Las Vegas Shooting

At least 58 people are dead and hundreds injured in a shooting in Las Vegas.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/us/las-vegas-shooting.html

Isn't it well past time to quit selling guns to every fucking yahoo in the country?

If they wouldn't do anything after Sandy Hook, they certainly aren't going to do anything after this.

Some of the first comments I saw on the internet were "Now is not the time to talk about gun control". Yeah, sure. Exactly when is the time?

Yeah, the Republicans and the NRA (same thing, really) always say that this is not the time to talk about gun control.

I wonder what happens when those people get some dread disease:
"You have lymphoma."
"This is not the time to talk about cancer."

We have decided as a society that these kinds of things are "acceptable losses." The freedom to buy and carry and transport high capacity automatic weapons is a freedom that Congress, in their wisdom, has decided is more important than the victims when something like this happens.

Richard is right. Nothing will change.

As long as gun control continues to be a wedge issue for elections, the Republicans will continue to buy votes with innocent lives.

Dead people don't vote.

Gee, this Paddock guy is squeaky clean.  No prior arrests, no mental health issues, no huge debts, no terrorist group affiliations, no watch lists, no reason to believe his arsenal wasn’t purchased legally.

The gun lobby is going to have a hard time explaining why this guy shouldn’t have been allowed to own guns while the rest of us should.

The anti-gun advocates are going to have a hard time explaining why this incident was foreseeable or preventable.

NoCoPilot wrote:

The anti-gun advocates are going to have a hard time explaining why this incident was foreseeable or preventable.

I don't think being anti-gun needs some sort of foreseeability argument other than "if you spread guns around all over the place, people will get shot". And preventable? No, but if there were a lot fewer guns around, there would be a lot less shooting. This basic proposition is accepted as obviously true pretty much everywhere in the world except in the US.

Ever since the Murrow building bombing I’ve been wondering what possible motive these domestic terrorists have. It’s almost like some malevolent voice comes into their head, like a virus or a worm, to turn ordinary people into monsters.

I just don’t get it.

It is hard to imagine what many of these idiots have on their minds.

Don't overuse or misuse the words terrorist and terrorism. Since 2001, damned near every news program describes something as terrorism, or domestic terrorism. In many or most cases, there is no terrorism involved, just assholeism. (sp?)

Yes, the Republicans were rabidly determined to call the Orlando nightclub shooting terrorism, because the perpetrator was Muslim, so "radical Islamic terrorism". But it wasn't. He was a mostly-closeted gay man who went nuts from self-hate in the hostile environment of his religious family. That's why he was shooting up a gay night club. You can blame the religion, as long as you notice that there are so many christian families in the US who are just as bad, but there was no political intent.

This guy? Who knows. But again, there doesn't seem to be any political motive.

And if there is no political motive, then it is - by definition - not terrorism. Or maybe the guy just hid his political motives so well that it was very poorly executed terrorism.

News programs use the word to suck in the viewers and boost their ratings.

Just perusing the web, you will find numerous articles headlining the fact that no one has any idea why the guy went on a rampage. Working with that, the Republicans say that no additional laws would prevent occurrences like this. Have they considered a national registry of all gun purchases and all guns owned. I think finding a guy with forty-some modern weapons would be a good reason to take a closer look at him, and possibly removing his arsenal.

People who are "right in the head" do not own forty guns. In that, I'm not including legitimate gun collectors who buy antique weapons.

_Howard wrote:

People who are "right in the head" do not own forty guns. In that, I'm not including legitimate gun collectors who buy antique weapons.

As I said to somebody at the bridge club yesterday, one of the saddest aspects of this thing is that in today's America, owning 40 guns of various sorts, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and a stash of explosives, isn't seen as dangerously insane.

_Howard wrote:

People who are "right in the head" do not own forty guns.

True.  But at present owning forty guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition and some explosives is not illegal.

Therefore people who do it may be crazy, but they're not criminal.  Being crazy is not, as of yet, a crime in Amerikkka.

NoCoPilot wrote:

_Howard wrote:

People who are "right in the head" do not own forty guns.

True.  But at present owning forty guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition and some explosives is not illegal.

Yes. Which is why my post suggested that tracking such activity would be a good start on gun control.

While you're at it, why not have the government collect data on which movies you watch, and which books you read?

Can you really conflate those? That's the NRA/RNC position.

They're all perfectly legal (for now). If you think it's a slippery slope allowing all kinds of weapons to be sold to all kinds of people -- as I do -- then you have to admit it's an even slipperier slope having the government track and monitor your legal purchases.

The first step -- the one Congress and to this point the People of America are unwilling to make -- is to make all high capacity assault weapons illegal to buy or own. That's the minimum entrance requirement to a sane firearms policy.

What, exactly, is an "assault weapon"?
What differentiates one of those from a hunting rifle?

And I don't see gun registration as any slippery slope. I had a cousin who was a gun collector - old, valuable stuff - and he had a federal gun dealer license. That goes back fifty years. The republic did not fall because Lee had a license. God damn, if I buy a pack of nasal decongestant, my name goes in a database. Why are guns sacrosanct?

I have some work to do this afternoon. You may continue this argument amongst yourselves.

Meme from Facebook:
"New theory suggests gunman didn't act alone, but was assisted by 51 senators and 298 representatives."

That's a reasonable theory. Sad to say.

I don't look at The Onion very often, but occasionally they hit the mark. This one came to my attention.

Yeah, thank The Great Communicator for that.