CBS (like every other media outlet in creation) is ignoring a key point about ARs equipped with a bump fire stock: they’re wildly inaccurate. If Las Vegas spree killer Stephen Paddock hadn’t been repeatedly firing into a crowd of thousands, if he’d had to actually aim at individual targets with a bump fire-equipped AR, he may not have hit anyone. But don’t take my word for it . . .
An unarmed security guard at Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino was the first to take on gunman Stephen Paddock, getting shot in the process, but providing crucial help for police looking to stop the massacre.
The security guard, identified as Jesus Campos by the International Union, Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America, was shot in the leg after Paddock fired at him through a door, police said.
Police said Paddock managed to fire off over 200 rounds as the security guard approached the suspect’s room alone. But the guard managed to direct police to the exact location of Paddock’s suite and even provided a hotel key to officers looking to clear rooms on the 32nd floor before they insisted he get medical attention.
The abcnews.go.com report is clear: the killer was practicing “spray and pray.” (As he was loading 100-round Surefire AR magazines, he would’ve had to either switch guns or reload to fire that many rounds.)
Speaking this evening, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo praised Campos, saying he aided officers in their search for Paddock.
Lombardo added that Paddock fired “well over 200 rounds” into the hallway when the security guard approached. Paddock had set up a camera in the hallway, apparently to watch for approaching authorities.
Bottom line: machine guns are less accurate than single shot semi-automatic rifles in most situations. AR’s equipped with a bump fire stock, even less so.
Not that it matters to the legislators bound and determined to “do something” after the Mandalay Bay spree killing. Or the media that support that effort in all its misguided glory.
Small point but the plural of AR is ARs. AR’s is the possessive. Really.
Gratuitous apostrophes boggle my mind. It takes extra time to add the erroneous punctuation, but people do it wrong anyway.
I’ll bet you guys are fun at party’s.
I’ll admit. I don’t write about it but it bother’s me as well 😉
My thought exactly, sounds like my wife. “OK Honey, you’re right, I’m wrong, can we move on now?” (now is it question mark before, or *after* the close quote, ahhhhh friggit, I don’t really care).
If you check, you will find most people do it incorrectly anyway.
I like you guy’s but your a bit uptight about grammar.
“I like you guies but your a bit uptight about grammar.”
FIFY.
“Gratuitous apostrophes boggle my mind. It takes extra time to add the erroneous punctuation, but people do it wrong anyway.”
As a young kid I never could remember the ‘rules’ of adding the apostrophe, so I just threw it in, just in case.
You asked about the mindset. Years back, that was mine on it.
Then one day, the lightbulb turned on. And it *really* bugs me now. So yeah, I do get what you’re saying.
I hated with a *passion* English composition in school. I only started paying attention to it when I started posting on Usenet in the 90’s, and only then because I didn’t want to look any more stupid than I actually am. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Nobody could possibly be that stinking stupid. *rimshot*)
And today I still break *lots* of the ‘official rules’. To anyone with half a brain, they can figure out what the hell I’m saying.
Usually. (But no longer on Usenet. That I do miss. The .alt hierarchy was a blast. rec.guns was fun, even with a 500+ daily post count .*sob*).
Irregardless of punctuation lets not loose sight of the authors point
AndyInMa – Now that was funny.
Yes, I agree. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be said. It doesn’t make me friends at parties, but it makes me wonder if anybody cares about sloppiness in the written word these days.
And for those keeping score, it’s ’90s, not 90’s.
And while we’re at it: the number of jammed rifles affixed with bump-fire stocks also highlights the inefficacy of using bump-fire stocks to emulate sustained, full-auto fire through a semi-automatic rifle.
Back on your original topic: I would like to know, of the 500 injured, how many were injured by gun shot wounds, and how many were injured through other means (such as being trampled by a stampede).
Were the guns jammed? I didn’t study the pictures.
Also, mega-capacity magazines jam a lot. Holmes was using a 100-round mag and his rifle jammed (fortunately).
They’ve revised the numbers down because some were double counted and some were trampled. The number of people wounded by gunfire is 489.
Does that 489 victims of gunfire include the 58 or 59 who died from their gunshot wound? Or are the fatalities in addition to the wounded?
In my numerous decades on the planet, I’ve never seen of heard the word “inefficacy” used. Interesting.
Subset sample: In an interview I listened to, the medical director of the nearest trauma center said that his ER had received 180 casualties, and 128 of those had gunshot wounds. The other 52 suffered injuries from being in the middle of the panicked crowds trying to get out of danger.
Let the media climb all over those idiotic slide-fire, bump-stock piles of shit. We all know they are a gimmick so people can fire their AR and experience what a select fire is like. We all know that bump stocks waste ammo, is impractical, inefficient, inaccurate, and a complete waste of money.
If they want to ban them, LET THEM. It’s no guess why the NRA is giving them a blessing. Sacrifice it!
Oh dear, NOT OUR BUMP STOCKS……WAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Here is the real deal though, those things weren’t really well known. Now thanks to the MS media cartel, everyone and squirrels in my back yard know about them. It’s just a matter of times before some ignorant retarded ass stupid teased fat kid from some school gets the bright idea to pull the same crap and install one of those corny things on his AR because he saw it on TV.
Ban them I says!
Oh, and I am 9.1 miles from Freeman High School, the scene of the last school shooting near Spokane.
Let them ban nothing! No more! Zip nada zero nothing. I’m tired of our side “compromising” anything. It’s been nothing but chip chip chip since the 1930’s. What has the gun community received in return? Let’s see, we lost full auto, SBR, SBS, Suppressors, guns by mail, licensing of dealers, new taxes, foreign imports, cheap surplus ammo, original barrels on kits, and I’m sure I missed something. No more.
We “lost full auto?” What exactly did you lose? The ability to empty your wallet as fast as you can empty a magazine?How is it a sacrifice for a responsible gun owner not to have full auto?
It is a sacrifice because of one little phrase “shall not be infringed”.
I don’t care for AR’s. I have sold every one I have ever bought. But I have the option to buy one if I do feel the desire. The same cannot be said for automatic rifles. My right to buy one of those is infringed. Citizens should always be able to outgun the government.
“How is it a sacrifice for a responsible gun owner not to have full auto?”
Spoken as one who doesn’t want to exercise any given right. The fact that you don’t want to exercise it doesn’t mean no one else should.
Should you lose your second amendment rights because Feinstein doesn’t want a gun? I didn’t think so.
Parochial thinking will hurt us.
I feel you are right. We should come up with more evil looking but useless mods to “sacrifice” each time a gun control panic comes.
Never ‘let’ them, they won’t stop there. Fight then at every step. If they ban bump stocks, then acknowledge that it’s not a huge loss. But fight then tooth and nail to make sure nothing beyond that can be achieved.
Gun control has two effects. It either does nothing or it raises the murder rate and gets more people killed. So don’t “let” then have anything.
No, whatever you do, DON’T throw me in the briar patch!
If the politicians on our side were smart about it (and if they were really on our side…but unfortunately they’re neither), we could get a lot of positive mileage out of this.
How badly do the progs want their “do something” legislation? What would they be willing to give us in return for those oh-so-important, we can’t live without them bumpfire stocks?
Bump fire stocks turn semi-autos into inaccurate spray & pray pseudo machine guns that unfortunately proved very effective at spraying rounds into a crowd of 22K tightly packed inside a high fenced open air concert venue. It’s a damn shame that a piece of $#IT accessory like the bump fire stock was blessed by the ATF during the Obama administration and will now likely result in the banning of many AR aftermarket parts starting with binary trigger groups.
At the risk of sounding callous. Actually no. Several 100 round strings of fire at a 22,000 person crowd and very few rounds (statistically) actually hit the crowd.
Rapid, aimed fire, at say one shot every 3 seconds would have been far, far more devastating than 1 round per second with the Slidefire stock apparently used.
You’re clueless Mark. Inaccuracy didn’t matter in this tragedy. All the miserable coward was concerned with was how to spray as many rounds into a crowd from an elevated position 400-500 yards away. There are skilled marksman capable of placing accurate shots with an AR-15 or AR-10 semi-auto rifle from five football fields away. So what? This loser wasn’t one of them. Those of us who know how to run an AR know that bump fire stocks are an impractical gimmick, but as I said before, unfortunately the murdering coward on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay utilized that impractical gimmick to perpetrate the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.
And if the windows hadn’t been able to be broken out, he couldn’t have done this at all.
Let’s make them REALLY unbreakable. Why should the fire department be able to break them out to ventilate a room?
Let’s limit all cars so that they can’t exceed the speed limit on the road they are on (we have the technology to do this).
We can make all the laws we want to, but it will not stop people from breaking them.
I can go to Lowes and buy all the parts to make a bump fire stock today, if I want to. How do we stop that?
Stupid laws that are meant to stop criminals bent on wreaking havoc are stupid, because they won’t work. They can’t work.
Laws define behavior, they can’t stop it. That’s the job of law enforcement. Unfortunately, law enforcement is reactive; they show up after the fact. Criminals know this, we should too.
Laws made in the heat of the moment are bad laws far too often, because they are made (and passed) based on emotion, not logic and reason. The AWB had a curious effect: more ARs were sold during the AWB than all the years before it, because the law was flawed; it attempted to strictly define an “assault weapon,” when no such description can be anything other than made up out of whole cloth. The more exact it tried to be, the easier it was to get around. We only need to look at “California compliant” ARs today to see what I mean. They are legal according to the letter of the law, but completely ignore the spirit of the law (as flawed as that spirit is).
Criminals are quite adept at not following laws – the more laws there are, the more laws they will ignore.
And THAT is the flaw in banning bump stocks.
Inaccurate? So what? Given the circumstances, they were still quite effective in producing casualties. Sometimes it seems that our side is just as bad as the ban-ers at grasping at things that don’t really matter to the specific situation. Face it; the whacko, nut-job, dirt-bag, waste of space took a handful of rifles and killed a whole bunch of people. We should focus on countering the real misleading/false/irrelevant/ineffective accusations/recriminations/false narratives (universal bg checks, “gun show loophole”, ban semi-autos, high capacity magazines, ad nauseam) than coming up with stuff like “well, he could have killed a bunch more if he did _______”. (fill in the blank)
Yeah, no. Our rights are not contingent upon a popularity contest nor on what some whack-job did (or might do in the future). That death toll and injury toll is what Chicago experiences in *one month*. No one bats a fucking eye at that.
Oh, and this suspect could have *easily* killed thousands with a crude, homemade, and easy-to-make bomb laden box truck. This matters because it shows how you CAN NOT stop a determined individual u less you want to live your whole life in a hermetically sealed bunker.
Yeah, no, you’ll notice I didn’t say a word about rights contingency, death toll in Chicago, etc. While all you say there is true, it has nothing to do with the situation at hand.
What he “could have done” has absolutely no bearing on what he actually did. He did what he did. Making arguments about what he could have done are just as irrelevant to the discussion as arguments on the other side about what their stupid proposed laws could have done to prevent it.
My bad, my phone smashed yours and MLee’s (two posts up) together.
You have a valid point that it is asinine to argue what *could* have happened, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is true. It is only asinine because the left refuses to have that debate. They *feel* they could stop it by passing useless laws, and that is all that matters to them.
To make that number reflect even more misses, remember the “injured” number includes those who aren’t injured by gunfire (most commonly, and confirmed to be included in the numbers given now, it includes the crowd shoving eachother in the panic). Thousands of rounds fired, and he killed less than 60.
I guess that includes Digi Trigger and who knows where this legislation goes. Does it include triggers like Gissle or any other trigger that allows for smoother and potentially faster rates of fire. These legislators did not even know that Bumpstocks have been on the market for a number of years and how many have been involved in a murder….this one as far as I know. This is just the beginning and so goes Reciprocity and HPA. Gone and we have another administration who will cave to liberal publicity. Already sent a message to the NRA to let them know I’ll drop my membership based on their caving on this issue.
Do any of the gun shops (physical or online) you shop with donate to the NRA? Send them a mail saying you’re less likely to shop there when you know it will be supporting traitors like the NRA. I already sent one to Bud’s.
Remember: It’s emails like that to advertisers that brought Gawker to its knees (that it didn’t get to bleed out before Hogan piledrove them as a finisher isn’t relevant). Even if they don’t stop donating, a few angry customers and nothing to the contrary, they’re going to be on the phone with the NRA telling them to cut that out.
Cut it out? The damage has been done!
I don’t own a Bump Stock & never thought about buying one because of the obvious flaws in trying to “simulate” automatic fire. However, the actual mechanical device used is immaterial. The FACT is that a severely deranged individual murdered innocents in cold blood. People he didn’t even know and for no apparent reason. The Bump Stock didn’t kill anyone, a very sick man did. On purpose. Then killed himself, probably thinking to “avoid punishment” for his misdeeds. May he rot in hell forever.
Ban severely deranged individuals who murder people. Ban murder – make it illegal to kill another human… oh, wait…
“Oh, it’s just as well. Those grapes were sour. I didn’t want them anyway….”
Where’s the holes in the door? Certainly they wouldn’t have all been in the breeched door.
There are bullet holes in the wall surrounding a door in some of the photos.
Don’t be silly RF. If firing at a concealed “target” you are not aiming therefore no “accuracy” is involved. You are just spraying.
That thought occurred to me as well.
This is blind fire by definition, and purely from a practical standpoint, if you must do that, then the more rapid the fire the better. Probably the only reason that murderous pile of fecal matter hit the security guard at all was through sheer volume — something the bumpfire stock helped accomplish.
I’ll keep my NRA membership…the good they’re done FAR outweighs this bumpfire BS. They stepped up bigtime after Newtown and massively on November 8th,2016. You sound suspiciously similar to Never Trumpers…
They the media could care less. Reporting the facts. Your dreaming………….
Truth about anything so far related to guns in this matter…………doesn’t matter to the left.
In the North Hollywood Bank of America shootout of 1997 2 perps using cheap Norinco rifles modified (illegally, of course) to fire full auto fired over 2,000 rounds while walking the streets in plain daylight and shooting at cars, police, people, cats, and puppies. They were killed by police using standard firearms. Number of people killed by the full auto perps? 0.
As far as full automatic crimes go, this was an absolute failure.
Unarmed Las Vegas Security Guard’s Survival Highlights That He’s Definitely In the Right City, But Should Really Be Trying The Slots Instead
FIFY
The inaccuracy is my main problem with bumpfiring in general. Even for the first shot, you’re applying pressure to the rifle in atypical ways which may well throw it off target, and will certainly make any subsequent shots uncontrollable.
On the other hand, a properly supported burstfire or even fully-automatic machine-gun at least offers the possibility of controlling your shots reliably.
Hence, my weird position where I’m perfectly ok with ATF putting the kibosh on slidefires, while I’d also be 100% in favor of re-opening the machine gun registry in the NFA or even just abolishing the tax stamp and right-delay infrastructure entirely.
DO NOT use the inaccuracy of these devices as an excuse to ban them!
It does not MATTER whether they are accurate or not. Their purpose is to enable people who do not have access to a fully automatic weapon to simulate such weapons for entertainment purposes. Period.
1) Bump fire stocks have never been used for a crime prior to this event, as far as we know.
2) Bump fire stocks are TOYS for people who like to shoot firearms faster, exactly the same as collectors of fully automatic firearms.
Banning an object used for a one-off crime is stupid. It deprives law-abiding people who use them legally of their entertainment.
There is a little notion called “freedom” which everyone who proposes banning these devices fails to recognize. People have a right to do what they want provided THEY don’t hurt someone else. The fact that a criminal uses the same object as those people to do a criminal act does NOT justify depriving those other people of their freedom to use that object.
Not to mention the obvious slippery slope which occurs when you start banning things people “don’t need.” That SAME argument has been used repeatedly by the anti-gun crowd to demonize semi-auto pistols and semi-auto rifles and magazine with greater than 10 rounds.
People don’t NEED a car that goes faster than 55mph, but we don’t ban them even though it might save thousands of lives every year when people exceed the speed limit.
People who who propose banning an object because people don’t “need” it are part of the problem. That includes the NRA who apparently is caving in in order to avoid further negative press. I get that people want to “make a deal” but there IS NO deal to be made. Ban one object on this basis and you’ll end up with no Second Amendment eventually.
It’s that simple.
Plus eleventy billion!
Thank you Richard Steven Hack for your simple and clear description of the situation and what is at stake. Most importantly, thank you for stating RIGHT and WRONG.
“CBS (like every other media outlet in creation) is ignoring a key point about ARs equipped with a bump fire stock: they’re wildly inaccurate.”
Gee, who could have predicted that? [/sarc]
For reference, just the other day Robert O’Neill said he never used FA fire in combat.
https://twitter.com/mchooyah/status/915321621908508673
NPR yesterday (I listen because I want to know what the enemy is saying) actually took the time to point out that
1) using one of these things makes a rifle much less accurate, and
2) normal guns are not designed for such rapid fire which increases malfunctions and jamming.
I was quite shocked.
In other words a spree killer who chooses to use a bump-fire stock will harm fewer people than if he/she went with stock semi-automatic! Just like spree killers who use 100 round drum magazines will harm fewer people than if they used standard 30 round magazines!
Currently proposed legislation, it if successfully stops the next spree killer from using a bump-fire stock (which is anyone’s guess), will actually increase the lethality of the attack. That sounds about right coming from government.
Warning: the following argument is counter-intuitive until you know important facts.
If a spree killer is going to use a rifle, the casualty count will be lower if the attacker uses a bump-fire stock and 100-round drum magazines. Why?
(1) Bump-fire stocks mean the attacker will be less accurate and strike fewer victims.
(2) Bump-fire stocks and drum-magazine exponentially increase the odds that the attacker’s rifle will stop functioning.
Last time I checked, NOT shooting potential victims (due to misses and malfunctions) is a desirable outcome.
It appears he had 4 cameras. One on the cart pointed at the elevator/hall, another one on the cart pointed at the stairwell, one attached to the suite’s double door and one in the connecting room.
He had ~9 rifles (maybe more) in the suite. He had put two chairs together to keep the rifles at reach and out of the way. He stacked at least 15 100 round Surefire mags (from his suitcase) next to the pillar and the chairs that contain his rifles. He broke the window next to the pillar (I assume because it would allow for more cover).
It looks like he was surveilling the concert from the window next to the suite’s bedroom until he decided to start his attack. He went into the connecting room (where it seems he hid his gear from hotel staff) to break the window using a mallet and fire on the crowd and airport fuel tanks with an AR-15 using a 100 round Surefire mag (at ~10:05pm). The fuel tanks didn’t explode, so he decided to move on to his 2nd firing position after the first mag dump, he locked the door behind him leaving a camera inside just in case they make entry into the connecting room first. About 35 seconds after the first mag dump, he busts the 2nd window with the mallet and fires another AR-15 with a Surefire 100 round mag at the confused crowd. After the 2nd mag dump it seems he is trying to reload another 100 round mag from his cache next to the pillar. He fires ~11 Surefire mags within 10 minutes of the initial shots. Sometime between those 11 mag dumps (possibly at 10:09pm) he fires through the suite’s door at the security guard. After firing at the security guard he continues firing at the crowd until ~10:15pm. When he realizes the police have arrived he uses his revolver to shoot himself in the head.
The police waited ~1 hour for SWAT to setup a breach charge and make entry. They find the shooter dead as they clear the suite. They notice the connecting room’s door is locked, they use a 2nd charge to make entry and clear.
It seems the shooter had no intention of having a shootout with SWAT. He could have put up a hard fight with the hundreds of rounds he had left.
It appears the shooter moved to Nevada a couple of years ago. He met a women in Nevada and provided her a expensive lifestyle in exchange for companionship. He spent those years acquiring funds and gear. He bought 33 guns within 12 months. He collected 100 round Surefire mags, bump fire stocks, optics and pounds of tannerite. He did some recon on upcoming public events and rented out a place overlooking the 2017 “Life is Beautiful Festival” a week prior to the “Route 91 Harvest Festival” attack.
It’s possible Paddock thought about committing a large scale attack before moving to Nevada. While in Nevada he could have committed to the idea and went around finding targets while stocking up.
This video shows what sounds like the first shots at ~10:04:24pm. There was about 4 aimed shots at the crowd closes to Gate 6 and Gate 5. Those exits lead to Giles St. and Ali Baba LN, There are parking lots across Giles St., which are a few hundred meters from the airport fuel tanks. It appears he wanted to get the crowd to run towards the fuel tanks. He might of had the idea of placing Tannerite in the parking lot via canisters or his own vehicle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7GZ1RawlLo
Approximate timeline:
3:12s – First shot @ 10:04:24pm
3:17-3:19s – 2nd-4th shot @ 10:04:29-10:04:31pm
3:20s – Pause in fire @ 10:04:32pm
3:51s – 1st bump fire @ 10:05:03pm
4:39s – 2nd bump fire @ 10:05:50pm
5:06s – 3rd bump fire @ 10:06:18pm
5:35s – 4th bump fire @ 10:06:47pm
7:32s – 5th bump fire @ 10:08:44pm
8:22s – Security shot @ 10:09:34pm
8:44s – 6th bump fire @ 10:09:55pm
9:19s – 7th bump fire @ 10:10:30pm
9:54s – 8th bump fire @ 10:11L05pm
10:20s – 9th bump fire @ 10:11:31pm
11:16s – 10th bump fire @ 10:12:27pm
12:35s – 11th bump fire @ 10:13:46pm
13:01s – 12th bump fire @ 10:14:13pm
13:55s – Suicide with revolver in mouth @ 10:15:06pm
Let it go Fargo. A piece of plastic that allows mouth breathers to do an end run around the NFA is not a hill worth dying for. It’s a stock, not a firearm.
If you want to make a case for repealing the NFA, go for it. Just stop with the disingenuous bump fire bullshit.
So 200 bullets to hit once? I want all my attackers armed with bumpfire. Good grief.
In the sitcom “Major Dad” the major would correct his boss, the colonel, who often used irregardless when he meant to use regardless. Cracked me up then and I smile even now, 30 or so years later, when I am reminded of it.
“200 rounds into the hallway…”. Where is all the brass?? I don’t see nearly enough brass in the photos to match all the rounds he must have fired out the window and into the hall. Sloppy photo taking? Or sloppy crime scene staging?