or Chicago?

  107. More data in.

    Shooter stopped after 10-12 minutes. Police also had trouble initially determining location of shooter; some thought he was in Luxor, not Mandalay. I have also learned that some LV police do in fact have patrol rifles. In the time that the shooter was active, none was able to return fire. Reason unknown. Probably range/angle/identification/backstop problems.

    Note that casualty rate was ~1 per second.

    “All it would have taken to shut him down would have been one person with a rifle.

    Oh God, the stupid… It hurts.”

    Sniper . . . look it up.

  108. “I’d be extremely wary of saying that SSRIs cause mass shootings.

    Additionally, the aforementioned list includes incidents in Colombia and Venezuela (pre-Chavez/Maduro by some way, for the avoidance of doubt), and we have Hungerford and Dunblane, the Aussies have Port Arthur. So, it is not a solely US phenomenon.”

    Of course mentally unstable people aren’t solely a US phenomenon, but they do seem to have more than their fair share, globally speaking, of mass spree killers, and they also consume a large proportion of the global consumption of SSRIs and other mental health medications. I happen to think the two facts are linked.

  109. Dennis, I get your points and as someone else said there is a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking here, but I guess I was really asking if a bit of AI on said database might pick up that a 64 year old who previously only had a couple of firearms (according to his brother) suddenly goes out and buys dozens of semi automatics and a lot of ammo for them. And that might warrant the local law enforcement stopping by for a chat. I might add I am also puzzled by the logistics of it all. All those guns, plus ammo, apparently in 10 suitcases. Did he turn up at the hotel in a van? Did he take them all up at once or did he go back and forth – I am sure it will be on CCTV somewhere, but does the hotel not monitor single men with 10 presumably really heavy suitcases? Meanwhile, did nobody notice him apparently installing TV cameras in the corridor?

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