Much like Virginia Tech, where Bitter had a cousin on campus that day, this mass shooting hit close to home. Bitter’s brother is in the music business and his act was on stage when the shooting started. We have gotten word that he is OK.
Initial reports are almost always wrong, but having seen video, it does indeed to appear to be some kind of fully automatic rifle. The cyclic rate didn’t sound fast enough to me to be a 5.56 machine gun, so I’m guessing something larger. The cyclic rate sounded consistent, so I’m guessing not a crank [UPDATE: I’m seeing a lot of speculation about cyclic rate being inconsistent, but it sounded pretty damned consistent to me. In the one video, you can hear the sonic boom of the bullet a half second or so before you hear the report. I think that’s being mistaken by some people as two separate firearms. Other videos have echoes which mask the consistency.] I’m doubtful of a bump mechanism, since he was landing hits.
He was firing for a good 9-10 seconds based on some video I saw. A 75-round AK drum should be empty in 7.5 seconds. What did this guy get his hands on? It’s not like there’s a huge black market for belt feds. Whatever he had, the nut job apparently planned the attack in great detail. One article I read suggested he had put up cameras to detect when the police were closing in. With enough planning and motivation, he could have gotten anything. This guy doesn’t appear to have been a whack job, by all accounts. So what motivated him? What made him snap?
I don’t know, and we probably won’t know for days, but one thing I can promise you is that you and I will be blamed for this in the media. We will be the ones held to account and the ones punished.
UPDATE: I’m seeing that this shooter apparently was a pilot and owned two planes. He also lived in a $400,000 house. This means he was in a socioeconomic bracket where he could reasonably afford legal machine guns. He also had a clean record. Be ready for that possibility.
They published his date of birth, address, mortgage information and name. They did not publish his voter registration or voter history. Either he didn’t vote or it didn’t meet the narrative. You need to go through a process to get the voter DB in NV, so it’s not immediately available to random lookup online – but it’s plenty open to anyone who normally does that kind of work, including the media.
Like you said, everything is wrong the first few days and we will get blamed. Unless of course he was another Bernie Bro. Then this will get tossed down the media’s memory hole pretty quick.
Yes and no.
Given the fact that we haven’t heard anything about his politics, I think it’s reasonable to assume that he was either largely apolitical, or that he was some manner of leftist — if the opposite was true, the media would have found it by now, and they’d be absolutely foaming at the mouth.
Just soo tired of having the shields on full all the time after some moron loses his grasp on reality.
It sucks that my second reaction that follows so quickly after my first is “UGH now they’ll be dancing in the blood after this”.
Glad to hear Bitter’s brother is ok. Parents and the brother of a girl in my office we’re in attendance. Haven’t heard word back if she’s heard of them.
I agree. I was shocked when I saw the initial video that it certainly sounded like automatic fire.
I hope it turns out OK. Crew were all OK, but they have more options in terms of running than people in a crowd.
Possible accomplice/second shooter either shooting, or reloading mags for the shooter.
There’s absolutely NO EVIDENCE of this whatsoever. None. Not a bit from any police source at all, nor anyone on the ground. Stop the wild accusations unless you have a source.
Glad to hear Bitter’s brother was safe, Sebastian. Sheesh.
I thought full auto fire too when I heard, but a bump fire stock would not be out of the question since accuracy would not have been a factor if this guy was just spraying into a mass crowd from a high point.
If this thing was full auto, was it modified? Legally owned?
I think we should be prepared for it to be a legally purchased full auto. If half the shit I’m reading turns out to be true, he planned this in great detail. Most of them do. He was 64. Presumably he would have had more financial resources than some guy in his early 20s starting to struggle with schizophrenia. Not saying that was the case, but I could see it being the case.
Dude had airplanes. He had the cash for a legal full auto.
I think the big question would be, if legally owned, has he had it for a while (years) or was he collected insane enough to buy, wait for the paperwork to process then go on a rampage….
So I pulled up Google Maps, from what I can tell it looks like the shooter was firing from behind the stage into the crowd. From the press reports this morning, I had assumed he was firing at the stage, from behind the crowd.
The most important thing is that Bitter’s cousin is OK.
As to the rest, I don’t know and doubt anyone will know conclusively for a bit.
However, I will go on record predicting that this will be used to try and kill the Hearing Protection Act or that it will be dropped from the SHARE Act. The rationale will be that since the shooter didn’t suppress his firearm police could key in on his location. Never mind that 130 db is still damn loud.
Confused cousin with her brother. I’m glad her BROTHER is OK.
Yeah, cousin showed all of the infinite wisdom of a college kid and didn’t bother to check in for hours during that event. My brother was quick to check in today with the limited ability he had – some texts and a quick note on FB – to at least keep us from worrying about the worst.
John, I thought the same thing when I heard the video. It sounded like full auto to me (slow but consistent timing), not that I’m an expert. If that turns out to be the case, it will be used to derail the SHARE act just because the same law covers both items. Probably by the people supposedly on our side, too.
It’s crazy that this happens right before we have a legislative initiative to improve some of the NFA regulations. I’d say it has to be a coincidence because the alternative is unthinkable, but we’ve had stuff like the Scalise attack recently too.
I really, really want that sort of conspiracy theory to remain incredible.
It very well may be the false flag you fear. We shouldn’t avoid it–it’s about time it gets confronted for what it is rather than merely wishing it not to be so.
If I had just pulled something like that out of my ass, I’d probably go see a proctologist.
Long night here in Vegas, stayed up listening to the scanners.
Glad to hear Bitter’s brother is okay.
From what I heard, the cyclic rate varied. A crank seems possible. I would have said bump fire, but you are right, they are hard to control, especially at a downward angle as he would have been shooting. I’m thinking its not a legal full auto. Could have been illegally modified, which would also explain the varied cyclic rate.
I heard he shot more than 90 rounds at one time- 100 round mags aren’t easy to come by, but that’s more likely than a belt fed.
Crazy that they found him by the smoke detector! Would’ve been so much longer if not for that.
Aaaaand Hillary/Newtown/etc is calling for gun control.
I immediately thought it was fully automatic fire from the videos It sounded like more than 30 rounds so I thought legally owned belt fed class 3 license fire arm. From the initial report he was shooting into the crowd over the stage so the people on stage were not targeted. The fact the was 3 day country music the audience was police, fire fighter and basically Trump voters types My speculation is he is a Scalise shooter person and decided he has nothing to lose
That’s my guess too. Some kind of deranged lefty, but we’ll see.
As to the number of rifles He may have expected a jam or barrel overheating so would need another weapon. It does not take a person with military training to figure out shooting from a hotel is a good vantage point
If my admittedly rank speculation is true, NFA information is privileged tax information, and is not subject to FIOA, and may not be disclosed. So if it was a legal machine gun, we may never find out. But it’s hard to believe that wouldn’t get leaked eventually.
Everything thing about this guy and his weapons will be out soon – that kind of media focus is irresistible. And as fast as it comes out, it will be politicized.
At this point, I’m not entirely convinced that the attack involved a machinegun. That said, I also wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
Still, of the handful of videos I’ve seen of the attack, only one burst had the kind of consistent cadence I’d expect of an MG; The rest had some pretty wild firing cadences (speed smoothly rolling up and down) which strongly suggests either a trigger crank or a bumpfire stock (binary triggers tend to sound more like uneven sets of paired shots, so the evidence suggests that they weren’t used).
Ultimately, given where we currently are with NFA transfer times, the apparent presence of FA simulator devices (bumpfire stocks and/or trigger cranks), and the absolute simplicity of making contraband MGs, I think it’s fairly safe to assume that he probably didn’t have a lawfully-registered MG.
I mean, seriously: Lets get real — If he was already planning to commit mass murder before committing suicide, then why should we expect him to have followed certain arbitrary and capricious gun laws that apply to MGs?
” In the one video, you can hear the sonic boom of the bullet a half second or so before you hear the report. I think that’s being mistaken by some people as two separate firearms.”
In the video I listened to, during the first burst (which I thought was metronome-steady) there were no cracks audible. The second burst included the cracks I interpreted as a second weapon, and seemed to be a different rate of fire.
Shooter’s brother says the guy had no automatic weapons when he helped move him to Nevada two years ago, and the local LE says they had no contact with him, so they didn’t sign off on NFA purchase paperwork. Nor is the shooter listed on the ATF site as an FFL. If it was a machine gun, it wasn’t legal.
Like I said, this is very weird.
Definitely weird. Smashing two windows to shoot from is odd, too. For one shooter.
Trusts did not require (at least, not in the past) CLEO sign-off. I live in a gun-control state and didn’t need CLEO for my suppressors, which are under a trust. So CLEO not knowing him doesn’t tell us for sure.
Would not be surprised he was shooting something home-modified. If he was ISIS (as they claim), they could have easily provided him instructions to convert an AK to full-auto in his home with some pretty basic tools. They’ve been publishing that for a while.
As you know, the only reason more gun owners don’t do that is because we’re a pretty law-abiding bunch.
“As you know, the only reason more gun owners don’t do that is because we’re a pretty law-abiding bunch.”
American gun owners aren’t necessarily law-abiding, we’re peaceable. We don’t always respect or obey the letter of the law, but we generally do our best not to hurt people.
Case in point: I know several people who have transported NFA items (other than mufflers/AOW) across state lines without the proper BATFE approval. That’s certainly a federal crime, but it doesn’t involve causing harm to any living being, and it doesn’t necessarily involve a breach of the peace.
“Trusts did not require (at least, not in the past) CLEO sign-off. I live in a gun-control state and didn’t need CLEO for my suppressors, which are under a trust. So CLEO not knowing him doesn’t tell us for sure.”
I doubt that he was into NFA: From what I’ve seen behind the counter, people tend to gravitate towards firearm mufflers first, and then other devices once they’ve dipped their feet in the pond. Since the available information seems to suggest that the shooter didn’t use mufflers; this in turn suggests that he wasn’t a stamp collector.
Further, the fact that the majority of the video evidence of the attack seems to show wildly varrying firing cadences, signs seem to be pointing to him using FA simulation devices (bump fire stocks, trigger cranks, etc.) rather than actual MGs.
The only thing I am sure of is that everything we think we know will turn out to be wrong when the dust settles.