I know. I just don’t think this is the time to point out how “awful” he thinks the victims are.
This is a warning for you since you’ve been here for about ten years, so you should know the rules clearly by now. Do not call anyone on these boards that word again
You’re confused nobody remembers someone who lived there briefly? I barely remember the names of co-workers if we don’t cross paths for a few months.
I wasn’t aware that rifles had political agenda.
The SKS is extremely popular with shooters of all political persuasions, because it’s very affordable. It’s very affordable beause it is, basically, a POS. OK, it’s a durable POS, but that’s about all I can say nice about it.
Now, I suppose a non-shooter with a rifle (one of the scarier things I know of - they treat weapons like magic wands) might cone to some convoluted agenda like you describe, but Occam’s Razor - The more simple you keep your theories (including mine! 
) - bearing in mind the facts - the more likely you are to be right.
Ultimately, I believe he chose the SKS because it was affordable. His business was close to the end of its lifecycle (based on when he lost his license) and I doubt he had a lot of disposable income. Based on police reports, he was practicing in areas where someone you could describe as a ‘shooter’ or fireams afficianado would NEVER shoot. He was, in fact, a n00b. He chose a weapon like a n00b. He shot like a n00b. Consider it a blessing he was such an complete n00b - Much worse could have happened.
He actually practiced?!? And he was still that bad afterwards? Wow!
The real question I wanted to ask was where are these locations you were talking about? Was he shooting in a back alley or something?
Nothing. I’m not a big fan of his, but it’s exactly the sort of thing he always says and it’s consistent with his basic view of…um…, let’s call it “ethics”. From jury tampering to free speech to violence, this post of his is right in line with everything else he posts. I don’t think a “philosophy” based solely on “Nothing matters except what BigT likes” is a good one, but he’s stuck to it through thick and thin.
I guess I’m mostly used to seeing him in the Pit, where he traditionally admonishes people not to insult each other. To me, it seems like a radical personality change.
[QUOTE=madmonk]
Where is BigT suggesting that any of this is ok?
[/QUOTE]
- These types of threads are generally not the time or place to grind political axes.
- The implication there was that it would be worse if someone else was shot instead of Republicans, thus minimizing the impact of the tragedy, and well, as I said, shitty.
I had an uncle who died when I was 30, he was just five years older, and our relationship was troubled, to say the least. He was kind of an ass, I don’t think he ever said a single kind word to anyone in our family, he called his mother by her first name as an intentional signal of disrespect, and from my perspective, he just manipulated and used people to feed his drug addiction. But when he died I didn’t go around saying, ‘‘Well, I’m not saying he should have died, but let’s not lionize him.’’ Because that would be shitty. I recognize there is a difference but it’s a good enough approximation to make my point. Nobody is obligated to love the GOP but this sort of offhanded comment in the middle of a tragedy is rude. It also reinforces the increased polarization and divisive behavior that makes people feel increasingly more justified in using violence to achieve their ends.
I wouldn’t call what he was doing real practice - It wouldn’t have been, in my mind, even adequate to serve as a basic familiarization. Certainly not enough to obtaim anything like proficiency.* About 50 shots, in a common open area near a housing development.
IOW, real shithead behavior. He was behaving with reckless disregard for safety. The police warned him and that was that.
- I’ve found this frighteningly common with ‘anti-gun’ people who find themselves armed, for whatever reason. They tend to treat firearms as magic wands - point it in a general direction, pull (jerk) the trigger, and expect problems to go away. It doesn’t actually work like that, of course. An “anti-gunner with a gun” is one of my scarier nightmares.
I am a horrible shot with a rifle(standing). Never could keep it steady. A shotgun at 25 yards makes a tighter “group”.
However, I could keep 4-5" with a pistol with regular practice.
This is the kind of thing that responds well to practice - And there are techniques that will improve free-standing accuracy. Also, not everyone is equally facile with different kinds of firearms.
Useing myself as an example, I’m pretty good with a pistol - Not a super-competitor - nope! - but more than good enough to place in casual matches. On the other hand, I’m very damn good with a rifle. Shotgun? I can do combat, but don’t ask me to do sporting clays.
My father is rather revese on that - Pure death to things with wings using a shotgun, and a terrifyingly good shot with a handgun, but strictly indifferent with a rifle.
But any of those skills requires practice. Fifty rounds with no plan, no control, no discipline in an open field will not proficiency make. It isn’t enough even, really, to know if your sights are off - If done on a range, with some measureable marks (like a target, maybe? Naaah!), sure, you might know where your shots are falling, and make adjustments. But this guy? Nope.
So - It may be that he didn’t actually intend to ‘shoot to kill.’ Or it may be that he was simply utterly incompetent, and had a shitty weapon with mal-adjusted or bent sights.
Thank you for this. Since November, I have felt considerably more hostile towards the GOP and their supporters. This does NOT mean that I’m glad about what happened yesterday. Violence is not the answer, and schadenfreude has no place here.
However, while I am genuinely appalled by the shooting and hopeful for full recoveries all around, I did find myself not strongly disagreeing with BigT’s post. I felt bad about that, but I couldn’t argue against it on merit. You, on the other hand, have done so fluently and I appreciate it. Thank you for articulating what I could not.
There are plenty of people in this thread spouting off with their pro gun views, including a comment on D.C. gun laws even though the event happened in Va. why did those not spark the same rebuke?
I’ve been very carefully avoiding discussing gun laws in this thread, though I most certainly have some opinons.
In all fairness, I’d expect anyone stepping over lines in either direction in this thread to get rapped sharply. There are other places, other times for that.
But he disparaged the victims of this crime. Discussing policy issues isnt anywhere close to that level of callous.
Back to a topic on the previous page, the sound of the gunshots on the cell-phone video: Another complicating factor is that both the microphone and the digital processing on a cell phone are optimized for the human voice, and similar sounds. But gunshots are not at all similar to the human voice, and so a phone video won’t record them with nearly as much fidelity is it will with voices. In other words, what you’d hear in person might be very different from what you’d hear on the video.
And on his inaccuracy, don’t soldiers in warfare have a similarly-low hit-to-shot ratio?
Yes but a lot of them aren’t really trying either. A whole lot of soldiers just want to pretend to do their job without actually killing anyone. I can’t see how that would apply to a volunteer spree shooter with an agenda. Everything I have seen indicates that he was just a really horrible shot (thank goodness). There are many different ways it could have turned into a mass execution for men, women and children but some luck and loads of incompetence led to the fact that the shooter was the only one that got killed. It isn’t that hard to kill people with a rifle if you know what you are doing. Lee Harvey Oswald hit two moving targets in a few seconds with a cheap bolt action rifle and he wasn’t even a true expert. This guy was more like the spastic kid that plays the gun games at the arcade and can barely manage to even hit the screen.
What, you don’t think he was a patriot who recognized that his government had become tyrannical and needed Second Amendment remedies?
\sarcasm, in case you weren’t sure.
Not at that range. Even desultery effort would’ve done far better. Against maneuvering, tactically-savvy, fit men at normal combat distances, yeah, that’s a a challenge. This was a stone-cold ambush, against completely unprepared targets in a constrained environment with limited concealment and very little cover.
Two be fair, one of those counts a miss, as it wasn’t the primary. But it was a challenging shot. Contrary to conspiricy theorist’s assertions though, the exact shot has been duplicated several times - It’s not an “impossible” shot as is often claimed.
Not to mention the whole idea of laying down suppressing fire, which wouldn’t apply here but certainly degrades the soldiers’ hit ratio
They did. By me, even. See #214. Of course his comments were especially callous to the victims relative to the general political hijacks. That’s the gist of my argument, which seems self-evident, and if you don’t see it by now, you probably won’t ever.