October 2017 – Page 4 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Almost Getting it Right

This is a lot better than I would have expected from “fact checkers” only a few years ago. It’s mostly right.

Journalists often mistake the “AR-15” semi-automatic rifle, sometimes referred to as an assault weapon, for an automatic weapon. It is a much smaller caliber version of the military and fully-auto M-16. The AR-15 is also highly accurate at a long distance.

Same caliber bullet, same cartridge. The only difference is the AR-15 is not capable of fully automatic or burst fire. There’s a difference in the receiver and the internal bits to make this so. The accuracy of an AR-15 is the same as the M16 when it’s set to semi-auto.

Gun opponents have lobbied for decades to make “high capacity” magazines illegal. Generally, they are talking about magazines that load more than 8 rounds. An experienced shooter can easily reload with a fresh magazine in a few seconds.

Generally they are talking about magazines that load more than 10 rounds, because I suppose they feel like that is a nice, round number.

But I’ll give the author credit for mostly getting it right. Years ago this stuff was often wildly off the mark.

Well, That Didn’t Take Long

Via Ace of Spades, a CBS legal exec:

“If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing,” Geftman-Gold wrote on Facebook. “I’m actually not even sympathetic bc country fans often are Republican gun toters.”

Yeah, and we’re the horrible people, right?

Despite Bitter’s brother narrowly escaping, this won’t change our opinions on firearms. I can’t speak for Bitter, but to me this is plane crash and lightning territory. It’s a rare event, and not something that necessarily calls for “something” that “must be done.” The only way you can stop someone with a clean record who is very motivated to get a firearm from getting one is to make them flat out illegal, and even if you did that, it still won’t stop people who are determined. Gun control is and always will be a fool’s errand. It’s an easy answer for people who want there to be easy answers.

I Agree, This is Highly Weird

David French at National Review:

This was the University of Texas tower attack on steroids, conducted out of nowhere, with meticulous planning and at great expense,Â from a person who doesnâ€™t seem to fit any normal profile of a mass shooter. There is much we have yet to learn, but for now, this is one of the most chilling and mysterious events Iâ€™ve ever seen.

In a decade of blogging, I’ve followed a lot of public mass shootings, and this busts the profile for sure. I’m glad there are people out there relieving ignorance about the legal status of machine guns.

I’m still going to stick with my initial speculation that this guy lived in a 400k house, had two planes, and a clean record: he fits the profile of someone who could have afforded a legal machine gun. I’m not going to be surprised if that turns out to be the case.

Las Vegas Shooting

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.