Oh wow.

[luzribeiro]

If you think that mansplaining about "not assault weapons" and "assault weapons" in light of today's events in Las Vegas is going to be helpful in discussing the huge gun violence problem the USA has, you are the problem.

50+ dead, 400+ taken to hospitals.

Save us all the wisdom you need to share about the bullshit you believe.

This is how these guys handle everything - by dragging us out into the weeds of the mansplains rather than actually addressing the issues.

Don't be a dick.

Comments

[policraticus]

What was "anyone" supposed to do? He didn't bring them in full view, obviously. The were probably disassembled, packed in a generic suitcase, and brought in one at a time over a long period. If he kept them that way, how would anyone even know? How could they know? Housekeeping changes the towels, they make the bed, they empty the wastepaper basket. They don't search your luggage. If the housekeeper had walked into the room and found a dozen rifles laying around the room and thousands or rounds of ammo, I guarantee you they would have reported it. They likely already have policies that require staff to report suspicious or illegal evidence found in rooms.

I suspect in the future, places like Mandalay Bay will have metal detectors and bag searches, but in the world before this massacre, that wasn't considered necessary. In hindsight, was that stupid? In hindsight, everything that could have prevented a tragedy looks stupid.

It wasn't love of guns that did this. It was hatred of people.

[asthfghl]

Let me "unpack" this story of yours. So he brought tons of weapon parts... into a hotel.
Then unpacked tons of guns. In an actual hotel room. And kept them there for days.

In a hotel room.

In an actual fucking hotel.

And no one could've known.

What.
The.
Actual.
Fuck.

[garote]

That’s so hard to believe?
Just how much time do you think everyone should spend scrutinizing the movements of everyone else?
Should every single person have a government-paid watcher following them around 24-7 to prevent stuff like this?
Or is the solution to plaster every surface in the world - private or public - with spy cameras and data-mine the shit out of all things at all times?

Personally, I don’t think we need to go either route.

Let’s pass a law with a countdown timer in it.
In ten years, no gun of any kind can be manufactured or sold in the United States that does not have the same IR dot grid 3D sensing module in it as the iPhone X. You train your gun in 20 seconds to recognize you. It’s a security feature that no sensible gun owner interested in home defense would ever refuse.

But here’s the catch. Every sensor has an RFID transponder built into it. If you enter any building - or car, or train, or airplane - with that weapon, the tag is read and everyone knows it. The one feature is inextricably linked with the other. Disable the transponder and the gun won’t fire.

Now that’s what I call a “well-regulated militia.”

No one can eliminate determined wackos with a careful plan. But we can certainly make it harder for them to do dangerous things. Like stockpile arms in a hotel.

[asthfghl]

You're entering a hotel, and nobody checks you with a metal detector at the entrance. Fine, that I can understand. Not all hotels are that stringent. But staying in a hotel room and having loads of weapons inside your hotel room, and no chambermaid ever noticing? Come on! The guy must have been hoarding heavy suitcases for days, and no one noticed anything!?

But you already touched on the real issue here. There's no meaningful regulation over this "militia". None.

If you think having shootings every week is normal, by all means, go ahead and change nothing. It's your people who'll keep dying. But don't presume to persuade me that everything is just fine. I'm not stupid.

[garote]

Who you talkin’ to?

[asthfghl]

My neighbor from upstairs.

[policraticus]

If the weapons were inside a suitcase, how would any chambermaid not equipped with a magnetometer or gifted with Kryptonian x-ray vision, ever know? Whose business is it how many suitcases a person has?

People who claim there are no regulations on guns in the US don't know anything about US gun laws.

[asthfghl]

Merely insinuating that I don't know anything about US gun laws still won't make the problem go away. It's become so apparent it's visible from space.

[policraticus]

How do we reconcile the fact that as gun ownership in the US has increased by several orders of magnitude, murder and violent crime rates have steadily decreased to near record lows? If the problem in society is violence, and the US has always been a more violent society on almost every level, the US seems to be solving the problem with guns.

[mahnmut]

> Whose business is it how many suitcases a person has?

That of the hotel security.

[mahnmut]

> Just how much time do you think everyone should spend scrutinizing the movements of everyone else?

In a hotel? About 30 seconds at the entrance. At the airport, maybe 60.

[garote]

Works for me.
(And on overnight flights, we can combine it and scrutinize people for 90.)

[policraticus]

First of all, not tons. I think the last thing I saw was 23 rifles, etc? That isn't much more than 250 lbs. Plus ammo, say 350. Packed disassembled, three or four pieces per weapon, I'd bet 5 average suitcases is all you'd need. He was there for 4 days.

Secondly, maybe hotel rooms work differently in Bulgaria, but here if you put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, they don't disturb you. So, yeah, it is completely plausible. If you aren't causing any problems, people pretty much leave you alone. Now I don't know if he was doing other things that might have alerted the hotel that something was amiss, like doing some target practice with the furniture, but if all he was doing was assembling weapons, that is something that can be done relatively quickly and very quietly.

[asthfghl]

23 rifles? Wow.

Just wow.

[policraticus]

How many guns do you think I own?

[asthfghl]

I've forgotten my magic 8 ball home, sorry.

[fridi]

No, it was the absolute absence of control that did this. But you keep telling yourself whatever story makes you feel like the "winner" of the argument. That totally helps.

[policraticus]

What absence of control, exactly? We don't even know yet how he bought most of these guns. But by all accounts, he was a law abiding person without any criminal history or history of mental illness. He acquired these guns over a long period, years in fact. What kind of control or law would have stopped a gun dealer from selling to him? We know he modified some of the weapons to be fully automatic. That is already illegal. Very illegal. The possession of modern automatic weapons has been illegal in the US since the 1960's. Find me the law that would have prevented this. People who are bent on murdering 59 people and wounding 500+ and then killing themselves do not care about breaking the law. The only people who follow these laws are folks like me.

[fridi]

"The possession of modern automatic weapons has been illegal in the US since the 1960's"

What a power grab!!! How did you freedom-loving folks allow this to happen?!!1!

[policraticus]

Eh. For my money, the difference between an automatic and semi-automatic is moot. Truly automatic fire is only effective at keeping an enemy's head down. They are very hard to aim. Effective fire is almost always semi-automatic. That is why the US Army uses a three round burst, rather than full auto, for their rifles. Of course, when your target is 20,000 closely packed unsuspecting civilians, that equation changes.

Registration of firearms was introduced on the Federal level in the 1930's after the St Valentine's Day Massacre and the general lawlessness of the Prohibition era. In 1968 there was an important Supreme Court case, Haynes v. US, that declared much of the Fire Arms Act unconstitutional. Congress quickly rewrote the law and included a total ban on the sale or possession of any fully automatic weapon manufactured after 1963(I think). To own an antique, operable, automatic weapon is a feat of herculean effort costing tens of thousands of dollars and requiring years of paperwork and background checks. Until Mandalay Bay I don't think an automatic weapon has been used during a crime since the 60's. Their use is so uncommon I'm not sure you can draw any statistics from it.

[luzribeiro]

Here we go with the mansplaining that I was talking about.

[policraticus]

Am I wrong? Is the evidence I bring to this discussion incorrect? Are the questions I raise illegitimate? Or does your argument reduce on down to "Because, shut up"?

[luzribeiro]

And your argument essentially boils down to "Things are not as bad as they used to be. Here. Problem solved".

[garote]

Well, more like, "things aren't as bad as they used to be; problem must be something else."

As for what the something else is, I'm inclined to blame the media's simultaneous fearmongering and glorification of gun use, feeding back into our culture.

Somewhere out there is a website tallying the number of appearances of guns in wide-release hollywood films each year, and putting it on an easy-to-see chart. And I'm sure the chart is appalling.

[kiaa]

"In hindsight, everything that could have prevented a tragedy looks stupid"

Hello, the rest of the developed world would like to have a word*.

* if you're willing to listen, that is.