At least 8 dead in Mass Shooting du Jour

[EricH]

I have shot an AR15. At a gun range. I have never owned one, however.

So you have never owned any of these guns; you have never carried any of these guns as part of your job duties; you have never been trained to use these guns in any kind of formal or informal setting; you have never used these guns for hunting or recreation, other than shooting an AR15 at a range one time; you have never practiced any kind of tactical drills using these guns; an up until recently you were apparently not aware of the differences between a nineteenth century .22 caliber cartridge like the 22 Short, 22 Long, 22 Long Rifle, and a more modern .223 Remington cartridge. Yes, I followed up on Elixir's comment and reviewed your posting history on the subject. Forgive me for being so blunt, but you know nothing about these guns, or firearms in general. I don't know where you are getting your information, perhaps playing Call of Duty or similar games in mommy's basement, and casually dropping terms like "bump stock" and and "Glock switch" to appear to speak with authority on the subject, authority you do not possess. You appear to believe that your experience playing Call of Duty supersedes the opinions of a person who has extensive experience hunting with, and later training with, carrying and fighting with these military rifles. Your assertion that the deletion of a full-auto sear from civilian AR15 style rifles makes it a completely different weapon is ridiculous. It is difficult to control the M16 in full-auto, you run out of ammo very quickly when using the gun this way, you might only be carrying 3 or 4 extra magazines, and you don't have the luxury of reloading the magazines while engaged in combat. For full auto we carried M60 machine guns, with everyone carrying extra belts to feed the beasts. And lots of grenades, which were far more effective at taking out fortified enemy positions and stopping assaults than our rifles.

The M16A1 is a deadly weapon, just as the modern derivations of the AR15 platform based on the M14 and M16 platforms are. The M16 can do enormous damage to soft human bodies and can penetrate body armor and even light skinned APC armor using the steel tip/core bullets we used. Much more so than the 45 auto cartridges in our 1911A sidearm. The modern Ar15 platform rifles and carbines available to the general public are just as devastatingly lethal, and better designed to the task of killing humans than the rifles we carried (our M16A1 rifles were prone to misfeeds caused by a poorly designed extractor).

I checked out my daughter's Mini 14 over the weekend. Its a nice gun, and feels like a scaled down M1 or M14 in my hands (I qualified with the M14 at Parris Island in 1967 and was issued my first M16 about a year later in Okinawa). The Ruger can be just as devastating in the hands of a professional operator, but it is no AR15. Which is why you don't see law enforcement carrying Mini 14s or bolt action rifles designed for hunting, they carry AR15s. According to my daughter who shoots AR15 rifles in competition - "you buy a Mini 14 to go plinking two or three times a year, you buy an AR15 if you are a professional operator and carry it every day". My daughter is a better shooter than the NCOs who trained us at the rifle range in the Corps, and her opinion carries a lot of weight with me. The Mini 14 is a very different gun from the M16/AR15 and is designed for a completely different purpose.

 

[Elixir]

So you have never owned any of these guns; you have never carried any of these guns as part of your job duties; you have never been trained to use these guns in any kind of formal or informal setting; you have never used these guns for hunting or recreation, other than shooting an AR15 at a range one time; you have never practiced any kind of tactical drills using these guns; an up until recently you were apparently not aware of the differences between a nineteenth century .22 caliber cartridge like the 22 Short, 22 Long, 22 Long Rifle, and a more modern .223 Remington cartridge.

Yabut maybe he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night?

I would also conjecture that neither Derec nor anyone he knows has ever had to treat various gunshot wounds.

 

[EricH]

So you have never owned any of these guns; you have never carried any of these guns as part of your job duties; you have never been trained to use these guns in any kind of formal or informal setting; you have never used these guns for hunting or recreation, other than shooting an AR15 at a range one time; you have never practiced any kind of tactical drills using these guns; an up until recently you were apparently not aware of the differences between a nineteenth century .22 caliber cartridge like the 22 Short, 22 Long, 22 Long Rifle, and a more modern .223 Remington cartridge.

Yabut maybe he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night?

I would also conjecture that neither Derec nor anyone he knows has ever had to treat various gunshot wounds.

The only time I have had to treat gunshot wounds in the ED was in the 70's when I was working on my residency in Boston. High powered rifle wounds were rare in those days, and we would primarily see wounds from handguns. In my practice as an attending, I would get called in to the ED for a hematology consult once in a while, to review blood workups and such as part of surgical prep, but I wasn't part of the trauma team.

I have seen what an M16 or AK round can do to the human body in combat, and it is horrifying. I have seen human heads nearly decapitated, and how quickly soldiers bleed out when struck with these bullets. I have seen these bullets punch through masonry houses and kill civilians sheltering inside. The bullets are designed to tumble in soft tissue, and create high intensity pressure waves that rip through flesh, like a bomb going off inside the body. I have heard from my colleagues in the ED of the damage these high powered rounds can do, and how difficult it is to successfully treat such wounds because so many organs and vascular structures are affected. Being struck in the torso is often akin to a death sentence, with the ED surgeons fighting to achieve hemostasis with ultramassive transfusions while trying to assess the damage to organs and blood vessels and stop the hemorrhage.

 

[Elixir]

So you have never owned any of these guns; you have never carried any of these guns as part of your job duties; you have never been trained to use these guns in any kind of formal or informal setting; you have never used these guns for hunting or recreation, other than shooting an AR15 at a range one time; you have never practiced any kind of tactical drills using these guns; an up until recently you were apparently not aware of the differences between a nineteenth century .22 caliber cartridge like the 22 Short, 22 Long, 22 Long Rifle, and a more modern .223 Remington cartridge.

Yabut maybe he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night?

I would also conjecture that neither Derec nor anyone he knows has ever had to treat various gunshot wounds.

The only time I have had to treat gunshot wounds in the ED was in the 70's when I was working on my residency in Boston. High powered rifle wounds were rare in those days, and we would primarily see wounds from handguns. In my practice as an attending, I would get called in to the ED for a hematology consult once in a while, to review blood workups and such as part of surgical prep, but I wasn't part of the trauma team.

I have seen what an M16 or AK round can do to the human body in combat, and it is horrifying. I have seen human heads nearly decapitated, and how quickly soldiers bleed out when struck with these bullets. I have seen these bullets punch through masonry houses and kill civilians sheltering inside. The bullets are designed to tumble in soft tissue, and create high intensity pressure waves that rip through flesh, like a bomb going off inside the body. I have heard from my colleagues in the ED of the damage these high powered rounds can do, and how difficult it is to successfully treat such wounds because so many organs and vascular structures are affected. Being struck in the torso is often akin to a death sentence, with the ED surgeons fighting to maintain hemostasis with ultramassive transfusions while trying to assess the damage to organs and blood vessels and stop the hemorrhage.

It is terrible indeed.
Tourniquets, pressure dressings and hemostatic agents can often mitigate the bleeding at the entry wound, but to little effect when the pressure front has destroyed all the internals - even with an extremity wound! My only first hand observations are of people who have dealt with it in the field, rather than with those who were shot. And they too are damaged, even if I’m not qualified to say just how.
So sad.

 

[Derec]

So you have never owned any of these guns; you have never carried any of these guns as part of your job duties; you have never been trained to use these guns in any kind of formal or informal setting; you have never used these guns for hunting or recreation, other than shooting an AR15 at a range one time; you have never practiced any kind of tactical drills using these guns;

So what? I do not deny that they are powerful guns. I am just pointing out the fact that these guns are rarely used in crime, and that therefore the monomaniacal obsession with banning them is misguided and only wastes political capital. You have not been able to debunk that (since it is true) and so you instead focus on who has carried what at their job.

an up until recently you were apparently not aware of the differences between a nineteenth century .22 caliber cartridge like the 22 Short, 22 Long, 22 Long Rifle, and a more modern .223 Remington cartridge.

BS. I was.

Yes, I followed up on Elixir's comment and reviewed your posting history on the subject. Forgive me for being so blunt, but you know nothing about these guns, or firearms in general.

Of course I do. The whole thing was initially a misunderstanding that Elixir is using as a cudgel becuase he, frankly, has nothing else.
I was making a point that all that matters for ballistic properties is the bullet, the powder charge behind it and barrel length, not whether the weapon is classified as being an "assault weapon" which is largely based on how it looks. I mentioned .22 as the diameter of all these bullets, which is true to two sig figs. I did not use it as caliber designation. Again, there is a reason Elixir keeps bringing it up long after I clarified what I meant, and it's that he has nothing else.

And forgive me for being so blunt, but you seem to no nothing about crime statistics regarding use of weapons. See these stats here. Rifles are very rarely used in homicides, and so-called "assault weapons" are only a subset of all rifles.

I don't know where you are getting your information, perhaps playing Call of Duty or similar games in mommy's basement, and casually dropping terms like "bump stock" and and "Glock switch" to appear to speak with authority on the subject, authority you do not possess.

Again, BS. And a personal attack to boot.

Your assertion that the deletion of a full-auto sear from civilian AR15 style rifles makes it a completely different weapon is ridiculous.

It makes a huge difference regarding how these weapons are regulated.

The M16A1 is a deadly weapon,

So is a handgun. So is a shotgun. So is a knife.

I checked out my daughter's Mini 14 over the weekend. Its a nice gun, and feels like a scaled down M1 or M14 in my hands (I qualified with the M14 at Parris Island in 1967 and was issued my first M16 about a year later in Okinawa). The Ruger can be just as devastating in the hands of a professional operator, but it is no AR15. Which is why you don't see law enforcement carrying Mini 14s or bolt action rifles designed for hunting, they carry AR15s.

From a ballistic perspective there is little to no difference between an AR15, Mini 14 and a bolt-action .223. The same arguments about how the wounds are devastating apply equally to any rifle firing the same, or similar, cartridge. Period.

According to my daughter who shoots AR15 rifles in competition - "you buy a Mini 14 to go plinking two or three times a year, you buy an AR15 if you are a professional operator and carry it every day".

And yet, ballistically they are the same. And a mass shooter doesn't have to carry it every day, but just once.
If so-called "assault weapons" were to be banned, what do you think would-be mass shooters would do? Say "oh, noes" and give up? Or would they switch to other weapons like the Mini 14? Or even just a couple of handguns like the VT Tech shooter who killed 32(+himself) and wounded further 17?

 

[Derec]

I would also conjecture that neither Derec nor anyone he knows has ever had to treat various gunshot wounds.

I have not. But if I were an EMT or an ER doc in the US, I'd encounter far more handgun wounds than AR15 ones. And not primarily because the AR15 victims are more likely to die right there. No, it's because people getting shot with handguns is far more common. Hell, being stabbed or punched/stomped to death is more common than being killed with any rifle!

#justice4BillyBatts #restInPower #MafiaLivesMatter #nowGetYourShinebox

 

[Derec]

The only time I have had to treat gunshot wounds in the ED was in the 70's when I was working on my residency in Boston. High powered rifle wounds were rare in those days, and we would primarily see wounds from handguns.

They still are rare, and you are still far more likely to encounter wounds from handguns, no matter how much Elixir and his ilk try to obfuscate matters. See here.

I have seen what an M16 or AK round can do to the human body in combat, and it is horrifying. I have seen human heads nearly decapitated, and how quickly soldiers bleed out when struck with these bullets.

Note, there are non-assaulty rifles, including hunting rifles, that fire very similar cartridges. Getting hit by a round from those at the same distance would result in very similar wounds. There is nothing magic about "assault weapons".

I have seen these bullets punch through masonry houses and kill civilians sheltering inside.

I call BS on that.

Both the 5.56x45 and 7.62x39, fired at very close range, went through the first wall of the block (~1" by the looks of it) but could not penetrate the second, much less have enough energy to be deadly. Both also fragmented, which would have made them less deadly even if they went through. The 7.62x39 (AK47 bullet) did more damage due to larger size.
I don't doubt you have seen it happen - but they must have been different weapons and bullets. Maybe a .50 BMG (should be called BFG). The same round Sheila Jackson Lee confused with the one AR15 shoots, by the way.

The bullets are designed to tumble in soft tissue, and create high intensity pressure waves that rip through flesh, like a bomb going off inside the body.

No doubt they are powerful rounds that cause devastating damage, especially if fired at close range. However, that applies to all rifles firing a similar round, and also, those weapons are very rarely used to kill people. Handguns are far more common, and even knifes and hands/fists/feet are used more frequently than rifles. So why do some on here obsess so hard over banning so-called "assault weapons"?

 

[Derec]

You base this conclusion on one case???

No. There are many examples. Including the case where Gascon refused to prosecute the 17 year old murderer as an adult.
This case was just the most fucked up example of it because Sandifer was 11, and because his killers were minors too.
I also recall a case from a few years ago of a minor teenage girl who took out several members of a rival gang in Chicago, before she was liquidated herself.
Sadly, use of minors as gang enforcers is not uncommon, and making their crimes have a "few years in juvi" maximum sentence no matter the severity will only make it more common, not less.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Again we must talk about 53% of gun deaths are suicide.

U.S. Rate of Suicide by Firearm Reaches Record Level

Gun suicides increased from prepandemic rates in all racial and ethnic groups, but the degree of change differed drastically.

www.nytimes.com

Red flag law? Better mental health care?

Red Flag isn't an answer--you'll likely end up precipitating the suicide rather than helping.

And we need to look at causes of suicide.

According to the statistics... guns.

No. Guns are the means, not the cause.

Odd, didn't know cause of death are listed as 'self inflicted suicide'

I am now aware of two suicides.

I'm pretty certain there are more than that.

I'm simply giving the sample space I know.

A pedantic person would say it was statistically insignificant.

That is statistically insignificant.

One was clearly for medical reasons--there's nothing the medical system could have done to change the fact that she was going to spend what little life she had left laying in bed. She chose not to. The second was elderly, she had managed alienate everyone near her except for her husband and then he died. The relationship is distant enough and she drove everyone away long enough ago that I wasn't even aware of her existence. Is there anything society could have done to improve her situation? I doubt it. (And that's not even considering the low opinion of mental health care in China.)

Well, there we go. The only two suicides that Loren is aware of, weren't that bad. Wanna tackle homelessness next?

I'm saying that in neither of those was there anything that society could have done to make them not want death.

So you don't want to tackle homelessness?

I do look forward to your book coming out soon, The Power of Anecdotal Evidence.

 

[Rhea]

Derec knows why there is an effort to affect AR15 ownership. It’s because it has NO PURPOSE that is good. So even thought it is not the majority number of crimes, it is worth addressing becaus there’s not argument *for* them. Can we a least get rid of the guns that we don;t need? You can’t hunt with them, and they are terrible for self defense.

Why does derec so desperately want them to proliferate?

 

[ZiprHead]

So what? I do not deny that they are powerful guns. I am just pointing out the fact that these guns are rarely used in crime, and that therefore the monomaniacal obsession with banning them is misguided and only wastes political capital. You have not been able to debunk that (since it is true) and so you instead focus on who has carried what at their job.

It's not a monomaniacal obsession. Everytime you bring up handguns in comparison AR type weapons most all of us agree there should be limits on those also.

 

[Rhea]

So what? I do not deny that they are powerful guns. I am just pointing out the fact that these guns are rarely used in crime, and that therefore the monomaniacal obsession with banning them is misguided and only wastes political capital. You have not been able to debunk that (since it is true) and so you instead focus on who has carried what at their job.

It's not a monomaniacal obsession. Everytime you bring up handguns in comparison AR type weapons most all of us agree there should be limits on those also.

This is an important point, thanks for posting. Yes, Derec knows, as he has been told scores of times, that poster also want better control on handguns. Derec has read me posting many times all the controls I would like to see that primarily help against handguns in inner city crime. I’ll say them again because he never acknowledges this:

1. Actionable auditing of every single seller of firearms. Eliminate the ability of sellers to shrug and say hundreds of guns were “stolen” or be unable to produce buyer records. This audit information goes into a federal database. If you want to sell guns, you are required to make sure you are not the one handing them to criminals. Federal government should know exactly who is selling firearms, and that their inventory is audited.
2. Make absolutely certain that all confiscated guns are marked and made inoperable, so that police can’t plant them. This is necessary if we want to do #3
3. Make the penalties for having a firearm in public severe enough that no one will casually carry them around. It would require deliberate criminality to have one. This makes even printed guns a risk to carry around.
4. Mount federal research into biometric safety in guns, and fuck the pushback of the NRA. There is a technology solution here.


These alone would make a significant impact on handgun crime, mis-use and suicide.

I’ve said it many times. Derec has plenty of information to know that his claim of “monomaniacal obsession” is flat out wrong and seeks to paint a false picture of other posters.

 

[Elixir]

I’ve said it many times. Derec has plenty of information to know that his claim of “monomaniacal obsession” is flat out wrong and seeks to paint a false picture of other posters.

It’s a bit of projection. The poster is basically opposed to chipping away at gun rights, ostensibly saying we need a blanket solution, banning handguns as well if we are to significantly reduce mortality. Knowing that such a transformative solution will never happen all at once, reveals his ‘position’ as effectively indistinguishable from any pro-gun stance.

The “monomaniacal obsession” is with the need to regulate handguns before anything can be done about weapons of mass murder.