True.
Most such look quite stupid, though.
Moderator Note
This has nothing to do with the specific case in the OP. Let’s stick to those specific questions about this specific case.
MODERATOR INSTRUCTIONS TO EVERYONE
Given the way questions about guns often go in GQ, I am going to have a very itchy trigger finger about political comments about gun control, from either side. Stick strictly to the topic at hand.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
This always sort of confuses me. I admit I’ve never tried to shoot people. But I’m often astonished at how low the body count in such incidents are. After 9/11, I recall reading an article in the Atlantic about low tech high impact scenarios. Occasionally, when I am in a crowded train station or street fair - someplace with minimal barriers to entry with a bag/backpack/heavy coat, I wonder about the carnage I could cause how quickly.
So, was he just unusually smart/talented in terms of people in general, or compared to mass shooters who tend to be not terribly so?
50% lethality of people shot is indeed high. In war, there are usually several people injured for every person killed.
It looks like it took about 3 hours from the moment the guy started to the moment he was killed. That’s at least 3 hours in which EMTs couldn’t get to those who’d been shot. Perhaps a lot of them died from bloodloss that in more typical mass shooting scenarios would have been prevented.
Perhaps many of the people who died were not just shot but also crushed by the crowd trying to flee.
He might also have used hollow point rounds or something more effective than FMJ. Perhaps having so many people pressed together also meant that he got several birds with the same stone.
I think I heard one of the survivors say that he was going around and shooting the wounded again.
That’s silly.One can be evil and smart at the same time. He demonstrated planning skills and executed a complicated operation mostly successfully. He was smart, which made his evil more dangerous.
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One or more of the wounded said they were shot again.
These are far from reliable. The magazine spring has to accelerate the stack of ammo upward by 1 round in the time it takes the slide to cycle. More rounds=more mass…requires stronger spring.
The force of a stronger spring causes more friction between the top round and the slide, this can interfere with cycling.
Even if the slide works OK, the two staggered columns of ammo press outward on the magazine sidewalls, which can result in poor feeding.
In short, we should be encouraging all mass shooters to use extremely high capacity magazines. They are quite likely to cause a malfunction and allow the shooter to be stopped. Extremely high capacity magazines are range toys, and no thinking person uses one in a gun carried for defense.
Precisely. Evil smart is way more dangerous than evil stupid. Doesn’t mean they are to be admired.
Planning skills like:
- Get guns and ammo
- Go to a crowded place that I have been too many times and know the exact lay out of
That’s some awesome planning skills right there.
Complicated operation like:
- Shoot way into doorway
- Start shooting towards a tightly grouped crowd
- When they scramble walk around and shoot some more people
- Check rooms that people can’t escape from and shoot ones hiding in them
This guy is a genius.
He chose a “good” target, cased it, picked a time where he could inflict maximum carnage, and accomplished his objective. And the simplicity of his plan is a virtue, not a failing. It would have been tempting to overthink it; he avoided that.
I never called him a genius. I just said he wasn’t stupid. He was fairly intelligent, and I am quite glad he is dead and unable to inflict further harm.
So not such a complicated operation then?
I said the PLAN wasn’t complicated, not the operation. There were pleny of things that could go wrong that he had to account for, but making an intricate plan is generally counter-productive; you just create more opportunities for things to go wrong.
Again, I am not praising him. But the fact that he was evil and hate-filled doesn’t mean he was stupid.
I saw that to but the same article says he shot three people in the parking lot before he went in. That more than implies that he was shooting his way in and did not have to sneak any weapons in. I don’t know if that is confirmed yet. I have a feeling we won’t get the complete story for a while when the official investigation report is concluded.
And he was able to post to Facebook while doing it. The guy was cold as ice. He pulled off the largest mass shooting in US history, like it or not its a milestone accomplishment. And yes, he was a hateful asshole who very likely did this all on his own and purposely shouted out his allegiance to ISIS as just a way to make sure he got more attention and to divert resources into checking out his claims. Oh this guy was smart. Hope he is burning in hell getting gang raped right now, but he was smart.
He demonstrated some pretty good competency at weapons maintenance and operation and extreme cold-bloodedness. And no doubt had a bit of luck as well. Clearly he wasn’t a drooling moron. But nothing in what he did seems to demonstrate any great intelligence to me.
No one’S called him a great intelligence. People have merelysaid that he clearly wasn’t stupid.
The post I originally responded to did exactly that.
I this to mean that he was crazy, but smart not that he was a genius.
The point is that most mass shooters are crazy, and not smart or they would also have killed many more people. This guy did his homework, which the others haven’t.