[The Hill] Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that it is "common sense" for Congress to ban the type of device used by the the Las Vegas gunman to enable a semi-automatic gun to shoot more rapidly.
"Look, if there is something that makes it easy to convert a semi-automatic into an automatic, then maybe that does have to be looked at and put under the Federal Firearms Act, which makes it illegal to have a genuinely automatic weapon," Gingrich said on Fox News.
"I think this is as technology changes, sometimes we have to change the rules to catch up with those technologies," he continued.
Gingrich's comments came after Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, similarly called for the devices known as bump stocks, to be banned. Republicans are increasingly supporting such a ban, despite party opposition to expanding overall gun restrictions in the wake of the deadly shooting.
#1
Additionally, permits for concert organizers to hold events like the tragic Vegas C&W show should take into account the potential for criminal activity as a safety measure. In this case, sniper fire.
If the President of The United States were scheduled to attend that concert, you can bet Secret Service security concerns (best in class security scenario) would have included adjacent structures, sewer drains, car parks, and other potential ambush locations to include issues such as lighting, wind direction, drones, overflights, and IED/VBIED's.
It pains me greatly to admit it, but the Hillary Clinton made a valid 'what if' point regarding sound suppression. Add to that muzzle flash stand-off and angle of fire. The law enforcement response could have been greatly exaspirated. Many more could have been slain.
The SOB wasn't trained and he took out nearly 60 people and wounded many more. What if the next guy knows what he is about? We appear to be moving into a new or more advanced and deadly phase of lawlessness and anarchy. Active counter-measures are needed.
As General Mike Flynn used to say, "we need to get there before the boom, not after."
#2
The bump stock was approved by the Obama administration as an ADA disability device so people with handicaps can fire an AR. Were such a law to ban it to pass, it would never pass court muster. The bump fire stock was being misused in Vegas.
#3
The intent was for the militia to be as well armed as the standing army. They learned that lesson a few years prior, starting in 1776. You don't like it, use Article V to amend the constitution.
#7
It's easy to say "let's ban those things" it's much, much more difficult to write precise language that won't affect other mechanisms that involve inertia and trigger rate. This is another feel good reaction to a senseless act. With a little practice, the proper trigger pull, and a rubber band one can achieve the same action.
#8
I hadn't even heard of a Bump Stock until in 2013 I reviewed Feinstein's list of items she wanted banned. Frankly I don't see how a Bump Stock could possibly help ADA-wise, wonder whether the Republican Senators will allow all current lawful owners to become felons.
From Mr. Ringo's Facebook page. His wife generously allowed him to share her story, the rest of which can be read at the link, dear Reader.
I may be the only person in the 'pundit' world who can put what we know about the Las Vegas shooter in perspective because I've dealt with something similar before. My personal take, at this point, is 'homicidal psychotic break, rationale currently unknown, possible pharmacological.'
To debunk a few of the recent urban legends and prolapse some of the stupider arguments:
ISIS: Nothing in his electronic trail indicates any contact with ISIS despite their claims and some rumors. Nothing.
'There were multiple shooters/he was a patsy!': All the guns in the room were registered to Paddock. He was covered in GSR and even had burns on his hands from hot barrel/rounds.
'He was antifa killing Republicans!': Nothing in his electronic trail indicates the slightest political affiliation or interest. Nothing.
There weren't even angry emails. He never posted comments. Rarely read political news. Nada.
Gambling debts! He was broke!
Paddock was a habitual hobby gambler who was the sort of person casinos hate. He would set a budget on his gambling and stick to it religiously. He also rarely lost big or won big and never let either one change his habits.
He was a perfectly normal, successful, retired accountant well-invested in real estate with very little or no recent change in demeanor or actions.
Perfectly normal guy and only a ‘loner’ to the extent he wasn’t terribly socially active. ‘Loner’ apparently means he didn’t frequent wild parties. If he had the narrative would be ‘wild party animal.’
'Homicidal psychotic break means he couldn't have done the planning!'
Au contraire. Deep sigh. Been here, had someone in my life nearly do if not that than similar. With their permission I will now recount a story and show why everything about this makes a terrible sort of sense to me. The story is about my lovely and extremely loving wife, Miriam, and her descent to homicidal psychotic break due to a nasty drug interaction.
#2
I read this earlier. The rather large flaw in this theory is motivation. Why shoot up a country music festival? When he was apparently a fan and attended concerts himself.
Paddock bought most, if not all the guns used (33 rifles) in October 2016. This was no sudden breakdown.
#7
All the planning but remember if its tied to the Left or Muslims, its a mental illness issue, if its tagged to anyone else, its just pure evil and people need to surrender their rights (for the children).
#8
Newc is dead on - very little evidence is in. We know nothing of the real investigation...nothing on his phones or real financial transactions...nothing on his search histories...nothing of any potential illegal drug abuse...nothing on Ms. Danley's affiliations...
Even crazy people have motives...this one did and they know what it is. The only questions at this point is when will they tell us if they won't tell...why not?
#9
I also agree that it's way to early to tell. I suspect he's left a note or spoke on video about motivations. Still, ignoring Vegas, the connected dots in this article were eye opening.
#12
We do seem to be in the midst of an epidemic of these types of events. Didn't seem to me that twenty or thirty years ago we had this kind of thing nearly as often. I remember the Texas bell tower incident and how shocking it was back in the 1966. Now it's like "What? Again?" I don't believe it's the guns. The guy in the bell tower didn't have a bump stock or even an AR-15. Wikipedia says he used a hunting rifle, probably a bolt action, and he did a lot of damage with it. Oswald used a bolt action. They're not gonna ban hunting rifles.
Then there was an incident in a McDonalds at San Ysidro, just down the road from me in 1984 and it was shocking too. But the bell tower incident and the McDonalds incident were decades apart. Now it seems like these things are only months apart. Maybe it's all the publicity, the nonstop yammering about it on TV. There are certainly more talks shows, a lot more, and they all feel compelled to weigh in ad nauseam on these incidents. Add Islamic terrorism and it's tough to feel safe anywhere in public. But the pace is quickening. Drugs certainly sound like a possible cause. Might be interesting for a real researcher to look at all the drugs that all of these perps took and find out if there's a connection.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/05/2017 12:17 Comments ||
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#13
Well, thanks rjschwarz. You beat me to it. Maybe if the shrinks prescribe more marijuana and beer some of these people would be too stoned, too mellow, to fire a weapon. That might keep them from becoming successful accountants but at least they wouldn't become mass murderers.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/05/2017 12:20 Comments ||
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#14
Americans have always had guns. How long have we had some of these medications?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/05/2017 12:34 Comments ||
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#15
I added width=400 to rjschwarz's image, because it was seriously bending the Burg.
Sorry, Abu, they want to ban ALL guns and will use any excuse. If they get their hands on AR-15s and the like you can bet your life that a Remington Model 700 or a Marlin lever gun will be next on their agenda.
#19
the shrinks prescribe more marijuana and beer some of these people would be too stoned, too mellow, to fire a weapon.
I have a relative living in CO who thinks the recent legalization of marijuana there has resulted in a great many workers who are either too stoned or too mellow to do their jobs (like drawing blood in a medical lab, or lawn work) properly.
#20
FYI. MSM continues to spin this as the biggest massacre in recent history in the US. The truth id the biggest massacre in recent history was on 9/11/2001. And no guns were used.
#21
A drug induced psychotic break similar to the one described in the article and a political or religious-political motive for the shooting are not explanations that are mutually exclusive.
#22
Trauma networks are discussing victim clusters being 'herded' between exits. High velocity rounds penetrating one and ending in a second. Another reason for two windows.
#25
TW.
400 is the exact number of pixels. If a frame is 300 pixels wide, the frame expands.
Style width % will size the image to fit exactly 80% of the original frame size, whether it is a comment box or the screen in a football arena without screeimg up the original size.
The author is in the left's writers farm system
(CNN) In the wake of one of the worst massacres in modern American history, our government's highest leaders will be silent about why things like this keep happening. "Warmest condolences" will be tweeted to families of those who lost their lives, minutes of mourning will pass and murmurs of mental health issues and lone-wolf actors will taper into silence. Taming homegrown terror and tightening gun control will be dismissed as inappropriate or unnecessary politicizing of a tragedy and quickly become secondary to more pressing issues on the administration's agenda. America has been here before.
In fact, America has been here 273 times in 2017 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which compiles deaths and injuries from shooting incidents and defines a mass shooting as any incident where four or more people are wounded or killed. According to their tally, there have also been 11,698 deaths as a result of gun violence so far this year. Between 2001 and 2014, 440,095 deaths by firearms occurred on US soil, while deaths by terrorism during those years numbered 3,412. Today, America faces approximately one mass shooting per day on average. I wish this gal would keep to stats from 2017 to make her point. Instead she has to stretch out the statistics so they compile into large numbers, all without pointing out differences between the data sets and what she is trying to say. We know now that many of those mass shootings in 2017 are crime and gang related, and are from extremely violent cities such as Chicago and others run or controlled by the left. And she fails to point out that while trying to fold statistics from the data sets from 2001 and 2017, including suicides and gun accidents. All in all, a rather dishonest attempt at discussing gun violence.
Mass shootings are a violent epidemic that have been met with fatal passivity for far too long. If mass shootings were perpetrated mostly by brown bodies, this would quickly be reframed and reformed as an immigration issue. If thousands died at the hands of black men, it would be used to excuse police brutality, minimize the Black Lives Matter movement and exacerbate the "raging black man" stereotype. If mass shooters identified as Muslim, it would quickly become terrorism and catalyze defense and security expenditures. No, but instead this author wishes to politicize the Las Vegas incident through racial frames.
But this is a white man's problem. According to an analysis by Mother Jones, out of 62 cases between 1982 and 2012 (a time period that would not include the actions of Dylann Roof or Stephen Paddock, among others), 44 of the killers were white men and only one was a woman. There she goes again, splitting data sets.
Since 1982, mass shootings in the United States have been committed by white men who are often labeled "lone wolves" or "psychologically impaired." As a result, the government that would otherwise be mobilizing its institutions to bring about reform remains a stalwart of the Second Amendment and mass shootings' greatest ally. An over-affinity for guns among white men, dangerous against any other backdrop, gets defended as patriotism by many conservatives or even as white pride by those on the alt-right. Gun ownership affinity includes all races, not just "white men." Everyone wants to take responsibility for their own safety, and not rely on this author's customers to show up to protect her and her ilk.
In fact, according to a 2014 poll conducted by Fox News, nearly seven in 10 Republicans believed that gun ownership is patriotic. If espoused by other groups, this sentiment and this number might be considered threatening. Instead, it is welcomed in a way that many believe gives tacit encouragement to potential mass shooters. "Many" to include the "many" in the author's fetid imagination.
Make no mistake: this is war culture that has dressed up as Uncle Sam and embedded itself into the American psyche. Any other path -- let's say, for example, abortion or foreign-born terror -- that led to the destruction of life on this level would be attacked as violently opposed to American values. But because this culture is embraced by the race and party that controls the government, it continues to be celebrated and defended in the spirit of love of country. So what's your problem again?
#2
Doesn't seem silent to me. Endless talk about it, public court cases where the perp is still alive, calls for gun control.
If you want silence, check out Chicago. "What's that?" "Why?"
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
10/05/2017 7:43 Comments ||
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#3
When you see their real rage, it won't be silent. I promise you that.
#4
The real problem is how do we stop the gang violence. Clearly gun laws don't work, less intrusive policing doesn't work. Shorter sentences doesn't work.
#5
Hmmm. Could be white men tend to have health insurance and therefore greater access to psych meds. Americans have always had guns. How long have we had some of these medications?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/05/2017 12:33 Comments ||
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#6
#3: Procopius2K:
How America has silently accepted provoked the rage of white men
[PJ] The Los Angeles Times calls anal cancer "the next big crisis" for the gay community. According to the American Cancer Society, the future looks grim.
The American Cancer Society estimates there will be 8,200 new anal cancer cases in 2017. In the absence of national screening recommendations, more than 50 percent of these individuals will be diagnosed at stage III or IV, when five-year survival is less than 40 percent. This creates a major public health concern.
The study shows that anal cancer comes from the sexually transmitted virus HPV. What it doesn't mention is why the gay community is so susceptible to contracting HPV. Perhaps the answer is too politically incorrect for the L.A. Times. NBC reported on a similar study that was done in Hawaii involving women who contracted anal HPV. They danced around the cause in an almost laughable way.
It’s not clear exactly how the women contracted anal HPV. Those who developed infections were more likely to be young and white, with lower levels of education and income and a history of multiple sexual partners, the study showed. Women who engaged in anal sex were also at higher risk, though transmission could have occurred in other, non-sexual, ways...The findings are important because anal HPV infection is strongly linked with anal cancer...
Really? Non-sexual ways? What ways are those? The article does not elaborate but goes out of its way to deny the very findings discovered!
The Hawaii study showed a greater risk of HPV infection in women who recently had anal sex, though the association wasn't as high as researchers expected. Non-penetrative sex and use of fingers and sex toys also may have contributed to transmission of HPV, or the virus could have been shed from cervical secretions, the report said. It is also possible that responses to our questions regarding anal sex were less than candid," the authors wrote. Study participants were twice as likely to contract the high-risk strains of the HPV virus associated with cervical and other cancers than the low-risk variations of the virus, the report showed.
So what we have here is a clear warning that putting things into the anus that don't belong there is a very bad idea‐and yet the media is unable to report that clearly. Why? Could it be the LGBTQWTF lobby doesn't want them to? Researching the negative effects of anal sex is darn near impossible. Very little is written on the subject, even though we know anal prolapses, fissures, tears, and infections are common. No one will report on it. Instead Teen Vogue is writing "how to" guides about anal sex (and cancer) for your minor daughters.
If you want to know the truth, it still exists on the American Cancer Society's website (at least until the gaystappo find out someone is telling the truth).
#6
I imagine that amyl-nitrate knocking out the immune system for a hour after using it to amp up the pleasure of that sort of sex didn't help one bit.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Additionally, permits for concert organizers to hold events like the tragic Vegas C&W show should take into account the potential for criminal activity as a safety measure. In this case, sniper fire. 
