Another mass shooting - largest in a good while, by a few victims

[Tom Sawyer]

Curious, how many attacks before it is necessary to intercede?

That is for the voting public to decide.

Ya, but that's the same voting public which put Trump in charge. Letting them decide things doesn't sound like an optimal solution.

 

[Patooka]

Despite all the hype it didn't work in Australia.

1) The murder rate was already going down, the gun-banners are taking credit for this. All you actually see is noise around the trend line, just what you would expect to see if nothing were changed. Gun bans simply disarm the law-abiding.

2) They've had mass shootings since.

3) Given their population many years between crazies would be expected anyway. We simply don't have enough data.

Wait, there has been other mass shootings in Australia? How have I missed this?

Islamist.

Pythagoras. I have a goldfish. What I just wrote doesn't really make a lot of sense without any elaboration or context does it? Would you like to rephrase you one word reply into something more relevant?

 

[iolo]

Making guns illegal will make less guns available for criminals and make illegal guns more expensive.

It will not make the world perfectly safe.

Only safer.

Despite all the hype it didn't work in Australia.

1) The murder rate was already going down, the gun-banners are taking credit for this. All you actually see is noise around the trend line, just what you would expect to see if nothing were changed. Gun bans simply disarm the law-abiding.

2) They've had mass shootings since.

3) Given their population many years between crazies would be expected anyway. We simply don't have enough data.

Get into the figures. It works everywhere. American lack of guts and reliance on the bang-bangs means you murder something like 29 times more people with guns than civilized countries.

 

[Toni]

Since it's a 64 year old, retired white male, whose motivations are unknown...

anyone want to speculate as to why he did it?

Voices. Drugs. Anger at increasing socioeconomic inequality. Anger at increasing socioeconomic equality.

Same thing I think is responsible for any of these shootings: He was bat-shit crazy. Everything else is just an excuse to act.

yep

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The gist of your response seems to be that we should be making the world safer, and I agree. We have taken steps to improve all aspects of car safety. We have taken steps to limit the use of tobacco. We seem to be addressing the use of drugs in a rational manner, some may disagree, and I think we're unanimous that islamic terrorism is bad.

So what in the name of Paul Bunyan's balls has that got to do with assault rifles and bump stocks? If you are for banning them as well, is there some greater point I am missing?

My point is, cars without computer assist safety features should be banned before assault rifles. Simple math says so.

No, the math reflects the exact opposite of that, since the frequency of fatal incidents for cars is EXTREMELY SMALL relative to their frequency of use. Put that another way: statistically speaking, a car is likely to cause a fatality once every 150,000 hours of use. An assault rifle, on the other hand, causes a fatality EVERY TIME IT IS USED. The only reason they don't kill more people than they do is because people very rarely use them in the first place.

In a risk management scenario, this is comparing a product that has a 99.9% failure rate but is only ever used once a year, to a product that has a 0.1% failure rate but is used 1000 times a year. Statistically speaking, BOTH products will produce the same number of failures. But in terms of mitigating risks, there's no actual need to retain the failure-prone product since the only thing it ever actually DOES is fail.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'd love to see you try to rent a u-haul without a license. But you digress. Why would anyone go through the trouble of renting a u-haul and driving it into a crowd - possibly endangering themselves in the process - when acquiring fully automatic weapons is so much easier?

aa

You need a driver's license to rent a U-haul.

I'm 99.9% sure that you do, speaking as someone who just moved halfway across town and was almost prevented from getting a u-haul truck just because of the restriction on my license (I'm blind in one eye and they had to check with corporate to make sure the rental was approved. It wasn't; my wife had to rent the truck).

So, you displaced firearm murders with other murders.

Only if the rate of NON-firearm related homicides actually increased (it didn't).

The ban was intended to REDUCE mass shootings, not eliminate them completely. It clearly accomplished that.

But that's all

It's more than enough.

--and as you said, violent crime spiked...

... while the homicide rate sharply decreased. Which means Australians as a whole were SAFER even during a brief crime wave than they would have been if firearms were still widely available.

More importantly, the uptick in violence lasted two to three years before suddenly declining again and has continued to decline ever since. It clearly wasn't caused by the implementation of the gun ban, especially since there was no corresponding increase in violent crime in subsequent implementation and buyback events years later.

Assault rifles, which ARE weapons, are dangerous enough that almost ANY use in a public place has a high probability of causing a fatal or near-fatal injury to other. It's relevant in this case that the 122 traffic deaths in Las Vegas that day were all ACCIDENTS that the drivers in those cases tried and failed to prevent; the Route 96 Massacre was a DELIBERATE attempt to kill large numbers of people that had to be terminated by law enforcement.

People use them at the local gun ranges all the time.

Local ranges are not public places.

I haven't heard of a single shooting.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-accidentally-died-high-noon-gun-range-florida-dad-police-say/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-charles-vacca-gun-instructor-killed-girl-uzi-sues-arizona-range/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/30/woman-shot-in-eye-at-sc-gun-range-has-died.html
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/justice/texas-sniper-killed/index.html

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

I'd love to see you try to rent a u-haul without a license. But you digress. Why would anyone go through the trouble of renting a u-haul and driving it into a crowd - possibly endangering themselves in the process - when acquiring fully automatic weapons is so much easier?

aa

You need a driver's license to rent a U-haul. I said no special licensing requirements. (And that's why I picked a 27'--that's the limit on what you can get on a normal license. While bigger ones exist you need to show a trucker's license to rent them.)

Can you imagine if there was some sort of limit on the kind of weapons you can acquire?

You need a driver's license or non-driver's ID to buy a gun.

Not at a gun show. Not in all states. Guns are not nearly regulated as highly as driving.

Basically equal.

How does my ability to demonstrate that I'm a responsible and capable driver equate to me being a responsible and capable gun owner?????????????????????

And at the time I wrote that I figured this was a suicide mission like most such attacks--endangering is irrelevant. Since I wrote that the cops have found he appears to have had additional plans, whether they were simply more attacks or actual escape I don't think they have found out. I suspect it was another attack, though--the cops have said he had 50 pounds of explosives in his car as well as more guns. They have also said they found Tannerite at his home. Tannerite goes boom, it's legal to buy, all his other stuff was legal so I strongly suspect the "explosives" were Tannerite. Staying within the realm of legal the only way to set off Tannerite is with a rifle. Thus my guess is that once he ran out of targets he was going to drive somewhere and shoot, and then go boom when the law closed in.

Well for christ sake let's don't regulate that either. Might slow down the militia's use of tannerite during a government uprising.

aa

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

My point is, cars without computer assist safety features should be banned before assault rifles. Simple math says so.

No, the math reflects the exact opposite of that, since the frequency of fatal incidents for cars is EXTREMELY SMALL relative to their frequency of use. Put that another way: statistically speaking, a car is likely to cause a fatality once every 150,000 hours of use. An assault rifle, on the other hand, causes a fatality EVERY TIME IT IS USED. The only reason they don't kill more people than they do is because people very rarely use them in the first place.

In a risk management scenario, this is comparing a product that has a 99.9% failure rate but is only ever used once a year, to a product that has a 0.1% failure rate but is used 1000 times a year. Statistically speaking, BOTH products will produce the same number of failures. But in terms of mitigating risks, there's no actual need to retain the failure-prone product since the only thing it ever actually DOES is fail.

Precisely, and well stated. It is incorrect to look at cause of death divided by number of deaths to determine the risk. The true risk is number of deaths divided by the exposure to the hazard. That's the first principle of actuarial experience rating.

aa

- - - Updated - - -

We have taken steps to improve all aspects of car safety.

Uh, would that include raising the speed limit from 55 to 70 mph?

Uh, if vehicles were regulated to the same degree as guns there would be no such thing as a 'speed limit'

aa

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My point is, cars without computer assist safety features should be banned before assault rifles. Simple math says so.

No, the math reflects the exact opposite of that, since the frequency of fatal incidents for cars is EXTREMELY SMALL relative to their frequency of use. Put that another way: statistically speaking, a car is likely to cause a fatality once every 150,000 hours of use. An assault rifle, on the other hand, causes a fatality EVERY TIME IT IS USED. The only reason they don't kill more people than they do is because people very rarely use them in the first place.

The vast majority of the time an assault rifle is used it's at a range. And even if it's fired at a human it probably doesn't kill.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

... while the homicide rate sharply decreased. Which means Australians as a whole were SAFER even during a brief crime wave than they would have been if firearms were still widely available.

Except it didn't. There's an up-and-down blip around the ban time but the overall curve is unchanged. It was already decreasing, it continued to decrease. The gun-banners are taking credit for something that was already happening.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Assault rifles, which ARE weapons, are dangerous enough that almost ANY use in a public place has a high probability of causing a fatal or near-fatal injury to other. It's relevant in this case that the 122 traffic deaths in Las Vegas that day were all ACCIDENTS that the drivers in those cases tried and failed to prevent; the Route 96 Massacre was a DELIBERATE attempt to kill large numbers of people that had to be terminated by law enforcement.

People use them at the local gun ranges all the time.

Local ranges are not public places.

I haven't heard of a single shooting.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-accidentally-died-high-noon-gun-range-florida-dad-police-say/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-charles-vacca-gun-instructor-killed-girl-uzi-sues-arizona-range/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/30/woman-shot-in-eye-at-sc-gun-range-has-died.html
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/justice/texas-sniper-killed/index.html

Please note that I said "local". I was saying I hadn't heard of a single shooting at the local ranges, not that there had never been a shooting at any range.

And one of the few places you could actually use a rifle (other than the shooting-experience businesses most of the ranges aren't set up for heavier guns) is the government-owned range. That sounds like a public place to me.

 

[sharon45]

Assault rifles, which ARE weapons, are dangerous enough that almost ANY use in a public place has a high probability of causing a fatal or near-fatal injury to other. It's relevant in this case that the 122 traffic deaths in Las Vegas that day were all ACCIDENTS that the drivers in those cases tried and failed to prevent; the Route 96 Massacre was a DELIBERATE attempt to kill large numbers of people that had to be terminated by law enforcement.

People use them at the local gun ranges all the time.

Local ranges are not public places.

I haven't heard of a single shooting.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-accidentally-died-high-noon-gun-range-florida-dad-police-say/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-charles-vacca-gun-instructor-killed-girl-uzi-sues-arizona-range/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/30/woman-shot-in-eye-at-sc-gun-range-has-died.html
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/justice/texas-sniper-killed/index.html

Please note that I said "local". I was saying I hadn't heard of a single shooting at the local ranges, not that there had never been a shooting at any range.

And one of the few places you could actually use a rifle (other than the shooting-experience businesses most of the ranges aren't set up for heavier guns) is the government-owned range. That sounds like a public place to me.

Yes, there are a few on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land near where I live, but I do not know what kind of guns they allow.

 

[fast]

Those people littered. Have you seen the photos of the trash? Of course, you and I are compassionate enough to not advocate that they be fined or jailed for their illegal behavior. Why? Because it's not a mere excuse but rather a justified reason for why they did what they did. They chose to focus their undivided attention on not becoming shot instead of making sure they didn't violate any city ordinances.

But, there's some tough mean sons of bitches in this world, and I've met a few. That's how I think of shit like this. It's also why I would of likely thought of it in the moment. Trashy sons of bitches. The words, yes, but to describe them, no. To predict the words from those who would of described myself had I been there and not considered my obligation to not leave trash behind.

Amazing. It never ceases to amaze me. Of course, I wasn't there, but had I been, i'm thankful you guys wouldn't judge me so outlandishly harshly.

 

[sharon45]

Those people littered. Have you seen the photos of the trash? Of course, you and I are compassionate enough to not advocate that they be fined or jailed for their illegal behavior. Why? Because it's not a mere excuse but rather a justified reason for why they did what they did. They chose to focus their undivided attention on not becoming shot instead of making sure they didn't violate any city ordinances.

But, there's some tough mean sons of bitches in this world, and I've met a few. That's how I think of shit like this. It's also why I would of likely thought of it in the moment. Trashy sons of bitches. The words, yes, but to describe them, no. To predict the words from those who would of described myself had I been there and not considered my obligation to not leave trash behind.

Amazing. It never ceases to amaze me. Of course, I wasn't there, but had I been, i'm thankful you guys wouldn't judge me so outlandishly harshly.

The entire area is considered part of a crime scene, so that ought to make picking up anything around there without official confirmation, tampering with potential evidence.

 

[fast]

Those people littered. Have you seen the photos of the trash? Of course, you and I are compassionate enough to not advocate that they be fined or jailed for their illegal behavior. Why? Because it's not a mere excuse but rather a justified reason for why they did what they did. They chose to focus their undivided attention on not becoming shot instead of making sure they didn't violate any city ordinances.

But, there's some tough mean sons of bitches in this world, and I've met a few. That's how I think of shit like this. It's also why I would of likely thought of it in the moment. Trashy sons of bitches. The words, yes, but to describe them, no. To predict the words from those who would of described myself had I been there and not considered my obligation to not leave trash behind.

Amazing. It never ceases to amaze me. Of course, I wasn't there, but had I been, i'm thankful you guys wouldn't judge me so outlandishly harshly.

The entire area is considered part of a crime scene, so that ought to make picking up anything around there without official confirmation, tampering with potential evidence.

That logic works well. It just wouldn't extend to me. All that trash wasn't there and on the ground at the firing of the first bullet. When fast, did you release the grip of the plastic cup holding your soda? It was in my hand when I was shot sir. Yes fast, we see it on film, but you were shot in your right arm, not your left, and you didn't have to release your filth on the grounds that our tax payers pay to keep clean from the likes of people like you. I needed to care for my arm sir. Are you a doctor, fast? No.

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it. But, it wouldn't surprise me if people were ticketed.

 

[sharon45]

The entire area is considered part of a crime scene, so that ought to make picking up anything around there without official confirmation, tampering with potential evidence.

That logic works well. It just wouldn't extend to me. All that trash wasn't there and on the ground at the firing of the first bullet. When fast, did you release the grip of the plastic cup holding your soda? It was in my hand when I was shot sir. Yes fast, we see it on film, but you were shot in your right arm, not your left, and you didn't have to release your filth on the grounds that our tax payers pay to keep clean from the likes of people like you. I needed to care for my arm sir. Are you a doctor, fast? No.

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it. But, it wouldn't surprise me if people were ticketed.

The authorities can still laboriously dust the massive contents for fingerprints, and see if anyone matches with people previously held in the system.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

... while the homicide rate sharply decreased. Which means Australians as a whole were SAFER even during a brief crime wave than they would have been if firearms were still widely available.

Except it didn't. There's an up-and-down blip around the ban time...

In the rate of violent crime, yes. The homicide rate doesn't go up AT ALL, and the rate of gun-related homicides drops at a rate no longer in line with the broader trend.

Also, don't think I'm not fully ware that you are making this statement from a foggy memory of a single chart you saw one time and are not looking at any actual data nor have you researched this topic in depth. You're basically drawing detailed conclusions from a meme and then supplying bullshit to justify it. I'm referring to the five or six studies conducted since then that I have saved on my hard drive; I have the numbers right in front of me, and I'm telling you you're wrong.

It was already decreasing, it continued to decrease.

The rate of gun-related homicide decreased at a far faster rate after the ban. The overall homicide rate continued to decline.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Assault rifles, which ARE weapons, are dangerous enough that almost ANY use in a public place has a high probability of causing a fatal or near-fatal injury to other. It's relevant in this case that the 122 traffic deaths in Las Vegas that day were all ACCIDENTS that the drivers in those cases tried and failed to prevent; the Route 96 Massacre was a DELIBERATE attempt to kill large numbers of people that had to be terminated by law enforcement.

People use them at the local gun ranges all the time.

Local ranges are not public places.

I haven't heard of a single shooting.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-accidentally-died-high-noon-gun-range-florida-dad-police-say/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-charles-vacca-gun-instructor-killed-girl-uzi-sues-arizona-range/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/30/woman-shot-in-eye-at-sc-gun-range-has-died.html
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/justice/texas-sniper-killed/index.html

Please note that I said "local"

[Edited]

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except it didn't. There's an up-and-down blip around the ban time...

In the rate of violent crime, yes. The homicide rate doesn't go up AT ALL, and the rate of gun-related homicides drops at a rate no longer in line with the broader trend.

Also, don't think I'm not fully ware that you are making this statement from a foggy memory of a single chart you saw one time and are not looking at any actual data nor have you researched this topic in depth. You're basically drawing detailed conclusions from a meme and then supplying bullshit to justify it. I'm referring to the five or six studies conducted since then that I have saved on my hard drive; I have the numbers right in front of me, and I'm telling you you're wrong.

It was already decreasing, it continued to decrease.

The rate of gun-related homicide decreased at a far faster rate after the ban. The overall homicide rate continued to decline.

I was talking about the gun homicide rate. It blips up just before the ban, drops and then reverts to the original trend line. It looks sort of like the blips you see on an EKG, except the base trend line is the left side of a parabola rather than straight.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Assault rifles, which ARE weapons, are dangerous enough that almost ANY use in a public place has a high probability of causing a fatal or near-fatal injury to other. It's relevant in this case that the 122 traffic deaths in Las Vegas that day were all ACCIDENTS that the drivers in those cases tried and failed to prevent; the Route 96 Massacre was a DELIBERATE attempt to kill large numbers of people that had to be terminated by law enforcement.

People use them at the local gun ranges all the time.

Local ranges are not public places.

I haven't heard of a single shooting.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-accidentally-died-high-noon-gun-range-florida-dad-police-say/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/family-charles-vacca-gun-instructor-killed-girl-uzi-sues-arizona-range/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/30/woman-shot-in-eye-at-sc-gun-range-has-died.html
http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/justice/texas-sniper-killed/index.html

Please note that I said "local"

The problem is your misinterpreting what I said. There's nothing wrong with saying "local"--I was describing the situation I knew of. It's just you don't like the fact that I pointed out how wrong you were in saying every use was fatal.

And I just realized you said there were 122 traffic deaths in Las Vegas in one day. We got all the traffic deaths for the nation??? (122 is about 6 months of fatalities for the whole state.)