Vegas Mandalay Bay mass shooting / Gun Control 2017 Thread

[alasdairm]

if you just give up before you start, you lose every time.

alasdair

 

[Scrofula]

I am anti gun-control

Says the man who claims Canada and the Netherlands as home.

Then you'll say there's "high" rates of gun ownership in Canada, to which I won't bother to look up that they're rifles, not handguns, etc., cf. Sweden, Waterfall, Escher, supra. It's easy to make your claims from a safe place. I think the stats were that an American male 18-55 or so, was 70 times more likely to die from firearms than the same demo across the G-8.

 

[cduggles]

America has 4.4 percent of the world’s population, but almost half of the civilian-owned guns around the world

It’s not just the US: Developed countries with more guns also have more gun deaths

There have been more than 1,500 mass shootings since Sandy Hook

Last link in my above post ^^ up there
Gun violence in America, explained in 17 maps and charts

 

[Scrofula]

I'm sorry, I'm looking at the ownership v. deaths graph: Argentina and Chile, being right next to each other, have about the same rates of ownership but huge difference in death rate. Is it the Chileans piscola? (No.) Do the Argentinians eat too much beef? Patagonia is just too rage-inducing? Evita? Argentina's a huge outlier anyway.

(I'm sure differences in record keeping across nations plays a role, but still . . . way lower than us! USA USA)

 

[BehindtheShadow]

I know here in SA almost every household has a gun be it illegal or not and we don't see mass shootings like in the States.

We do indeed have very violent crimes like armed robberies etc but not mass shootings.

I actually wonder if this guy had a brain tumour or something like that because nobody in their right mind would do something so heinous IMO.

 

[JessFR]

I know here in SA almost every household has a gun be it illegal or not and we don't see mass shootings like in the States.

We do indeed have very violent crimes like armed robberies etc but not mass shootings.

I actually wonder if this guy had a brain tumour or something like that because nobody in their right mind would do something so heinous IMO.

Unfortunately that’s not true. People can do this sort of thing and be entirely in their right mind. Look around this thread, so many people refusing to really understand other people’s points of view, the evil gun lobby, etc etc. The point is people simplify other people’s views, it’s easier to believe they are evil and wrong or corrupted and selfish rather than having a different but legitimate point of view.

Little by little, this can become so extreme that eventually people really do see the people they don’t agree with as evil, and they need to die. There are endless excuses, religion, etc, but really it all comes down to humans deciding that the existence of other humans they don’t agree with simply can’t be tolerated.

Ignorance, intolerance, simplification. Everyone does it. And unchecked, eventually it can reach a point where people decide their enemies can’t continue to exist. And of course, and this is where we do start getting into biology more than human nature. Sometimes some people really are evil. It’s rare, but sometimes it’s that simple. But like I said, rare. Most of the time nobody is really evil, just little by little they’ve really become this exteme. And unlike being truly evil and bad, with which we know there are biological influences, a lot of otherwise normal humans have the potential to reach such extremism that they’d kill.

My point is, there need not be any brain tumor, or any biological “problem” at all. But I don’t expect many will agree with me. Which is exactly my point. It’s far too gray a point of view for most to tolerate. But that’s my view.

 

[BehindtheShadow]

Unfortunately that’s not true. People can do this sort of thing and be entirely in their right mind. Look around this thread, so many people refusing to really understand other people’s points of view, the evil gun lobby, etc etc. The point is people simplify other people’s views, it’s easier to believe they are evil and wrong or corrupted and selfish rather than having a different but legitimate point of view.

Little by little, this can become so extreme that eventually people really do see the people they don’t agree with as evil, and they need to die. There are endless excuses, religion, etc, but really it all comes down to humans deciding that the existence of other humans they don’t agree with simply can’t be tolerated.

Ignorance, intolerance, simplification. Everyone does it. And unchecked, eventually it can reach a point where people decide their enemies can’t continue to exist. And of course, and this is where we do start getting into biology more than human nature. Sometimes some people really are evil. It’s rare, but sometimes it’s that simple. But like I said, rare. Most of the time nobody is really evil, just little by little they’ve really become this exteme. And unlike being truly evil and bad, with which we know there are biological influences, a lot of otherwise normal humans have the potential to reach such extremism that they’d kill.

My point is, there need not be any brain tumor, or any biological “problem” at all. But I don’t expect many will agree with me. Which is exactly my point. It’s far too gray a point of view for most to tolerate. But that’s my view.

The only reason why I say this was look at Charles Whitman the Texas Tower Sniper, they autopsied his body and found a pecan sized tumour in his brain which they believe is what caused him to go on his shooting rampage.

I am not disagreeing with you but I actually do wonder if this might be the case with this guy.

 

[JessFR]

Yeah I remember that case. But I don’t think it’s been the case with many others. It would be interesting to find out, but I doubt it will turn out to be the case.

 

[BehindtheShadow]

Most of these guys that do things like this after doing investigations etc they find things like "manifesto's" so yes would be very interesting to see why he has done what he has

 

[Scrofula]

But his proclaimed motive, even a real motive, if it was possible to know such things, is irrelevant. To find out that he just really hates country music (understandable) instead of owes the casinos a bunch of money, gets us nothing.

The question of illness is important, but not the end either. Would it help us to know he had a brain tumor? Would we demand MRIs for every male in the country? I think mental health care obv. needs improvement anyway, but it would be too late for him, and he supposedly had money to pay for treatment. (right? someone said he was rich).

Really, there's one common factor to all mass shootings. Key is in the word "shoot".

Jess, I'm curious what the nuanced take from the gun lobbies is? You are right, I tend to simplify that one. I can even knock it down to a single word: money. If you want to rep their complex point of view, I'll listen.

 

[swilow]

I've given the Oklahoma city bombing and others as an example countless times but it just goes ignored.

Its a red herring. It has no bearing on the fact we are discussing gun massacres.

Sure, people kill people with all sorts of things. How does this relate to guns? It is demonstrable that proliferate and liberal gun laws are causally related to mass shootings. Can you refute that?

... it's important for law abiding citizens to be able to own guns.

Why?

What about hand grenades, or landmines?

There isnt one. Americans as a society are just going to have to learn to live with this type of stuff

Why?

 

[cduggles]

In 1966, Charles Whitman killed seventeen people and wounded thirty-one from his perch in the tower at University of Texas at Austin in 96 minutes before he was shot and killed by police officers.

One of his shots killed an unborn child with a bullet to the skull. The mother survived.

Not simply to be morbid, which this is, but to point out that a former Marine with the skills of a sharpshooter can do a great deal with semiautomatic weapons. Whitman was shooting a person every two minutes.

I don't want to stigmatize people who have been discharged (honorably or not) from the military, but the skills of a sniper or sharpshooter separate them from others and I think a psychological or psychiatric evaluation is in order upon exit from a theater of war if they were engaged in combat and upon discharge.

Mental health care needs to be available for those who need it and a debriefing process focused on combat veterans would be a good start, I think.

 

[BehindtheShadow]

In 1966, Charles Whitman killed seventeen people and wounded thirty-one from his perch in the tower at University of Texas at Austin in 96 minutes before he was shot and killed by police officers.

One of his shots killed an unborn child with a bullet to the skull. The mother survived.

Not simply to be morbid, which this is, but to point out that a former Marine with the skills of a sharpshooter can do a great deal with semiautomatic weapons. Whitman was shooting a person every two minutes.

I don't want to stigmatize people who have been discharged (honorably or not) from the military, but the skills of a sniper or sharpshooter separate them from others and I think a psychological or psychiatric evaluation is in order upon exit from a theater of war if they were engaged in combat and upon discharge.

Mental health care needs to be available for those who need it and a debriefing process focused on combat veterans would be a good start, I think.

Agreed and if you look at my earlier post I mentioned in his autopsy they found he had a brain tumour the size of a pecan nut which also could have been what led him to do this.

 

[spacejunk]

~1,230 feet from the window to the grounds.

that's seriously fucked up.
i've never been to vegas, but my sister has friends that own hotels and a casino there, so she visits from time to time.

i'm curious what the vibe has been like around town in the last few days. it must be fucking horrible for everyone even slightly connected to this.

there's too much bloody killing in this world.

The problem is not nor has it ever been about gun control. The problem is our society and foreign/domestic policies.

Our foreign policies of dropping millions of dollars of bombs on other countries and killing countless thousands of civilians has created anti-American extremism all over the world.

At home, the socioeconomic conditions that we've created by allowing the rich and powerful to shape this country have gotten so bad that domestic terrorism is now a real threat. No, not everyone that picks up an assault rifle and starts shooting people does so because of Islam. People in America are working 2 or 3 jobs just to feed their families. Most of them can't afford proper medical care or education for their children. They're drowning in debt while multi-billion dollar banks charge them 15%-25% and $35 overdraft fees. They spend their entire lives struggling and worrying while a tiny percentage of Americans soak up 90% of all new wealth coming into the country. They feel, and rightfully so, that the entire system is rigged against them and that their own government is constantly plotting ways to exploit them to the benefit of rich corporations. They see that 1-in-every-5 children in the richest country in the planet's history live under the poverty level and are terrified of what kind of life their own children will have. They feel helpless and hopeless. Is it any wonder then why things like these mass shootings happen? There are lots of other countries with similar gun laws to ours and NONE of them have a problem with mass shootings like we do.

When you make people feel like they're trapped in a corner and drive them to insanity, they'll do insane things. It doesn't matter what our gun laws are. These shootings will continue until people start realizing what the true nature of the problem is.

i just read this whole thread, and i think this ^^ is my favourite post.

not sure i agree that "[t]he problem is not nor has it ever been about gun control", but i think it certainly is related to the sort of imperial oligarchy that the USA has become in the last half century or so.
richest nation in the world, yet so many people live in abject poverty like a "3rd world" nation. the working and middle classes feel like they can never get ahead, and some folks struggle to keep their heads above water, despite working several jobs.

that sort of inequality and social injustice is going to breed fucked up, toxic culture, any way you slice it.

but on the other hand, the NRA has far too much influence, and a lot of people are profiting off this fear and distrust (fear and distrust equals more gun sales). when such a large proportion of americans live in urban areas, i don't understand all this love for guns.
these ain't frontier times, and from what i can see, nobody is using guns to prevent government tyranny either (not that i would want that - but it looks like government tyranny just walked straight in the front door, brazen as can be. funny how people don't seem to mention that aspect of the whole 2nd amendment deal, post-trump. 3 years ago it was all the rage. interesting, huh?)

as much as it pains me to say it, i get the feeling things are only going to get better in america before they get a whole lot worse.

where are you genericmind? i miss your posts.

 

[chompy]

This whole thing was disgusting. I used to live in vegas and most people there are packing guns. Locals don't usually go down to the strip. Condolences to the victims and their families.

 

[nuttynutskin]

not sure i agree that "[t]he problem is not nor has it ever been about gun control", but i think it certainly is related to the sort of imperial oligarchy that the USA has become in the last half century or so.
richest nation in the world, yet so many people live in abject poverty like a "3rd world" nation. the working and middle classes feel like they can never get ahead, and some folks struggle to keep their heads above water, despite working several jobs.

that sort of inequality and social injustice is going to breed fucked up, toxic culture, any way you slice it.

The dude was rich.

 

[JessFR]

But his proclaimed motive, even a real motive, if it was possible to know such things, is irrelevant. To find out that he just really hates country music (understandable) instead of owes the casinos a bunch of money, gets us nothing.

The question of illness is important, but not the end either. Would it help us to know he had a brain tumor? Would we demand MRIs for every male in the country? I think mental health care obv. needs improvement anyway, but it would be too late for him, and he supposedly had money to pay for treatment. (right? someone said he was rich).

Really, there's one common factor to all mass shootings. Key is in the word "shoot".

Jess, I'm curious what the nuanced take from the gun lobbies is? You are right, I tend to simplify that one. I can even knock it down to a single word: money. If you want to rep their complex point of view, I'll listen.

I've already said why I don't want to talk about gun control on this thread. Talking about the killers potential motives and how people can become so extreme as to do something like this without being mentally ill is one thing, talking the politics of gun control, advocating for one side, and using this tragedy as the excuse is a whole different thing. Which I want no part of for reasons I outlined at the beginning of the thread.

I'll say this much, and only because it's fairly indisputable and not endorsing either side so much as it is calling for both sides to show each other more respect. Obviously the firearm industry itself is self serving. They are a for profit industry, their motive is money. The complexity is in the millions of ordinary Americans who honestly and legitimately don't agree that the kind of gun control being proposed isn't the right thing to do. They aren't being paid for that belief. And their being right or wrong in their belief isn't the point, the point is to paint the gun lobby in a way where the human part of the picture doesn't exist is exactly the kind of dishonest over simplified black and white thinking that extemeism involves.

It's just like with health care. People love to pretend the powerful insurance companies and big pharma make up the whole picture. Ignoring all the ordinary people who honestly don't agree for far more complex reasons.

In the case of health care I don't even agree with it, I'm in favor of a more socialized universal health care system. But my complaint isn't about which side I agree with or about what I think should be done about gun control. It's about the refusal of either side to see the complexities and the desire to write it all off as some big cynical lobbies the group doing it for the money, and ignoring the real people and their real reasons.

My point is that this kind of simplification, black and white, the people vs lobbiests kind of thinking is the kind of thing that extemeism uses to justify its actions. All good, all bad.

I already made the point that I don't like these kinds of things being used as a way to endorse a particular extremely heated partisan political view, in part because its using the victims deaths to advocate for something that many of them might have very strongly opposed. Personally I think my gun control views tend to be disliked by virtually everyone on both of the mainstream sides. So I don't want to be giving my viewpoint on it in particular.

 

[spacejunk]

The dude was rich.

wealth inequality doesn't only affect the poor.

there have been studies into the happiness, mental health and general wellbeing of people living in countries with both high and low levels of wealth inequity, and it has been demonstrated that both poor and rich folks seem to be happier and more well-adjusted in countries where there isn't an obscenely high gap between rich and poor. the myth that poor = sad and rich = happy is part of the general problem, i think.

but i think the argument isn't that poor people locked out of the economic prosperity that is enjoyed by a minority are going to go on shooting rampages; it is that this sort of society breeds messed up cultures - and to me, that's what gun fetishism is (note - i'm not talking about an appreciation for firearms, which there is nothing wrong with, even if it's not something i personally have much appreciation for).

i'm not going to make any wild guesses or assumptions about what this fucking asshole was up to.

i will just add though, that this was an act of terrorism. whether or not there was any explicit ideology driving him is, i think, irrelevant.

but notice that 'we' don't call white guys terrorists? we call them "lone wolves", or imply/speculate that they're crazy,.

seems that only muslims get lumped with the terrorist label nowadays, which (to me, at least) says an awful lot.

What's a 'lone wolf'? It's the special name we give white terrorists

We have a double standard in the United States when it comes to talking about terrorism. The label is reserved almost exclusively for when we’re talking about Muslims.

Consider Stephen Craig Paddock, the shooter in Sunday’s massacre in Las Vegas. Is he a terrorist? Well, the authorities aren’t calling him one, at least not yet.

This is all the more remarkable because Paddock’s actions clearly fit the statutory definition of terrorism in Nevada. That state’s law defines terrorism as “any act that involves the use or attempted use of sabotage, coercion or violence which is intended to cause great bodily harm or death to the general population”.

Stephen Craig Paddock shot and killed at least 59 people and injured more than 500 others. If that doesn’t qualify as a textbook definition of Nevada’s terrorism law, I don’t know what does.

Yet, when asked at a press conference in Las Vegas if the shooting was an act of terrorism, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo replied: “No. Not at this point. We believe it’s a local individual. He resides here locally,” suggesting that all terrorism is foreign in nature.

Lombardo didn’t call Paddock a terrorist, but he did label him a “lone wolf”, which in our lexicon is that special name we use for “white-guy terrorist”.

Nor is this oversight limited to Lombardo. Las Vegas’s mayor, Carolyn Goodman, also described Paddock not as a terrorist but as “a crazed lunatic, full of hate”. No doubt many other people will repeat the same sentiment in the days to come.

And Donald Trump, who craves every opportunity to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism”, avoided any mention of the word “terrorist” when discussing the tragic events of Sunday night.
Speaking from the White House, the president instead called the mass shooting “an act of pure evil”. Rather than offering sensible policy changes, such as greater gun control, the president had other ideas. He thinks we should pray more.

Donald Trump calls Las Vegas gunman 'demented' - video
Paddock’s act though is, by definition, terrorism. Even under the stricter federal definition of terrorism, Paddock’s murderous rampage should qualify. The federal code defines “domestic terrorism” in part as “activities that appear intended to affect the conduct of government by mass destruction”. It’s hard, if not impossible, to understand how committing one of the largest mass shootings in American history is not “intended to affect the conduct of government”.

But one reason, beyond outright racism, why white people are less frequently charged with terrorism than Muslims in the United States lies with the little-known fact that while federal law does define “domestic terrorism”, it does not codify “domestic terrorism” as a federal crime. (At least 33 states do, however, have anti-terror legislation.) This is partly out of concern that such a statute could go a long way toward criminalizing thought and trampling on the first amendment.

Federal law does contain “hate crime” provisions, but in our present war on terror, it’s one thing to be convicted of “hate” and quite another of “terrorism”. Someone who hates is considered a bad person. Meanwhile, in the eyes of many, someone who is a terrorist doesn’t even deserve to be human.

What this legal reality translates into is a world where the vast majority of the high-profile terrorism prosecutions brought in this country, the ones announced by the justice department with great fanfare and heralding a safer future, basically never revolve around domestic terrorism.
This became clear recently when the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, surprisingly said that the death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia at the hands of a white nationalist sympathizer constituted “domestic terrorism”. But lawyers repeatedly pointed out that at the federal level, domestic terrorism “doesn’t constitute an independent crime or trigger heightened penalties”, according to the website justsecurity.org.

Instead, the high-profile terrorism cases that do trigger heightened penalties are the foreign terrorism cases that almost always involve Muslims, especially since the justice department’s prosecutions of international terrorism is determined by a list of some 60 designated “foreign terrorist organizations”, most of whom are active in Muslim-majority countries. Even material support cases directly related to domestic terrorism are rarely prosecuted in federal court.

A bias, in other words, is embedded in the structure of our laws and how we prosecute them. Foreign terrorism prosecutions put the focus on Muslims and foreign conflicts, while domestic terrorism gets downplayed in our federal courts.
Any predisposition one may have already had that it’s Islam that produces terrorism is thus repeatedly reinforced in who gets prosecuted under our laws. And those attitudes, bolstered by the law, become mainstream in our news media, on our television screens, and in our day-to-day conversations with friends and neighbors.

But in the United States far more people, by orders of magnitude, are killed by gun violence than terrorism carried out in the name of Islam. We just don’t pay attention.
In 2017 alone, there have been 273 mass shootings, about one a day, and 11,671 deaths due to gun violence, according to Gun Violence Archive. Those numbers may surprise you. They did me, and they’re abysmal.

In our society, the federal government often directs the attentions of the people through their policies and priorities. Today, especially under Donald Trump, federal authorities seem even less interested in talking about domestic terrorism.
When a mosque in Minnesota was bombed earlier this year, for example, the White House didn’t even bat an eyelid. Meanwhile, acts like Trump’s Muslim ban reinforce the idea that anyone, anyone at all who comes from one of the barred countries – almost all of whom are Muslim-majority – ought to be considered a security threat.

The answer to this kind of institutionalized and deeply ingrained Islamophobia is to recognize how this clear double standard lets too many domestic terrorism perpetrators off the hook.
We should explain to our government that the interests of justice are served when the terrorism label is fairly and accurately applied.
We should point out to the government that, in their zeal to make the country safe from outsider threats, they are enabling domestic threats to proliferate. And we must hope that this administration in particular will see our warnings as a caution and not as a plan.

the whole thing is deeply disturbing and horrific. killing people like that is not a valid act of self-expression, and it is time the governing classes stopped offering empty sentiments and tried something. anything.
pump huge amounts of cash into mental health services, or whatever people want to blame this sort of thing on.

it's a virtually unique modern american phenomenon, so it would be nice to see someone taking some kind of pragmatic steps to make a difference.
i don't even mean "taking people's guns off them" or "gun control" or whatever.

commission some studies, have some kind of government investigation or inquiry or however that works in the US.

from across the pacific it kinda seems like the only these atrocities cause is a bunch of empty rhetoric, and the same old debates that invariably lead to an impasse - and yeah, i'm a cynic - but it's hard to see that as anything but gun lobby corruption preventing anything being done to try to address it.
when the gun lobby stifles elected representatives doing their jobs, it kinda makes it look like the NRA et al are complicit in this deeply fucked-up culture.

the whole thing has nothing to do with "freedom" at this point. that's a con.

the USA has more imprisoned citizens than any civilisation in human history. it's not about 'freedom' at all.

 

[cduggles]

High-profile shootings don’t appear to lead to more support for gun control

Although mass shootings are often viewed as some of the worst acts of gun violence, they seem to have little effect on public opinion about gun rights, based on surveys from the Pew Research Center. That helps explain why Americans’ support for the right to own guns appears to be rising over the past 20 years even as more of these mass shootings make it to the news.

Gun violence in America, explained in 17 maps and charts

 

[cduggles]

Agreed and if you look at my earlier post I mentioned in his autopsy they found he had a brain tumour the size of a pecan nut which also could have been what led him to do this.

I absolutely did remember (it inspired my post) and I should have quoted you. However, we are in agreement!