I woke up in the middle of the night to a bunch of news alerts from this. Several of my coworkers were in Las Vegas this weekend, but knowing them they were not at any concerts. I hope they’re safe. This is madness and surreal.
Unreal - it is just too easy to get guns and ammo in this country. This was a country music concert - should have been fun for those people, instead some nutjob with 10+ rifles and fully automatic weapons opens fire - WTF is going on? DD
Yeah but we need a D&D thread to post all are off-color political views on the subject. I can guarantee that in the coming days more than a couple of people in the Hangout will be referred to this thread to say whatever unfortunate thing they post over there.
I have no idea. Will have to wait and see. Not that knowing makes it any less horrific, but as of right not I don't think anyone has any idea WTF. But this doesn't fit the mode of other such incidents, at least not on the surface. FWIW, I only saw the very end of it, but all accounts (even those on 'opposed' news channels) of Trump's speech on this indicate it was a very good, somber, inclusive speech. Good....this doesn't need to turn into something political, especially not right away.
When I went to bed it was being reported as 2 dead and "dozens" injured. Holy **** did those numbers rise.
Can a resident gun expert talk about what ammo must have been involved? I can't imagine the guy was such an amazing shot that he had 400 individual hits, so his bullets must have been fragmenting like crazy (?) Shooter doesn't really fit the young crazy disaffected male profile. Really weird and horrific.
Well when you are shooting into a crowd of 22,000, it doesn't take accuracy, you are shooting fish in a barrel. I don't think he was using special ammo at all, just an automatic rifle that was either belt fed or had a drum. Also, I'm not sure that every person injured was shot, when you have a shooting like that in a crowd that dense, you'll have people hurt via the stampede effect it causes.
I am no gun expert at all. But I imagine that not all 400 injuries were directly from bullet wounds. They could have been from falls while running, getting trampled, etc. That being said he was firing automatic weapons which shoot many bullets in a short amount of time. Thousands of people crowded in tight spaces would make him more likely to hit folks in his bursts. I don't really know.
Others have already mentioned the tightly packed crowd and injuries due to a mass panic. Saw an expert talking on MSNBC who also stated that bullets would richochet from the ground when shooting from the high ground, so one bullet would be capable of injuring multiple people. Also stated that people were often on top of each other, the bullets could penetrate several people.
A ton of injuries probably occurred from the ensuing madness. Perhaps even a few fatalities. He was shooting for approximately 5 minutes. Given that window he likely got off at least a thousand rounds. Supposedly the weapons he was using were fatal up to 2000 feet and the window he was at was 1700 feet from the concert site.
They're saying it was automatic gun fire. I'm thinking he may have had a slide fire setup on his rifle. It allows a semi-automatic to act like an automatic. http://www.slidefire.com/
