by I received a text this afternoon from the Brady Campaign regarding the mass casualty event in Las Vegas. They are urging people to contact Congress and ask for more gun control. You can see the screenshot of it below.
Let’s look at what we know and what we don’t know.
Do we know the name, age, and race of the murderer?
Yes. However, I make it a policy of this blog never to grant mass murderers the pleasure of having their name become infamous. He was a white male aged 64.
Do we know the number of victims?
Yes. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the latest count is 58 killed and at least 515 wounded.
Do we know why the murderer did this?
No. As far as it has been reported, there has been no manifesto, no suicide note, and no indications as to why the murderer decided to commit this evil act.
Is it terrorism related?
While ISIS has claimed responsibility for this calling it a lone wolf attack by someone who had recently converted to Islam, the FBI has discounted this. However, as Andrew McCarthy at the National Review noted, the murderer did terrorize the community.
Do we know what type of firearm or firearms he used?
No. They have been variously reported as .223 and .308 caliber rifles along with the AK-47.
How many firearms did he have?
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo told the press officers found 10 rifles in the murderer’s room. The Wall Street Journal reports, however, the number at 18-20.
Did he have fully automatic rifles?
The best answer is maybe. He may have had a full-auto rifle or he may have had a bumpstock or GAT crank. There is debate on this and no one has reported conclusively on this issue. He was reported to have been a multi-millionaire with multiple homes and two airplanes. He could have afforded to buy legal NFA machine guns but we don’t know.
Do we know how the murderer obtained his firearms?
No. Update: ABC News reported on their evening news that at least some of the firearms were purchased from a gun store in Mesquite, NV after the requisite NICS check. They are not a Class 3 dealer.
Do we know how the murderer died?
Yes. He committed suicide as the police were breaching the door to his room.
Did the murderer have a criminal record?
No. His late father, however, was a convicted bank robber and had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. The father had escaped from Federal prison and did try to run down FBI agents with a car. He died in 1998.
What firearms law would have prevented this?
Put bluntly, none. The killer had a clean record and had no reported history of mental illness. He would have passed even the strictest of background checks including those required to purchase NFA items. Moreover, given his financial resources, he could have obtained any sort of weapon on the black market. A determined lone wolf with his resources will always be able to cause death and destruction. In this case it seems the killer put a good deal of planning and money into getting the right location at the right time.
Policy made in haste rarely is good policy. We should resist any and all efforts to use this tragedy as the basis for new gun control laws. The Rahm Emanuel “never let a tragedy go to waste” days should be over and they should stay over.
Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire puts it very well in this post from earlier in the day.
They were dancing in the blood before the bodies even got cold… 72 hours, THEN maybe we'll have at least some answers.
The problem is that the left isn't interested in any policy other than prohibiting gun ownership. They trotted out the usual list of things they want, none of which have any relevance here. The point of it is not to prevent things like this but to disarm the citizenry so that the government can extinguish other freedoms and so the leftist allies in the criminal class have free reign. Having a discussion about policy with such people is useless, no matter how much is known.
As distasteful as many in our tribe consider this, the first commenters or advocates coming to Congress are just like the first caller to 911; they are the victims. Everyone after that is the suspect. The reason that pro-gun groups are always on their heels, caught flat footed or on the defensive is that all of the major pro-gun groups espouse this “let’s keep quiet while the anti-gun forces muster and begin advocating” approach.
Once you call 911 and make yourself the victim, the police adopt you as the complainant. Congress behaves the same way. Then, when our tribe eventually responds to the bills, it’s too late to get fence sitters to change their minds.
“But they haven’t been successful” That depends on how you measure success. IF you define success as only getting bills passed, you would be correct, but success to the anti-gun crowd is more than just passing bills, success to them is also stifling our bills, or sometimes even maintaining the status quo.
Once the complainant “establishes the narrative” the boundaries of all subsequent discussion are set and nothing outside the boundaries are given serious consideration. This ambush doesn’t present a clear cut issue or binary legislation choice. Anti-gunners are merely exploiting the ambush to further their general agenda, but they’re doing it to publicly in order to stymie nat’l reciprocity and SHARE.
Our response should not be revulsion and disgust, but rather to counter their contacting congress efforts with MORE people and push harder for those bills to pass.
OR
we could just do nothing, and continue to lose precious time and opportunity to get these bills passed.
The choice is up to us.
Victims and families of the LV ambush should be prayed for. After that, it’s time to engage congress.
The news speculators are out in force on the network news shows. Clips are not magazines, full automatic firearms are NOT readily available to the public.
The shooter has been identified by name. I have always thought that publishing the name and origins of the perp encourages future atrocities. Almost by definition, the people who commit these shootings are deranged, sometimes grossly, unhinged. Most, if not all, do not expect or desire to survive their attack. It may be done to “go out with a bang” and set new records for carnage. It has been reported that they have journals or diaries indicating some “hero worship” of the previous people who committed mass shootings. This type of copy cat commits his crime wanting to be memorialized in Newspapers, TV and Radio reports, so in reporting details fulfills and fuels future crimes. The public has the right to know things about these acts, that being said, there is no real good done by going into details: name, age, ethnicity, etc. These should be reported as generic values: male, young/middle/old age, general region of origin, so as not to fulfill the desire of the perp to go down in history as the largest, biggest, most, etc.