Vegas Shooting

[Mladen]

10 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Yes, very upsetting.  And I think the toll might get much higher.  I have nine family members who were there on vacation, one already dead and my sister says my BIL isn't looking too good and that most of the people around where they had been standing were either shot or killed. 

I can not express how sad I am to hear this. Dr Pepper, my prayers are with you and your family...

These things are starting to occur with such horrifying regularity that makes you wonder what really went wrong with us all.

[Liver and Onions]

My condolences to you, Dr. Pepper,  and my best hopes for your brother in law. I hope all the injured pull through. 

[Xray the Enforcer]

11 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Yes, very upsetting.  And I think the toll might get much higher.  I have nine family members who were there on vacation, one already dead and my sister says my BIL isn't looking too good and that most of the people around where they had been standing were either shot or killed. 

My god. I am so very sorry for your loss. 

[Dr. Pepper]

Thank you everyone for the very nice words and condolences.  I sort of feel like a jackass accepting them since I'm not close with my family these days.  But I love my sister tons and have felt really shocked she's dealing with all this (BIL is still doing ok-ish).

The numbers are astounding.  More than 600 people injured or killed.  I'm curious how easy or difficult it is to break the windows in high rises.  For some reason I assumed it must be very difficult in buildings with no balconies, though I guess with a huge weapons supply it's not so difficult.  

[Stubby]

2 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Thank you everyone for the very nice words and condolences.  I sort of feel like a jackass accepting them since I'm not close with my family these days.  But I love my sister tons and have felt really shocked she's dealing with all this (BIL is still doing ok-ish).

The numbers are astounding.  More than 600 people injured or killed.  I'm curious how easy or difficult it is to break the windows in high rises.  For some reason I assumed it must be very difficult in buildings with no balconies, though I guess with a huge weapons supply it's not so difficult.  

So sorry to hear of your family's loss, Dr Pepper.

[LongRider]

Doctor Pepper, Very sorry to hear about your family being among the victims of this tragedy.  Terrible news.

 

(Auto correct would not abbreviate doctor so spelled it out)

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

We have to figure out a way to monetize gun control the same way the NRA has monetized gun advocacy. 

[Salome the Persian Witch]

Dr. Pepper - I'm so sorry to hear of your loss. I send good vibes to your BIL as he heals, and I rejoice with you in the news of the well-being of your missing family members.

I got nothin'.  I can only quote Jimmy Fallon. "It feels like someone has opened a window into hell."  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yep. Stricter gun laws followed almost immediately Black Panthers and other African Americans arming. 

I hate that it's true, but the easiest way to get conservatives on the side of gun control is to encourage minorities to openly carry guns legally. 

I'm not so sure.  When my son's Cub Scout pack sells popcorn at "Palmetto State Armory" fully a third to half the customers who are going into the store to shop or shoot are people of color.  My observation is clearly anecdotal but if the premise is that whites can't stand people of color being armed it certainly isn't born out at that location.  I don't think comparing California under Regean to the US of today will bear out.

This does also illustrate the need for more and better statistical information about the demographics and effects of gun ownership.  The refusal of the Feds to fund in depth studies about the broad impacts of firearm ownership needs to end.  The NRA and the pro-gun lobby are hurting everyone with their opposition to these studies.

[Dr. Pepper]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I'm not so sure.  When my son's Cub Scout pack sells popcorn at "Palmetto State Armory" fully a third to half the customers who are going into the store to shop or shoot are people of color.  My observation is clearly anecdotal but if the premise is that whites can't stand people of color being armed it certainly isn't born out at that location.  I don't think comparing California under Regean to the US of today will bear out.

This does also illustrate the need for more and better statistical information about the demographics and effects of gun ownership.  The refusal of the Feds to fund in depth studies about the broad impacts of firearm ownership need to end.  The NRA and the pro-gun lobby are hurting everyone with its opposition to these studies.

Are those people of color then going on to walk around with their guns on open display?  Are they openly showing their guns while protesting?  I think these things are a bit different than being at a store purchasing a gun or using the shooting gallery there.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

17 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Are those people of color then going on to walk around with their guns on open display?  Are they openly showing their guns while protesting?  I think these things are a bit different than being at a store purchasing a gun or using the shooting gallery there.  

Dr. P,

I don't know which is why I think we need more information.  Many of the people of color were openly carrying with pistols in belt holsters.  But, again, my information is anecdotal.

[Suttree]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I'm not so sure. 

Why not sure? It's literally what good ol' St. Ronnie the White Washed(with the backing of the NRA) did in CA.

As for the effects of gun ownership, the evidence is pretty clear “Within the United States, a wide array of empirical evidence indicates that more guns in a community leads to more homicide,” David Hemenway, the Harvard Injury Control Research Center’s director, wrote in Private Guns, Public Health.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Suttree said:

Why not sure? It's literally what good ol' St. Ronnie the White Washed(with the backing of the NRA) did in CA.

I'm not sure that is what would happen today.  I'm not contesting the fact that's what happened when Reagan was governor of CA.

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

 

This does also illustrate the need for more and better statistical information about the demographics and effects of gun ownership.  The refusal of the Feds to fund in depth studies about the broad impacts of firearm ownership need to end.  The NRA and the pro-gun lobby are hurting everyone with its opposition to these studies.

Indeed.  

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/10/the_gun_lobby_restricts_medical_research_too.html

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After each catastrophe, leaders such as my colleague Eric Goralnick, medical director for emergency preparedness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, share experiences, both domestically and internationally. Paris learns something from Boston: Tourniquets, long out of fashion, had turned out to be helpful in the field. In turn, Boston had learned something from Aurora: Mass casualty drills in Boston had never accounted for such a large number of victims until officials realized in the wake of Aurora that they needed to prepare for circumstances that had previously seemed too remote to train for.

Emergency departments like the ones that treated victims from Las Vegas are forced to develop their protocols based more on anecdote than evidence. 
Man-made mass casualty incidents seem increasingly common. But are medical teams actually learning enough from them? Are we really getting any better? The answers are unclear because in the United States since 1996, there has been an effective ban on federally funded research on firearm injuries. At that time, pro-gun members of Congress actually tried to eliminate the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention simply because it was funding research on gun injuries. The members instead succeeded at removing $2.6 million from the House’s CDC budget—the exact amount of money allocated to firearm injury research. (The money was later reallocated specifically for research on traumatic brain injury.) At the time, Congress’ language was difficult to interpret, but the result of that language has been clear as day: The CDC stopped funding gun injury research. The National Institutes of Health followed suit. Almost everyone in the research community now errs on the “safe side.” Research on the epidemiology of who, why, and how people die as a result of gun injuries in America has virtually vanished.

Today, there are hundreds of federally funded studies on opioids, compared with approximately a dozen on gun injuries, says Megan L. Ranney, associate professor of emergency medicine at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, even though opioids and guns kill roughly the same number of people. (President Obama clarified some of the language in 2013 in an effort to encourage new research, with only a modest effect on funding—the NIH briefly funded several firearm-related studies, but the funding was not renewed.)

 

Today Paul Ryan says that it's mentally ill people who kill, not guns.  But he won't fund and he and his ilks keep cutting funds to help mentally ill people, while not passing legislation to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill.  Why?  He says, because if we do that people's rights will be infringed.  To translate Paul Ryan: People have no right to medical care but they have every right to have guns.

[Morpheus]

The fundemental philosophy of the modern Republican party is that everyone has the right to come out of a vagina alive, after that you are on your own, you have no right to healthcare, education, mental wellbeing or quality of life. If you are poor they will actively try to make things worse for you.

[Larry of the Lawn]

5 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I'm not so sure.  When my son's Cub Scout pack sells popcorn at "Palmetto State Armory" fully a third to half the customers who are going into the store to shop or shoot are people of color.  My observation is clearly anecdotal but if the premise is that whites can't stand people of color being armed it certainly isn't born out at that location.  I don't think comparing California under Regean to the US of today will bear out.

This does also illustrate the need for more and better statistical information about the demographics and effects of gun ownership.  The refusal of the Feds to fund in depth studies about the broad impacts of firearm ownership needs to end.  The NRA and the pro-gun lobby are hurting everyone with their opposition to these studies.

Oh come on.  This is the same country where black kids with water pistols get shot and angry freedom loving white ranchers can terrorize federal lands while brandishing guns aplenty with no repercussions.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Oh come on.  This is the same country where black kids with water pistols get shot and angry freedom loving white ranchers can terrorize federal lands while brandishing guns aplenty with no repercussions.  

I'm not saying you're wrong.  Hell, I'll give you another one.  The NRA's silence over the Philandro Castile shooting is incredibly telling.  If Castile had been white the NRA would have screamed bloody murder.  All I'm saying you may not be right and that it is worth looking into.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

23 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

I don't get this remark.  The NRA is the NRA.  Protesting shooting is not what they do, generally speaking.

But do they have some kind of history of protesting the shooting of armed white people?  Or do you imagine that the reasons they don't do this is because armed white people never get shot?

They were silent when officers shot a man legally carrying a weapon when he was attempting to tell the officer he was legally carrying a weapon. If he had been white the NRA would have screamed bloody murder.

[KingintheNorth4]

The NRA and Gun Lobbyists continue to enable domestic terrorists such as Stephen Paddock. They hold too much sway when it comes to trying to push new gun laws. Their grip needs to be loosen, from the local to the federal level.

[Week]

Ignoring the NRA apologia on behalf of a morally bankrupt organization -- 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/more-killings-more-guns/541905/

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So it’s not at all true that “nothing changes.” In fact, a remarkable research paperpublished in 2016 by Harvard’s Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra, and Christopher Poliquin found that between 1989 and 2014, the most probable policy response to a mass shooting was a loosening of gun laws.

"A mass shooting increases the number of enacted laws that loosen gun restrictions by 75 percent in states with Republican-controlled legislatures. We find no significant effect of mass shootings on laws enacted when there is a Democrat-controlled legislature."

This may explain why gun advocates insist that the immediate aftermath of a spectacular massacre is “too soon” for the gun discussion. They want the pain and grief and fear to ebb. They want ordinary citizens to look away. Then, when things are quiet, the gun advocates will go to work, to bring more guns to places where alcohol is served, where children are cared for, where students are taught, where God is worshipped. More killings bring more guns. More guns do more killing. It’s a cycle the nation has endured for a long time, and there is little reason to hope that the atrocity in Las Vegas will check or reverse it.

The link also has a litany of state by state changes over the last 4 years. A few which seem particularly problematic -- 

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The most ambitious of these laws was adopted in Georgia in April 2014. Among other provisions, it allowed guns to be carried into airports right up to the federal TSA checkpoint.

Of course, it's a crime to bring a gun in your carry-on ( punishable by 1 year in jail and $100,000 fine (in GA, at least)) -- so why would a person have a gun? Picking up friends or family? 

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Wisconsin did away with its 48-hour waiting period for handgun purchases in June 2015.

The "but I'm angry now" policy to gun ownership. Waiting an entire two days -- truly an affront to freedom. /s

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Effective June 2017, the state of Ohio allowed concealed-carry weapons to be brought into daycare centers and airports.

I'm still unclear on the legality of openly brandished pellet-guns by 12-year olds though.