According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Route 91 Harvest music festival crowd wasn’t Stephen Paddock’s only target. He also fired at two jet fuel tanks about 650 yards from the Mandalay Bay hotel, striking them twice.
The bullets left two holes in one of two circular white tanks. One of the bullets penetrated the tank, but did not cause a fire or explosion near the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, another knowledgeable source said late Wednesday.
The tanks are roughly 1,100 feet from the concert site, where Paddock killed 58 people and wounded almost 500. Several airplane hangars belonging to prominent corporations are also near the tanks.
What Paddock didn’t know is that fuel — anything from a car’s gas tank to those holding thousands of gallons of jet fuel — isn’t easily ignited.
A source knowledgeable about airport operations said jet fuel is hard to ignite and tanks like those across from Mandalay Bay have mechanisms in place to prevent fires.
Mike Boyd, a Colorado-based aviation consultant, echoed those words.
“A machine gun is not going to blow up a tank of fuel,” Boyd said. “Jet fuel itself sitting there in a big wet pile is very hard to ignite. You have to be a very amateur terrorist to think anything like that.”
The tanks have since been inspected and repaired.
1. Add bump fire stock to the Machine gun registry.
2. Entire AR15 is now a machine gun.
3. Ditch stock and drill our auto sear pin, add trigger group
4. Profit
Because the NRA is a political organization which understands how the game is played in the court of public opinion. We had momentum in the gun debate and we must regain it by showing what the public considers to be reasonable behavior.
If all that is lost in the process is flimsy overprice plastic stocks to add in bump fire, I am fine with that. As long as we can still use our hands, belt loop, wood, or whatever else we want to play with on our own. The ban should simply be on commercially available pre-fab drop-in stock/grip assemblies.
If we go anywhere even close to the direction of the current Feinstein bill THAT would have to be stopped. This needs to be very specifically and explicit in what it targets and does not. Banning triggers is not going to fly. Restricting how I use my belt loop obviously won’t either.
I totally agree this is silliness. It’s pandering to emotional fools that don’t understand firearms. But you have to admit if we are going to give on ONE SINGLE THING – this is probably the single best to cave on!
I know you not 1 inchers will attack, but I am being pragmatic and realistic here. We will need to dig our heels in and fight for every inch on OTHER fights. It wouldn’t be totally unwise to give an inch here.
The fact this very site has debated the legality of these stocks before should tell you they really probably never should have come to market in the first place.
But go ahead. Call me a pussy and idiot and whatever else. I couldn’t give less shits. I am simply trying to make yall think things through. Right now, you are being short sighted.
Find your congressman and send them this text.
Representative [Name],
Given the current furor on the topic of bump fire stocks, I thought it useful, as one of your constituents, to contact you with an idea for a practical solution to the issue that you might offer as a thoughtful compromise to all parties involved.
The existence of the bump fire stock is a direct result of ridiculously inconsistent federal and state regulations of firearms and banning them outright will serve little purpose other than to cause the gun community to disavow their support for you and invent new methods to achieve the same goal.
Instead, it would be far more reasonable to revise existing firearms laws to better fit the intent of the 2nd amendment and ease the regulatory burden on law abiding gun owners. The core of this idea stems from the existence of the National Firearms Act and the registration of existing machine guns under the provisions of that act.
I would recommend you propose the following compromise.
1. Any fire rate acceleration device is regulated as a Title II firearm under the national firearms act equivalent to a machine gun. The definition of a machine gun under Title II would need to be refined as to include such devices, but specifically exclude trigger modifications to avoid confusion.
2. Any existing owners of such devices will be required to register their device with the BATFE NFA branch using an NFA Form 1 with the requisite excise tax waved as no transfer of ownership is actually occurring.
3. Given that it is currently illegal to register a new machine gun under the provision of the 1986 Hughes amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act, this amendment would need to be repealed in its entirety.
4. To prevent states from prosecuting law abiding gun owners for abiding by this new federal law (and preventing challenges to the law based on entrapment grounds), any bill would need to preempt state level regulation of any item regulated under Title II of the National Firearms Act.
I think that such a bill could be proposed as an alternative to an ineffective and draconian ban being pushed by opponents of the 2nd amendment across the isle. It would discourage the development of new workarounds to the National Firearms Act by allowing law abiding gun owners to own actual Title II items under strict regulation, but without the fear of state level persecution for their exercise of their 2nd amendment rights. Such a bill could be touted as a victory from both sides of the isle and would show the willingness of gun owners to consider public safety concerns.
More importantly, such a bill would not likely face legal challenge due to meeting strict scrutiny standards applied by the courts. The interests of the government, while present, would be applied in the least intrusive method of meeting said interests. Moreover, the argument that repealing the Hughes amendment is unwise can be countered with the simple demonstration that between 1934 and 1986 exactly two homicides were committed with a registered Title II machine gun. (According to BATFE testimony to congress regarding the FOPA in 1986.) As such, clearly the regulation applied under Title II of the National Firearms Act are largely sufficient to meet the government’s public safety interests without the need for a blanket ban. (A ban that could be challenged under both D.C. v Heller and U.S. v Miller precedents.)
I hope that you consider this idea in how you approach the coming gun control debate and introduce a bill or amendments to an existing bill covering items 1-4 as I outlined earlier. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback you would like to discuss.
Respectfully,
At some point I would love to hear what the NRA’s leadership thinks is guaranteed under the second amendment. Where is the line you do not cross? Every time I turn around I see the NRA giving away one small thing after another
Well, any hope of non NFA suppressors is now dead. Any hope of lifting import bans and getting rid of 922r is gone. Look to the NRA to cave on .50 cals and Shockwave type “firearms” next.
Don’t give me your trade off spiel.
This is a total capitulation. They aren’t going to get ANYTHING in return.
There is a whole laundry list of things they will cave on as they walk backwards, feeding the wolves as they go.
Best of luck to all of you who think your stuff is safe. I’d be buying stock in larger diameter PVC tube manufacturers if i were you.
I am amazed you can control a bump fire stock at over 330 yards well enough to hit a person. I’d assume most of the wounded was from the initial burst, with many others being injured in panic tramples. I wonder if he had an actual automatic.
He couldn’t have NOT hit a person.
I doubt he was aiming at individuals, he was firing indiscriminately at an area of the planet that happened to be made of people from 0′ to 7’0″ up.
He may have skipped class when they covered 2A infringement. You’re not supposed to admit that you want to reduce the number of guns Americans legally own. Remember, the catch phrase is “Nobody wants to take away your guns.”
You certainly don’t want to offer registration as a means of this reduction. Stick to the script; don’t be a hero. The catch phrase is “Registration only provides law enforcement with a means of solving crimes.”
If you get these wrong, you risk tipping off gun owners that you intend to use registration as part of your gun confiscation scheme.
“Until the Next One” in 3…2…1…
So far, the only good news this week has been DCs backing off the reasonable need requirement for permits. And that especially includes the NRA refusing to hold the line on aftermarket gizmos.
F$&K THE NRA, they have betrayed us all. Call, write, email your representatives because the slippery slope is caving beneath us.
The NRA should have or just stay out off.it all until we’re asked for our opinion. Everyone knows that where this bump stock was going.
Face it I’m a shooter and trainer and when we were walking out talking about this we all knew it would be dead when crongress got ahold to it. They just passed it on undser Obamma in 1910. We’ll since the law enforcement had to stand up to them this is really bad. We can do without it as it’s a toy anyway.
AND it was just reported the shooter(?) was seen with a mystery gal NOT being the Filipino woman…this whole thing stinks😡😡
Feinstein doesn’t want any device to increase the firing rate of the gun. OK, put Jerry Miculek on the clock, and we’ll cap it there. Generally, the max firing rate of the gun is determined in full fun mode, so technically nothing on the market increases the rate of fire.
Although I see no need for a bump fire, I prefer precise well aimed fire. Banning them or anything really only keeps it out of the hands of law abiding citizens. In a day you could easily make your own working home made bump fire with just a few basic legal items. I have seen videos of a working design, using the following easily obtained items.
a Magpul MOE grip
M4 Buttstock
Metal rod
9 Screws
12 washers
One piece of 8×10 sheet metal
Tools needed
Dremil
Drill
Screwdriver
Trade bump stocks for suppressors, knowing that triggers such as the fostech echo, and franklin armory binary triggers now make these bumpfire stocks obsolete. They are far easier to control, and the early versions of the franklin armory trigger could actually go faster than the gun could run. Simply make sure that the bill ONLY bans stocks and not triggers.
Remember, although we tend to focus on the first part of “gun control” it’s actually not really about the guns. It’s about absolute control. The left purely hates the fact that they cannot dictate how we live and think. Their overarching, prime motivation is to control everyone and everything. They only fear our refusal because of the relative equality of force provided by guns. We absolutely cannot allow the communist / socialist / marxist / statist forces to disarm us or freedom itself will vanish.
Bonus round: since the left wants to validate all feelings, my feelings about their stupidity, ignorance of history, incomprehension of defensive use of force, and willful blindness are just as valid as their own feelings. If we’re really going to play by the same rules, they have to accept my feelings too.
Of course, they genuinely don’t believe that the rules apply to them. Rules and laws are apparently for lesser beings, not the ignorati of the left.
“It’s about nothing”…why do you give a platform to a know nothing old fart? I am getting to the same age but his blather made absolutely no sense. Do better!
Like Obama, let me be clear: I give no fucks about bump fire stocks. Don’t own one, never shot one, don’t see the point in them.
That said, this whole argument seems to me to be akin to talking about “Nail Polish Remover Control” after Manchester (that didn’t happen btw, at least not as far as I know). It’s basically a “useless” feel good argument that has no real effect other than to fuck with the 99.999% of purchasers who have no ill intent.
As such, I think it’s fucking stupid. BUT this one comes with some potentially serious side effects down the road depending on how courts view it.
At this point however I’ll wait for a few days to see how things shake out. LOL maybe McCain can sink yet another GOP bill and this time for some sort of good reason.
Small point but the plural of AR is ARs. AR’s is the possessive. Really.
“… kill that narrative.” Ha! Never happen.
I absolutely think that bump-fire stocks should be traded for some “common sense” de-regulation. National reciprocity is not bad, but what about those damn 7 round mag. limits, or extra taxes and background checks for ammo purchases?
I know that these are state regulations, but we DO have a constitution with an interstate commerce clause. Use it. Kill those regs nationwide. Of course, it may not pass congress, but then we could correctly claim that the left really doesn’t care about bump-fire stocks, since those other regs are so stupid.
How do you ban something you can 3d print, make from scrap metal in your garage or just use your finger to do. you can’t.
Not only did those
domestic enemiesidiots call for additional regulation of bump fire stocks, they blamed Obama for the simple fact that they’re currently legal to buy and own!!That’s right, an official NRA statement says Obama was too soft on guns.
And the Lairds of Fairfax still wonder why we call them Negotiating Rights Away.
In the 1890s people were also using “cough medicine” that was 90% cocaine or heroin, which also cause paranoia, etc… Not stay we blame guns, but people have been medicated as long as there have been medicines that make you feel good. More likely than not, the rise in mass shootings has to do with collapsing social bonds.
500+ shots threw my 320 so far. Not one missfire or ejection problem. I dont even bother clean it
Scopes on carry-handles?
Makes as much sense as tits on a bull, or two boys banging on the Whitehouse lawn.
Anybody know where I can get a suppressor that small?
In all seriousness, this picture hurts me head.
Meh!!! A lot of my friends have always laughed at me for carrying and would say I would have a better chance of being hit by lightening before getting shot at. I know about 20,000+ people in Vegas who would disagree