Mass Shooting in Vegas

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Re: Mass Shooting in Vegas

Postby LegionofShrooms » Thu Oct 05, 2017 9:00 pm

Lindvaettr wrote:To my knowledge, the major firearms manufacturers do not produce the bump-stocks themselves. They're manufactured and sold by other companies (AR-15 bump stocks are primarily manufactured by a company named Slide Fire, for example).

This is interesting because the NRA primarily serves as the political/lobbying wing of gun manufacturers like Colt, S&M, etc. I wonder if they're willing to advocate for these measures because their main backers aren't the ones making a profit on them.


Alternatively, they could realize that the scale of the attack and death toll directly contributed to by bump stocks vs the gain for their organization stemming from their continued legality might just not make them worth fighting for, given the amount of negative press this has brought with it.

This could just be good PR sense on their part at the cost of an item they see as less than critical to their organization.
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Re: Mass Shooting in Vegas

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Fri Oct 06, 2017 1:10 am

LegionofShrooms wrote:
Lindvaettr wrote:To my knowledge, the major firearms manufacturers do not produce the bump-stocks themselves. They're manufactured and sold by other companies (AR-15 bump stocks are primarily manufactured by a company named Slide Fire, for example).

This is interesting because the NRA primarily serves as the political/lobbying wing of gun manufacturers like Colt, S&M, etc. I wonder if they're willing to advocate for these measures because their main backers aren't the ones making a profit on them.


Alternatively, they could realize that the scale of the attack and death toll directly contributed to by bump stocks vs the gain for their organization stemming from their continued legality might just not make them worth fighting for, given the amount of negative press this has brought with it.

This could just be good PR sense on their part at the cost of an item they see as less than critical to their organization.


What, the NRA prioritize good press and safety over profit and advancing the interests of its members, a vast minority of the country?

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Re: Mass Shooting in Vegas

Postby Crimson847 » Sat Oct 07, 2017 12:17 am

Maybe the NRA wants them regulated like automatic weapons because A) if used "properly" they more or less turn a semiautomatic firearm into a makeshift automatic, and B) automatic weapons are garbage for just about any lawful civilian purpose. Firing a gun on full-auto makes it substantially less accurate and wastes ammunition at an alarming rate, which is the exact opposite of what you want for just about any lawful purpose. If you're target shooting, full-auto wastes buckets of expensive ammunition and makes it harder to hit your target. If you're hunting, the above applies and if you do hit the animal you'll turn it to Swiss cheese, which makes it much harder to eat or show off as a prize in your living room. In a self-defense situation the loss of accuracy is even more problematic, and by spraying a hail of bullets in your attacker's general direction rather than a few aimed shots you vastly increase the risk of hitting some innocent bystander. So for almost all lawful purposes full-auto is much worse than semi-auto.

The only lawful purpose a machine gun might be good for would be suppressing a mass shooter to allow others to get to cover, but in such a situation the risk of hitting an innocent would be immense, since mass shooters by definition target public places with lots of people. Imagine if someone had tried that in Vegas, for instance; they'd have possibly suppressed the shooter, but also delivered dozens of rounds into a bunch of innocent people's hotel rooms. You don't need a machine gun to suppress a single shooter in such a circumstance, as was proven by the folks at UT Austin during the clock tower shooting in 1966, when several bystanders took cover with their own guns and took periodic potshots at the tower's observation deck to keep Whitman's head down.


(Interesting note: in Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore asks a bunch of members of the Michigan Militia what they have at home for home defense. One guy says he has an M-16 he uses for that purpose, and his fellow militia members object, on the grounds that "you have to know where your rounds are going". You'd be surprised how little support there is for using full-auto weapons for self-defense even among the most diehard "gun people".)
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Re: Mass Shooting in Vegas

Postby pikajew » Sat Oct 07, 2017 3:38 am

Thanks for giving me a place to post this without clogging up the rant thread.

I live in Vegas. I work inside of Mandalay Bay. I have countless friends that were there, my staff was stuck in the building until dawn, and I even know a few people that were injured. The (now confirmed) car full of explosives and ammo was parked where I get dropped off and picked up for work.

I'm going to put each paragraph in spoilers because after typing this all out, I realized it became a really disjointed rant about what living through this has turned into.

Spoiler: show
I'm sick to death of people asking how he got weapons in the room. We have multiple convention centers and pageants that happen here. It's 100% normal for someone to carry 10 suitcases with them. It's normal for rich assholes to bring multiple sets of golf clubs (we have three luxury courses within a mile of the property). It's normal for people to bring boxes and cases full of equipment for the conventions. Hell, the Hawaiian Tropic pageant brings in women that carry trunks of nothing but bikinis. There are posted notices everywhere telling people that carrying a firearm into a casino is a felony, but how do you know if the box under someone's bed is full of dildos and cocaine or a gun? Besides, there's thousands of people milling about. I really hate the idea that someone is responsible for noticing that someone is doing something inappropriate, but even so. Security has their hands full in a casino when a large event is happening. (I'm highly irritated that they didn't use their emergency response system to actually warn the people working about what was going on. They have both an alarm and an automated phone system and neither were triggered. My staff learned about the shooting because a waitress across the hall ran over to tell them to close after checking Snapchat and hearing about the shooter.)


Spoiler: show
I had to call security on the same woman the Friday and Saturday right before the shooting. On Friday, security never made it to my shop. On Saturday, it took 45 minutes for them to respond because of a violent incident in the Nike Golf store six doors down from us. Today, there were at least five armed guards that were at the doorway between the public area and employee hallways I use to access the back door to my shop. Not to mention dozens of FBI agents and police officers. They have evacuated the entire 34th floor. The hotel is still at 70% capacity. The Delano (which is attached and literally a part of Mandalay Bay, it's just the luxury tower) is at 90% capacity. The Luxor, which is also attached to the Bay, is at 80% capacity. Some people were kicked out for trying to sneak up to do their own investigating.


Spoiler: show
Some people are being really nice and supportive. Some are nice but a little more snoopy than they should be with people they've never met before. A handful of people made me absolutely angry. One bitch mentioned she's a reporter from Arizona that drove up on Tuesday. She was complaining because she didn't know anyone here, so she didn't have anyone to stay with and hotels were only offering free rooms for people helping, not reporters. She told me that this was really rough on her. Maybe 18 inches away, one of my staff members (that was caught in the attack) tried not to start crying again.


Spoiler: show
The people coming up with conspiracy theories are the worst. The investigation is ongoing. The festival grounds are still taped off, they haven't even put a tarp over the broken windows, the main entrance to Mandalay Bay is still closed.


Spoiler: show
Oh, my company hired therapists to come and help support us. We had a different one for yesterday, today,
and tomorrow. Today's therapist got into a car accident on the way to the group session and is in the hospital. We don't know how to check on her to see if she's ok, aside from emailing the person in corporate that set up the therapy sessions.


I've always complained that there isn't a sense of community in Vegas, but this has proved me dead wrong. Places are turning donations away at this point. My city is supporting each other in a way I never would have believed was possible. And thank you for letting me unleash this here instead of at the next person that whines about how hard it is to party this week.

Edit: Had to fix spoiler tags, retroactively putting them in made my post catch the dumb.
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Last edited by pikajew on Sat Oct 07, 2017 3:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mass Shooting in Vegas

Postby 52xMax » Sat Oct 07, 2017 3:51 am

Damn. I'm just glad you're safe.
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Re: Mass Shooting in Vegas

Postby tinyrick » Sat Oct 07, 2017 9:39 am

Guns & Ammo advertises a bag that lets you slip in and out of a hotel armed without being detected for it's November issue.

Guns & Ammo feels like the kind of magazine that would only exist on the dark web in the Shadowrun universe, but it's on store shelves nationwide. God bless the 1st amendment until it allows kids to read Harry Potter and play Dungeons & Dragons.
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