#1
The author's logic escapes me. The shooter's firearms purchases appear to be in full compliance with existing gun laws.
For his purposes and time available, the completely legal "bump stock" worked perfectly and saved the shooter a great deal of urgently needed travel money.
#2
His logic is that Paddock chose to comply with the law and it's challenging path to full-auto ownership and go with the quasi-auto bump stock route, which may well have restricted is effectiveness at killing, due to the propensity for such arrangements to jam. It would be interesting to know how many of the guns he had in the room were jammed and difficult to clear quickly - perhaps he had so many because he knew that would be a problem for him.
#3
Paddock used a "pray and spray approach." The technique is inaccurate. Moreover, from my understanding, the "bump stock" add-on makes the firearm more prone to jamming. I'd think that a skilled and practiced shooter with a semi-automatic rifle could do a great deal of damage to the crowd below the Mandalay--maybe more so than with bump stock weapons. I doubt that more gun control laws would have helped or prevented such an incident. Gun-control politicians tend to have knee-jerk reactions to such shootings and want to immediately enact more gun-control laws while knowing little about firearms or the impact of their legislation as it opens the door to confiscation; that is the ultimate aim of the gun-grabbers. I tend to oppose such legislation because it is like allowing the nose of the camel under the tent. Once these feckless laws are enacted, it opens the door to enacting more feckless laws. These laws prevent little crime and just tend to tick off law-abiding citizens. The people who engage in such mass shootings are criminals and they have little regard for gun laws; they would obtain guns in an illegal manner. Look at Chicago, for example. How many guns used in shootings and homicides are legally obtained? Annually, one third of all U.S. gun-related homicides are committed in Obama's hometown of Chicago.
#4
With all Paddock's money and planning combined with his criminal nature, it seems to me he could easily have secured several illegal automatic weapons had he been a little more patient.
#5
I haven't seen or heard any convincing evidence that a bump fire stock was used. The video of the event has the shots going off far to regularly. Only a full auto could achieve that regular firing rate. Bump stocks are a fun way to empty a mag, and that's about it.
In a better world, the discussion we'd be having is whether or not Congress even has the authority to ban bump stocks -- with the obvious answer being 'no.'
#7
The rate of fire in the videos is not indicative of Automatic weapon firing consistency. Rate of fire slows and speeds depending on the shooters ability to hold it in place in the shoulder.
#8
Gun control enacted by Mandalay prevented the security guard who was shot by Paddock from having a weapon. If armed and trained in gun use he could have engaged Paddock long enough for more armed security and then police to prevent any where near the fatalities incured at the festival below. This was the firefight he expected but never materialized due to extreme gun control imposed on hotel premises including security personel. Therefore he turned on the festival before taking his own life instead of suicide by cop.
#10
How many magazines did the sh1tbird have loaded up and ready to go.
I've read that he used up half of what he had prepared, rjschwarz. It could have been much worse, especially had he successfully set off the airplane fuel tanks.
[Foreign Policy] Decertifying the nuclear deal isn't the most dangerous decision about Iran the president will soon make.
President Trump is about to make the most destructive foreign-policy move by a U.S. administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
It is not simply that Trump reportedly plans this week to decertify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), despite the fact that every other signatory country, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and even Israel’s intelligence agency agree that the deal is being implemented properly by Iran. No, seemingly embarrassed by his inability to just "tear up" the "worst deal ever negotiated," Trump is about to do the thing uberhawks have demanded for years: designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization and putting it on the same level as al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Far more than decertifying the Iran deal, the designation of the IRGC would massively and unnecessarily complicate the fraught U.S. relationship with Iran. The certification requirement was imposed by Congress ‐ it is not a part of the JCPOA, and Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has even acknowledged that it would not necessarily mean U.S. withdrawal from the deal. Designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization, however, would have immediate and potentially disastrous effects that could reverberate across the Middle East. It is, after all, a branch of the armed forces of a U.N.-member nation and one that has shown little hesitancy to strike back at whoever threatens it or the Islamic Republic.
#2
Honestly, do they think the USA fears Iran?
Give me a break.
20 minutes over their ports by USAF and they enter the dark age (again).
China goes dark as well and we fire no shots within 1000 miles of their coast.
Kurds take NW Iran , N Iraq, and Syria to the Med and we have New World Order .
Just sayin.
#5
Actually, the nuclear production and research sites at Khonab, Ardakan, Bonab, Bushehr, and a few other should be taken out. If they cannot be inspected through scheduled inspection regimes, they should be destroyed.
#8
The IRGC aren't terrorists - they are forces of a nation state that were in open warfare with us in Iraq. Iran declared war on us in Iraq and we did not reciprocate...that was on Bush and Obama...they killed over a thousand of us...and we did nothing.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Foreign Policy] Decertifying the nuclear deal isn't the most dangerous decision about Iran the president will soon make.
