Machine gun fire into Las Vegas crowd at Route 91 music Festival

[exnihilo]

please dont accuse any company of supplying weapons to ISIS without evidence, real evidence. I would find it hard to believe any USA company is supplying to enemies that are terrorists.

The US government supplied Afghanistan and Libya, and is supplying Syria. I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that US arms makers are supplying terrorists because they have.

thought legal automatics were limited to those produced before a certain date, so limited supply pushes up pricing well above retail of new production since they are effectively ‘collectors items’, then there is the tax.

I expect in vegas, there are contacts to purchase most illegal items

I believe it is prohibits weapons after 1986 thanks in part to Reagan.

Vegas also has lots of legal full auto guns. You can go to ranges and pay a lot to try one out.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

The shooter could have purchased regular AR-15’s legally and then illegally obtained the parts and the expertise to make it fully automatic. Or purchased said parts and labor from someone else. Even in Nevada, fully automatic weapons are extremely difficult for private citizens to have, believe that is part of federal law. Sure there are ranges where one can pay to rent and fire one, but try buying one from that shop. There may be some grandfather scheme by which owners could keep older ones, dunno about that one.

There is a lot we don’t know but a few things are certain right now:

• The shooter planned this thoroughly.
• He picked his target and his target demographics.
• He had to have practiced shooting somewhere as it is clear he knew how to keep his guns firing.
• He set up platforms at the windows to mount the guns on
• He set up cameras in the hallway to tell him when law enforcement officers were coming for him.
• He used his girlfriend’s ID and play card in the hotel.
• He was not a Christian.

Now there is a lot more we don’t know:

• What triggered him?
• He was allegedly going through a divorce. Anything there?
• Was he a registered voter? Who did he support?
• How did he get the guns, the ammo and the platforms into the room without hotel security finding out? We can be sure the CCTV feeds are being scanned right now.
• How did he hide everything from the housekeeping staff?
• They’re saying his Asian girlfriend is no longer a person of interest. That could be a smokescreen to induce her to return to the US. I think she must have known something. Perhaps she knew what was going to happen and was warned to leave the country.
• What about the eyewitness accounts of a “Hispanic” couple that pushed their way up front at the festival and said “everyone is going to die”? How much credibility? Could they have been a different ethnicity?

 

[exnihilo]

The shooter could have purchased regular AR-15’s legally and then illegally obtained the parts and the expertise to make it fully automatic.

He could, but it would have to be an older AR-15. Several changes were made in the 80s to make it difficult to convert. As I recall you’d have to replace the trigger group and the bolt carrier. While it may be possible to manufacture or obtain such things I would imagine it is very difficult.

He could have one of those bump fire stocks. In which case it isn’t a real automatic rifle.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

He could, but it would have to be an older AR-15. Several changes were made in the 80s to make it difficult to convert. As I recall you’d have to replace the trigger group and the bolt carrier. While it may be possible to manufacture or obtain such things I would imagine it is very difficult.

He could have one of those bump fire stocks. In which case it isn’t a real automatic rifle.

You have a good point there. I have seen some discussion regarding bump fire stocks, that could be how the shooter did it. Wonder if we’ll get pictures of the guns found in the room.

Also there is out there on Twitter that the shooter was spotted on a video taken at an anti-Trump rally in Reno several weeks ago with his girlfriend. I watched this video, narrator is careful to say not confirmed, but there is definitely a resemblance. He was wearing a pink shirt and a pink pussy hat and holding a sign.

In an interesting twist, it turns out that the shooter’s father was a bank robber who was diagnosed as psychopathic and made the FBI’s Top Ten list. More here. Wow.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Amen.Good news your son is safe, and your sister as well Jamie5,reading about the perp he was a very odd individual ,high stakes poker player but nothing to indicate this outcome.

 

[Roseeurekacross]

on our news it says Nevada is a no permit carry zone and that assault rifles are legal. Is an assault rifle an auto / machine gun? or would he have had to modify as you describe?

he had 10 guns , i wonder what the others were like. apparently his father was on an fbi watch list and psycopathic. perhaps this guy just became like that.
he was quite well off. a few properties and 2 planes.
his partner , an Australian , might shed some light on it.

 

[Jamie5]

Thank you for prayers and well wishes. Sister flew back home today and is ok. She was at another concert about a mile away. She said they closed part of the highway and even the airport for a while. I can’t imagine the fear of the crowd. New videos being released and it sounds like a war movie machine gun, just hundreds if not thousands of rounds being fired upon the thousands of people at the concert. It is truly an act of evil and I can’t believe or even comprehend how someone could do this. I wish he would have just killed himself first. This is so sad. Prayers for all the victims and the hundreds fighting for their life.

 

[exnihilo]

on our news it says Nevada is a no permit carry zone and that assault riflres are legal. Is an assault rifle an auto / machine gun? or would he have had to modify as you describe?

An assault rifle as used popularly, for instance by the media, generally means a modern semi automatic rifle. These typically have black plastic grips, stocks, and guards. They have detachable magazines. These are typically what are carried by police or the military. You might call it a scary looking gun.

I believe true assault rifle must be capable of fully automatic fire. What is often called an assault rifle is not because it is not fully automatic.

I believe a machine gun is a larger caliber, heavier weapon, can be belt fed or magazine fed, and is fully automatic only.

Practically speaking a true machine gun is a very deadly weapon that is designed to be fired from one place and fire a lot of rounds. A true assault rifle is designed for mobility and to be carried. It is designed to be able to conserve ammunition.

An AR-15 is a popular rifle that is just like the M16 (a true assault rifle) except that it is capable of only semi automatic (one shot per trigger pull) fire. A true assault rifle is an auto rifle but not a machine gun.

Someone who knows more about the actual technical distinctions may be able to provide a clearer or more accurate description.

 

[Roseeurekacross]

thanks. we had all semi autos banned after port arthur,

my son is just going through the process of getting a gun license here. its so strict. he even needs signatories that own over a certain amount of acres.

 

[F_Marturana]

Oh my, I’m glad he’s safe. How scary it must have been for you.

These events have gotten me very saddened today. Praying for the victims.

 

[7_Sorrows]

thank you for your kind thoughts.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Amen.Good news your son is safe, and your sister as well Jamie5,reading about the perp he was a very odd individual ,high stakes poker player but nothing to indicate this outcome.

Thanks Jeanne. He still is not home yet. I will be glad when he is home safe.

 

[josie_L]

Amen.Good news your son is safe, and your sister as well Jamie5,reading about the perp he was a very odd individual ,high stakes poker player but nothing to indicate this outcome.

His family seems to be shocked about this, i.e., he had no political and/or religious affiliations that they are aware of that could have motivated this massacre of epic proportions.

Although, the shooter’s father was on the FBI’s most wanted list and considered psychopathic, so who knows what underlying psychosis festered within him?

 

[Jeanne_S]

I also heard there is speculation that he was a stooge" didn’t act alone as audio indicates there were more than one gun being fired at the same time.

 

[J_Peterson]

42 guns and thousands or rounds of ammunition and nothing to indicate this outcome? Only in America.

 

[Jeanne_S]

Yes,very unbelievable that he went unnoticed ,holed up in a hotel room for several days…

 

[Jeanne_S]

Just heard the shooter also sent large sums of money to the Phillipines,which is also a Islamic rich area

 

[pnewton]

I am really surprised at how little discussion there has been here over this article. I do not anticipate any change as a result of this incident, as the Orlando shooting also prompted no change. We have become rather calloused to gun violence. I found this Onion article.

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

“This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Michigan resident Emily Harrington, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep these individuals from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past six and a half years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

 

[Jamie5]

As a country it’s embarrassing how we seem to do everything to avoid talking about guns. Everytime there’s a shooting it’s always something else, is it mentally ill people, is it terrorists, is it blah blah, is it hotel security, is it window security.

mass shooting, mass shooting, mass shooting.

And this week congress is voting to de-regulate gun silencers, seriously.

I don’t think it should be so easy for one crazy human to kill so many people so quickly.
It makes no sense to me as a reasonable human being, it just doesn’t.

 

[exnihilo]

He could have rented a truck and drove into the crowd and killed as many. The tool isn’t the problem. Europe has shown us removing the tool of a gun won’t stop mass murder.

As for silencers they aren’t what you likely think. They don’t make a gun silent. They just make them more quiet. A lot of hunter would use them. Many hunter suffer hearing loss from not wearing hearing protection. They don’t because it is difficult with good protection to use a scope. So silencers are really a matter of health. And the restrictions on them were a silly law from the thirties passed by lawmakers influenced by fantasy more than reality.