Mass shooting at Las Vegas music fest....50 dead and 200 injured(update-400)

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/02/us/gallery/las-vegas-shooting/index.html

This is atrocious. I recall last year the number of shootings were high, but looks like 2017 is determined to get worst. First and foremost all of the love and support to the individuals personally affected by this tradegy.

Lastly this is one of the biggest mass shootings in American history. Truly a dark time.

I know things get heated on this board, and I'm not trying to stifle any discussion. But please try to show tact and respect in this thread. Life is too short and precious in the broader scheme of things.

Thoughts and hope goes out to everyone in Las Vegas who was hit by this and their families.

Sad day for America.

Yup, let´s hope this thread stays civil and no one on either side starts to throw out fake things or accusations.

Another mass shooting in the gun country. Is it time to admit that the policy of making it easier to buy a gun than a pack of cigarettes is probably not a great idea, or are we still going to make the same dumb "gun rights" arguments that make no sense?

This country is sick.

Just watch people say that this isn't the time to speak about gun laws and health care for mental illness. So, when is it a good time to speak about those things? I am so glad that I am no american.

Not news you want to wake up to. :(

I'm all for making it harder to get guns if we also get harsher on mental health and those whom fail to report those who show signs of mental health issues. I see no way to remove guns from the country without creating worse problems, and I see no real progress in only focusing on the tools that "broken" humans use. Regardless, you have righteous defenders for either and it won't progress either way even after this most recent shooting.

Woah! When I went to bed last night this was two people dead. I definitely did not expect that number to jump to 50.

Yeah, let's not focus on tools. Let's keep pretending that it's not the guns. That seems to be working just wonderfully, if your goal is to be the most gun violent country in the modern world. Funny how other modern Nations with normal gun laws and 1/10 the guns have gun violence rates hundreds of times lower.

Just remember - this has nothing to do with the guns! This guy could just have easily knifed 500 people from his second floor hotel room window...

Wth man. Just terrible. How...how does a person get that many shots off?

@tjandmia: I think it has more to do with gun culture. The "muh guns, muh flag, 'murica!" Mentality.

Shocking, but not exactly surprising. Nothing will change and it'll be forgotten once the next Trump scandal rolls around.

So the guy was picking people off from a hotel room near the top of the hotel? They sell guns that good?

Apparently he had over 10 rifles with him and giant magazines.

From the description of the attack, it seems like it's as close to shooting "fish in a barrel" as possible without actually shooting fish in a barrel. Brutal stuff.

From what I heard on the radio it was an automatic.

Looks like the injury count is now just over 400.

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/las-vegas-shooting/las-vegas-police-investigating-shooting-mandalay-bay-n806461

@Sam3231: I'm not trying the gun debate issue, but automatic guns aren't legal are they?

Just listened to one of the videos and it did sound automatic. Stopped watching though...

Right. They aren't.

They are legal if you got the permits, and I think if you buy older automatics anyone can buy them (super expensive though). And there's a lot of rifles that you can rebuild into automatics if you aren't a total tool.

@Chutebox: I'm not sure. I don't believe automatics are illegal, but I could be wrong.

I'm not getting into the gun debate today either. I'm sure others will, but I stayed up past 4 am last night doing homework, and I just don't have the energy today.

And the shooter was a retired old man. I don't get this shit

It's actually kind of odd how the law is around automatics. They aren't fully illegal but they require a much stricter background check and cost way more. However, it isn't too terribly difficult to turn a semi into an automatic with some know how. This dude had over 10 riles they say so it is possible he was a very experienced gun owner. Terrible tragedy.

200 injured?, news here is reporting 400 injured.

Condolences to those directly affected to this either way.

Wow, what a tragedy. 400 injured now too :(

Condolenses to those affected. I hope all those injured get a speedy recovery without any complications.

And this post right here is why I hate ideologues.

Still don't understand why these guns are legal. A handgun for home protection or a rifle to hunt, I get. A semi or fully automatic rifle that can cause mass casualties and are made for one purpose(war, to kill people) shouldn't be legal. When the second amendment was written, these kinds of guns weren't available and probably not even imagined.

RIP to all those lost. Heart out to the families and friends. Damn, what a terrible day.

ffs

@joshrmeyer: the guns weren't legal. He either bought illegal guns or modified his, which I didn't even know was possible, to be automatic

Semi auto, from what I understand, just means the gun loads itself. So that basically includes all hand guns and they've been around for a very long time

If I'm wrong someone please correct me

@Maroxad: What is wrong with that post? You don’t have to be an ideologue to recognize that guns kill and having more guns equals more killing in the US.

Like I said in my post it is unclear if the guns were illegal or even automatic at this point unless I have missed some news on this while at work. Not all automatic guns are illegal and it is not terribly hard to turn a semi into an automatic. The odds that this guy bought around 10 illegal rifles is really low as that would be ridiculously expensive.

@Nick3306: ah, thank you

ONE old man. Let that sink in for a second. One man. Retired. Probably not in great physical shape, either. Sure he was probably a good shit, spent a lot of time at the range or more likely a big empty patch of desert in Nevada, but it's still one guy.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 dead

1 shooter

I am so sorry to all the victims and survivors, and massive props to the medical and support staff and anyone helping.

We have got to stop letting this shit happen, though. And we do let it happen.

It's a grey area. So, for example, while it might be illegal to buy a certain gun in your state, it is not illegal to own that gun and you can buy that gun in the next state which is only three hours away. The NRA and other organizations/people spends millions (billions?) to keep these loopholes open and prevent new legislation from being passed at the federal and state level.

And Americans love to tinker. I think everyone does, don't get me wrong, but Americans really seem to like to. So it's not hard to find someone willing to make changes to your weapon. Hell a lot of this stuff is as simple as filing something down, putting a small part back in, and so forth.

I was trying to avoid getting political, but since others have brought up how I feel; then ill chime in. People need to stop being so damn adamantly opposed to any form of common sense gun regulation. Even Reagan a pretend conservative made it a point to ban assault weapons. No private citizen needs this much power. It only takes one bullet to ruin/destroy someones life, take one psycho with a weapon that can fire 60 in a couple seconds and a crowd of defenseless people and you get disaster. Too many nuts/alcoholic/people with anger issues/people with mental health issues/people having a bad day/and reactionaries have easy access to these weapons. And the more America continues its obsession with guns then the more the demand for them will keep them on the street.

Thank of it this way, I can buy an AK-47 or M16 legally as long as it is semi-automatic. But when I get home there is nothing stopping me from easily adjusting it to fire fully automatic with some tools that you have laying around your house.

This is a reoccurring problem that has been ignored or shifted around to satisfy the right-wing fanatics who believe that the government is "bout to get 'em" never mind that these same fanatics support the militarization of our police and growing the military to satisfy their wet dreams of invading every little country that looks at them cross-eyed.

This is a problem. This is a problem that has occurred over and over that has resulted in the deaths of friends, families and loved ones in places that they should feel safe, whether it's a concert, a workplace, a place of worship or a place of learning. You had kids getting shot in Sandy Hook. You had office workers getting shot in San Bernardino. You had black church-goers shot by some white supremacist in South Carolina. And now we're here with one of the worst massacres to occur in U.S. history with 50+ dead and 400 wounded and the response to this is, "Oh, what a tragedy. Thoughts and prayers to the families" by immoral politicians and assholes who live in their ivory towers, pretending that this is an isolated event and that guns solve everything, that the victims should have been armed. Or that they should not have "gun-free" zones. Or because law enforcement is "politically correct" in their response, nevermind that they arrived on scene with armored cars and SWAT teams.

Forget the reason why these assholes did it. It all boils down to one thing: Easy access to guns. It's not guns, just "easy access" to guns. The concert-goers could have been armed and it would have been irrelevant. The asshole shooter was in a high-rise building that granted him cover and a position to pick them off. Oh wait, some of the access was illegal? So what? When you have guns circulating around this country, with little to no enforcement from the authorities, it's still "access."

I get it. No one wants to politicize a problem so that they don't appear as if they want to gain something out of this. If this was an isolated event, I would maybe agree with you but this isn't the case. From the massacre in high school, a theater, a church, a concert, an office building, a temple, one must wonder if these are all isolated events or a cancer that this country continues to neglect because we are caving into the ideologues of fanatics. But if dead kids who went to school to learn, get sick and tired of learning and eagerly wait for recess can't convince anyone that we have a problem, why would the deaths of 50 people who went to a concert to listen to some country music convince an ideologue who firmly believes in their archaic views?

Now who is the ideologue?

I hope all the families affected by this mass shooting are doing okay.

The problem is the person pulling the trigger not the inanimate object. If he didn’t have 10 guns he could have made a few bombs instead and we might be looking at hundreds dead.

@mrbojangles25: Yup, one man... That's what's scary. Imagine if 4-5 nuts had hotel rooms next to this one who were also shooting. This is crazy that one man can cause so much damage with a legal or illegal(depending on who you ask) weapon, that serves no purpose than to kill.

I do not own a gun, and haven't since I was a kid. I had an sks growing up on the farm with 2 30 round banana clips, 1 10 round clip, and a little over 600 rounds. I sold it long ago and I never saw a need to get another gun. I have all around me buying guns as adults and the difference between our perspectives on guns are quite different. I grew up with guns, access to more guns, and all the ammunition I could ever need since members in my family did their own ammunition. I don't find them cool or needed in my current living situation. But...

The purchase of guns through the legality of a store whether it is Walmart or a more specialized gun shop is not the issue whatsoever. The legality of purchases/sales through other means, however, is.

Personally I think there should also be yearly examinations for mental health regardless of whether you do, or want to, own a gun for everyone without exemptions.

California has passed some good laws concerning their firearms which has shown broad results, but even that is a far cry from saying it's actually fixing the problem itself.

@n64dd: nukes should be legal to buy in that case. No, the object is made for war. These weren't hunting rifles. Objects made for war like grenades, or these kinds of rifles have no purpose being in the public's hands. Why are some guns legal and some aren't? Doesn't that break the 2nd amendment rights? My point: allow guns... Guns with a legitimate purpose aka home protection, or hunting.

Ya, I'm not a big fan of guns or knowledgeable of guns and didn't even know that was possible.

@Chutebox: As far as I know, auto are illegal. But super easy to make auto, like AKs. They are designed for war, to kill the most effective way. It's illegal to hunt with an AK-47 or M-16 etc so why is it legal to buy them? What's their purpose in normal society? I say keep them on the battle ground or police hands only.

FYI- the guns used in the Orlando shooting that killed 49 were 100% legal six Sauer's that were not automatics. It's not hard to pull a trigger fast I guess. So whether these guns were legal or not, the outcome would have been probably the same.

Ya, I agree. And it's shit either way.

Yeah you can modify semi auto's to make them appear full auto without technically breaking the law (some people will break the law and important full auto receivers from overseas but most will just do some simply mods). Your not technically making them full auto but it's VERY close to full auto, most wouldn't be able to tell the difference

Knew someone who did a trigger mod on an ak47 and basically made the trigger have a light pull. As a result, if you double tap the trigger (using your top two fingers alternating really fast against the trigger), the gun will basically shoot at near full auto speed.

You can also do “bump firing,” which is where you simulate automatic firing by rocking the gun against the trigger finger. There's aftermarket stocks you can buy that will allow this feature (the link below is a youtube video of a stock from Slide Fire that you can buy online).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=218&v=yTSNscULt28

That's a crazy jump to make. To nukes.

400 injured and 50 dead or so... How many bullets did he use?

Sure you don't mean hundreds?