# A new record! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 2, 2017, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804 "2017-10-02T13:09:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/141 "2017-10-02T17:29:22Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > “You deliberately killed 168 people with a rental truck, fertilizer, and fuel oil. What the fuck’s wrong with you? And what the fuck is wrong with this country that you had access to tools that allowed you to do that?” > > Answer? Didn’t the BATF start tracking and investigating people acquiring acquiring large quantities of fertilizer without a valid reason for doing so? If so, isn’t this a fairly stupid argument you’re using? ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/142 "2017-10-02T17:30:16Z")
People will just climb over the fence. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/143 "2017-10-02T17:30:21Z")
I think Abbie Hoffman once said the nice thing about bombs is that the amateurs tend to take themselves out of the equation. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/144 "2017-10-02T17:31:05Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > The very first link you found just happened to be from a heavily Republican-leaning website? What a coincidence. > > The article of course is ridiculous. It says the US is ‘only’ sixth in terms of mass shootings based on ‘rampage shooting fatalities per 1 million’ - only counting from between 2009 and 2013. Norway only has five million people. One horrific mass shooting is of course going to skew the data. If only 10 people were killed, it would have a ‘higher’ count of ‘rampage shooting fatalities per 1mn’ any other country on the table. Nobody in their right mind thinks Norway has more mass shootings - doesn’t pass the smell test. So that doesn’t seem to be a very representative statistic. > > Also note that the table leaves out cases where they decide it wasn’t a mass shooting, it was actually gang violence, robbery, domestic violence, etc. That also significantly reduces the body count. Ok. Literally it was the first link. What are the real statistics? ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/145 "2017-10-02T17:53:13Z")
If the table dramatically changes by playing games with the dates, the table is suspect. One or two incidents in countries with very small populations heavily skews the ‘per capita’ rankings. Norway, Finland, Switzerland - just one incident can put you at or near the top of the ‘per million’ table. Do you really think you’re more likely to die in a mass shooting in Switzerland than in the US? If that table was for 2012-2017 would Norway even be on the table, let alone at the top? Norway has had one rampage shooting since 2011. The US has had [273](http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting)_this year_ (four or more individuals shot or killed in same general time or location, not including the shooter). ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/146 "2017-10-02T17:53:51Z")
As of about six minutes ago The NY Times says the police in Las Vegas have not yet offered details of the weapon or weapons used by the gunman in the Mandalay Bay Resort. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/147 "2017-10-02T17:54:25Z")
The shooter must have been planning to do this for at least a few weeks. He knew about the festival and scouted ahead of time for a place high enough to hit as many targets as possible. He probably watched hotel security and observed how they patrol and picked out gaps he could smuggle his weaponry through without notice. If he assembled his rifles after bringing them to his hotel room, he could have just carried a lot of luggage and told the concierge his wife packs a lot. So was he wanting to target a particular demographic? If he was a secretly converted IS operative, as many bodies as possible. If not, it was a country music festival which likely attracted a conservative audience. Why would he kill people who were likely to be on his side politically? Did he have a grievance against whites, even though he was white himself? None of these scenarios seem likely. His family was taken completely by surprise and suspected nothing. He had been quietly stockpiling weapons, waiting for the day when he would use them all. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/148 "2017-10-02T17:55:56Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > The shooter must have been planning to do this for at least a few weeks. He knew about the festival and scouted ahead of time for a place high enough to hit as many targets as possible. He probably watched hotel security and observed how they patrol and picked out gaps he could smuggle his weaponry through without notice. If he assembled his rifles after bringing them to his hotel room, he could have just carried a lot of luggage and told the concierge his wife packs a lot. > > So was he wanting to target a particular demographic? If he was a secretly converted IS operative, as many bodies as possible. If not, it was a country music festival which likely attracted a conservative audience. Why would he kill people who were likely to be on his side politically? Did he have a grievance against whites, even though he was white himself? None of these scenarios seem likely. His family was taken completely by surprise and suspected nothing. He had been quietly stockpiling weapons, waiting for the day when he would use them all. Lots of supposition. No confirmed facts. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/149 "2017-10-02T18:00:06Z")
> [@XT](#): > > The guy killed 50+ people and injured 100’s more. It’s important to know who this guy is, and what his motivation is. Seems self-evident to me, but I admit MMV. It’s self-evident to a lot of evangelicals that the Bible should be the basis for all secular law. ‘Self-evident’ isn’t good enough unless it’s self-evident to pretty much everyone. > [@](#): > > Not really. The single unifying factor seems to be crazy fanatics or just crazy. Until we can identify and fix crazy, the next-best thing is restricting potential force multipliers for crazy people. > [@](#): > > After all, bombs have been used, And as discussed in this thread, we did something about that after OKC, and no big killings via bomb since. > [@](#): > > and cars, That’s gonna be harder to deal with, but at least we all recognize this as a problem, and there won’t be anything partisan about trying to solve it. > [@](#): > > even knives in China. The tool is less important than the person using it… No, the tool is very important. The planes that hit the WTC buildings took out over 1000 people each. Keeping that tool from being used in that manner again was vitally important. And we’ve gone 16 years without a repeat, thank goodness. The OKC bombing killed 168. We decided it was important to make that tool a lot harder to access. And we’ve gone 22 years without a repeat. Last night, at least 58 people were killed. Nothing will be done to make the killer’s tools harder to access, and we will be lucky to go a year without a mass shooting where a double-digit number of people get killed. Sure, you can kill people with knives. But it’s damnably hard to commit mass murder with a knife, which is why it rarely happens. > [@](#): > > That your only focus is on the political aspects, not the shooter or the victims…just the tool used. Because it’s the tool that enables so many crazies to kill lots of people at once. We can’t stop crazy. We can only limit the tools available to crazies. I repeat: fucking DUUUUH. And that shouldn’t be fucking _political_, any more than all the post-9/11 security around airplanes was political, or making it hard for another McVeigh from making a fertilizer bomb was political. It’s only _political_ because one party doesn’t want to address this problem as a problem that needs solving. > [@](#): > > My WAG is if this guy had decided to fly his plane into the crowd stuffed with some volatile and set the crowd of 22,000 on fire or blow them up this thread wouldn’t have happened in this way. I assume that wouldn’t happen, because I assume that there are similar restrictions on general aviation to the ones any passenger on a commercial flight has to go through. But if I was wrong, and something like this did happen, yeah, I’d be mad as hell that GA had been given a pass on the post-9/11 security surrounding commercial aviation. Just the way I was upset that [trains carrying hazardous chemicals](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=362574&highlight=chemical) apparently could roll right through the middle of major cities without regulation. (I thought I recalled a thread of mine decrying exempting chemical _plants_ from new security requirements when we were tightening security after 9/11 on most other things that could be used against us by terrorists. But I can’t find it.) So you can take your WAG and shove it up your ass. > [@](#): > > And yet, you made no mention of any of this in your OP or even in subsequent posts. Except the one you quoted. :rolleyes: > [@](#): > > Instead you, again, focused on the tool used, not the events that transpired. You attempted, successfully of course since this is the SDMB, in making this a political issue about the 2nd Amendment instead of about a vicious attack by a crazy old white fucker who murdered a bunch of people. Yep, the **tool**. This is what our disagreement revolves around. I want the next crazy old white fucker (or black or brown or red or yellow fucker, I’m not particular) to not have access to the **tool** that makes it possible to murder 58 people and wound hundreds in just a few minutes. Deprive him of the **tool** , and he’d have a much harder time killing more than a few people, and might not succeed in killing _anyone_. We don’t know how to fix crazy. We have the ability to do something about the tool. > [@](#): > > Horseshit. The killer could have used any number of things to do what he did. The only reason it’s important to you is it was a gun he used. I didn’t know you were the Amazing Kreskin. I’m thinking of one card in a standard deck right now. Which one is it? > [@](#): > > If, next time, it’s a bomb or a car or truck or basically anything else it won’t be important to you either since it won’t be a gun and you won’t be able to make this a political pissing contest. When it’s another tool of mass murder, we’ll all be united about doing something to make it harder to use that **tool** , just like we were with airplanes and fertilizer-based explosives. (We’ll even be that way about cars, if only we can figure out _how_, given our near-total dependence on them.) This is the only **tool** where there’s this partisan political division. If it weren’t for one party opposing doing anything about this tool of mass murder, there would be no “political pissing contest.” > [@](#): > > Ultimately, it’s about the crazy killer, willing to use any tool at their disposal to slaughter innocents. So since we can’t limit crazy people, let’s limit the **tool** s at their disposal. That’s the part we can control. I keep saying it, but fucking DUUUUH. Sure, they can still kill with knives or the proverbial blunt instruments, but a good deal less efficaciously, with many many fewer people killed and wounded, many many fewer people having to mourn the premature deaths of their loved ones. Speaking of self-evident, it seems self-evident to me that that would be a Very Good Thing. Why are we even having this conversation? Fucking hell. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/150 "2017-10-02T18:01:07Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > The shooter must have been planning to do this for at least a few weeks. He knew about the festival and scouted ahead of time for a place high enough to hit as many targets as possible. He probably watched hotel security and observed how they patrol and picked out gaps he could smuggle his weaponry through without notice. If he assembled his rifles after bringing them to his hotel room, he could have just carried a lot of luggage and told the concierge his wife packs a lot. > > So was he wanting to target a particular demographic? If he was a secretly converted IS operative, as many bodies as possible. If not, it was a country music festival which likely attracted a conservative audience. Why would he kill people who were likely to be on his side politically? Did he have a grievance against whites, even though he was white himself? None of these scenarios seem likely. His family was taken completely by surprise and suspected nothing. He had been quietly stockpiling weapons, waiting for the day when he would use them all. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/151 "2017-10-02T18:05:21Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > If the table dramatically changes by playing games with the dates, the table is suspect. One or two incidents in countries with very small populations heavily skews the ‘per capita’ rankings. Norway, Finland, Switzerland - just one incident can put you at or near the top of the ‘per million’ table. Do you really think you’re more likely to die in a mass shooting in Switzerland than in the US? If that table was for 2012-2017 would Norway even be on the table, let alone at the top? > > Norway has had one rampage shooting since 2011. The US has had [273](http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting)_this year_ (four or more individuals shot or killed in same general time or location, not including the shooter). QFT. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/152 "2017-10-02T18:10:13Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Lots of supposition. No confirmed facts. We do have [some video](https://youtu.be/bQYv0v_QPC0?t=21) where you can hear the shooting occurring. I am no expert so perhaps those here more familiar with guns can offer educated guesses. I know a semi-auto rifle can be fired quite quickly. Can one be fired this quickly? Someone who knows will have to answer that. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/153 "2017-10-02T18:12:54Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > If the table dramatically changes by playing games with the dates, the table is suspect. One or two incidents in countries with very small populations heavily skews the ‘per capita’ rankings. Norway, Finland, Switzerland - just one incident can put you at or near the top of the ‘per million’ table. Do you really think you’re more likely to die in a mass shooting in Switzerland than in the US? If that table was for 2012-2017 would Norway even be on the table, let alone at the top? > > Norway has had one rampage shooting since 2011. The US has had [273](http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting)_this year_ (four or more individuals shot or killed in same general time or location, not including the shooter). I don’t know what this means. Norway has 5.2 million people. The US has 323 million. I don’t know what you mean by games with the time frame. I once saw somebody roll 4 boxcars in. Row at a craps table. What is statistically significant? Why isn’t Mexico or El Salvador or Liberia on that list? What about Russia? If my cite is right leaning is Vox our yours left leaning. Where re the gun ownership/violence statistics that I should just trust? Again, hypothetically, if Tim McVeigh had tried to buy a gun, and, if he had succeeded suppose he only would have killed 10 people instead of 168, but since he couldn’t get one he built a bomb and killed 168. Statistically could we say that gun control laws killed 158 people? What is it you are trying to convince me of? I go back to my original belief. The problem is that there are a small number of crazy people. Modern technology, including guns allows for a tremendous amount of kinetic energy to be accessible to those people with disastrous effects. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/154 "2017-10-02T18:15:48Z")
_Since we can’t fix crazy, we should limit the tools that crazies can get their hands on. This will limit the harm that crazies can cause._ I know I said it at least four times in my last response to **XT** , but given the length of the post, some might’ve skipped it, which is fine. I just wanted to pull that key thought out, because this is the essence of my thinking on the issue. The other main point from that post is: _When that tool has been airplanes or fertilizer-based bombs, restricting access to the tool hasn’t been_ political. _Neither party’s against that restriction. If we can figure out how to limit the carnage you can cause with a car or truck without taking them all off the streets, that won’t be political either. It’s just when the tool is a_ gun \*that restrictions on a tool of mass murder become \* political. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/155 "2017-10-02T18:26:11Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > You know what? > > Screw this. > > I’m out of this thread, and I leave you anti-gun idiots with this pleasant thought: bloviate all you want. Mewl and whine and maybe all get together and chant. I love it when you idiots offer up shit like, “Hey hey, ho ho, all these guns have got to go, hey hey, ho ho.” > > But that’s not happening. This tragedy is the result of the fact that there are sick and evil people in the world, and it is NOT the result of a robust Second Amendment. > > And that robust Second Amendment is immune to your grabby little fingers. So no matter how many sit-ins, marches, chants, and lies you spew, the **law is not going to change**. > > That’s reality. Get used to it. Right. Because it’s not like guns make it easier for sickos to kill. Three cheers for our reality: more guns, more injuries, more deaths, all hail the NRA. Get used to bloodshed. What the hell–blood washes off, doesn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Plutonium\_Kid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8baadc/32.png) [@The\_Plutonium\_Kid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Plutonium_Kid)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/156 "2017-10-02T18:26:52Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > OK then, trying to make a point about the fucking futility of keeping the next mass shooting from happening by actually putting limits on firearms due to a small but well-organized army of fanatics isn’t a ‘moral’ point. But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re just using this tragedy as an excuse to indulge yourself in an orgy of self-righteous malice. You don’t care about the victims. You just enjoy that jolt of adrenaline you get from spewing hatred. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/157 "2017-10-02T18:28:02Z")
If he \*did \*care about saving lives, what would look different to you? ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/158 "2017-10-02T18:29:36Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Just another isolated incident, like every other one before it, isn’t it? :rolleyes: Hundreds, in fact. After a while, the “it’s just one lone wolf” argument gets old. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/159 "2017-10-02T18:29:53Z")
Look, clearly all these “blame the people, not the tool” posters are extreme libertarians who see that tens of thousands of people are dying from opioids, and suggest that the problem is addiction, not the drugs themselves. Any tightening of regulations on getting one’s hands on opioids is bound to backfire, since there’s a lot of Americans who use them responsibly; and in fact the best thing to do is to make sure that everyone has free access to as many opioids as they want. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804/160 "2017-10-02T18:30:13Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > I don’t know what this means. Norway has 5.2 million people. The US has 323 million. I don’t know what you mean by games with the time frame. I once saw somebody roll 4 boxcars in. Row at a craps table. Good example. If you tried to determine the likelihood of boxcars by taking a sample of 30 rolls, it would skew your results if that streak fell into your sample, you’d think the probability of boxcars on a given roll was .13333… rather than .027777… . You’d be off by a factor of 5. Same thing with these small countries. In a given short period of time, some small countries will have way fewer mass shootings than their norm over a much longer period of time, and some small countries will have way more. The ones with way more in that period will show up, _in the numbers for that period_, as having more mass shootings than the U.S. per capita, based on a happenstance clustering of these rare incidents. (And they _will_ cluster. The math of a stochastic process known as an arrival process says so. Just a question of whether they cluster in your sample period, if it’s of short duration, or sometime outside of it.) But if you had a longer period that you were looking at, the clusters and the times of no clusters would balance out. > [@](#): > > I go back to my original belief. The problem is that there are a small number of crazy people. Modern technology, including guns allows for a tremendous amount of kinetic energy to be accessible to those people with disastrous effects. See post #154. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-new-record-u-s-a-u-s-a-u-s-a/797804.md?page=9)