Do tell . . . Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence

So mass shootings become a symbol of gun violence in general. The deaths of dozens become a window into the death of one, and a separate one, and a different one over there.

This, of course, has already happened with the mass shooting on Sunday in Las Vegas that left at least 58 people dead and hundreds more injured.

And this is a problem. What we know about mass shootings suggests that they are different from the everyday deaths that happen at the end of a gun. The weapon is the same. So much else is different. And the distorted image we get by using one as a lens through which to view the other has consequences for our understanding of the problem and the policies that might address it.

And that might explain . . . Why mass shootings rarely change the paralyzed politics of guns

In the cultural and political standoff over the role that guns should play in American society, the sides are so starkly drawn that groups such as the NRA don’t really need to jump into action when a traumatic event such as the Vegas shooting takes place.

“The NRA doesn’t need to send out their troops immediately after these shootings, because they’ve already trained people to believe that these incidents will lead to a crackdown on gun ownership,” said Jeff Nugent, a former chief executive of companies such as Revlon and Neutrogena and brother of rock star Ted Nugent, who serves on the NRA’s national board.

You can almost hear the sound of the scales falling from her eyes . . . I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.

When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

The new normal in Vegas? . . . Guests Scanned at the Wynn in Glimpse of Las Vegas’s Future

At entrances to the Wynn resort in Las Vegas on Monday afternoon, guards scanned visitors with metal-detector wands and inspected their bags, creating a 10-minute wait to get inside. The new security protocol, put in place after Sunday’s mass shooting nearby, is likely to become the norm on the Strip and possibly beyond.

Casinos and entertainment venues are going to have to take a more holistic approach to security, thinking about rooftops and other potential shooting perches — considering the possibilities for an attack from all angles, said David Shepherd, a former FBI special agent in counterterrorism who later was the security director for Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s Venetian resort.

Figuring The Wind with Ballistic

While velocity and bullet drop can be calculated fairly easily with the proper numbers, how wind affects bullet trajectory must be determined through years of experience, unless using the Wind Kit available with the Ballistic App Advanced and iPad Editions.

The Ballistic Wind Kit uses the JBM ballistic engine’s wind capabilities to allow shooters to account for nearly any possible wind situation. In fact, the wind kit allows users to quickly program the most complex wind scenarios.

Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. Announces the Repurchase of 243,423 Shares of Its Common Stock in the Third Quarter of 2017

Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. (RGR) announced today that during the third quarter of 2017 the Company repurchased a total of 243,423 shares of its common stock in open market transactions at an aggregate cost of $11.3 million. The average price per share repurchased was $46.33. These repurchases, which accounted for 1.4% of the outstanding shares of the Company’s common stock as of July 1, 2017, were funded with cash on hand.

At the end of the third quarter, $88.7 million remained authorized and available for share repurchases and 17.4 million shares of common stock remained outstanding.

Yeah, don’t hold your breath . . . Dear Jimmy Kimmel: Stay Out Of The Gun Debate If You Can’t Be Honest

Maybe  you’re okay with innocent Americans losing their constitutional rights because they’ve been placed on an unaccountable secret government list for no reason. Most people aren’t, however; even the American Civil Liberties Union agreed with the NRA on this. You owe it to your audience to tell the truth about the matter. . . .

The American gun debate is a very critical one, Mr. Kimmel. It involves issues as diverse as civil rights, civil society, self-defense, an independent citizenry, public safety, and political power. We should be able to count upon public figures to provide factual, well-reasoned arguments on one side or the other regarding this crucial topic. If you are not capable of doing so, then for goodness’s sake, please, keep your mouth shut and let the people who do understand these things discuss them.

This is why we can’t have nice things . . . Bump stocks — Legal in NJ, but even this gun shop owner wants them banned

Joe Hawk, the owner of Guns and Roses gun shop in Toms River, said he doesn’t sell bump stocks in his store — and believes they shouldn’t be sold at all.

“There’s no reason for it. There’s no need for it. It’s only for someone who’s trying to increase their rate of fire,” he said. “The only reason you would use something like an increased rate of fire would be in a war zone.

“The only reason that you’d want to do that is to put yourself on a battlefield, and American streets and American communities are not a battlefield.”

Incandescent stupidity . . . If Only Stephen Paddock Were a Muslim

What happens when the killer was only a disturbed American armed to the teeth with military-style weapons that he bought legally or acquired easily because of us and our crazy lax gun laws?

Then we know what happens: The president and the Republican Party go into overdrive to ensure that nothing happens. Then they insist — unlike with every ISIS-related terror attack — that the event must not be “politicized” by asking anyone, particularly themselves, to look in the mirror and rethink their opposition to common-sense gun laws.

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

40 COMMENTS

  1. If Trump and the GOP allow the banning of the stupid bump fire stocks, I’m done. May as well vote Democrat. Congress and the white house and all we get is more “gun control”. F that. I’m done.

    • “If Trump and the GOP allow the banning of the stupid bump fire stocks, I’m done.”

      For practicality’s sake, I’ll trade them even for bump-fire for 50 state reciprocity.

      And that just might work. They get a win, and we get a *bigger* win.

      Midterms are coming up. Those in vulnerable districts very well may be interested in a horse-trade…

      • 50 State reciprocity was never going to happen, never going to happen no matter what is horse traded. The West and East Coasts will not allow it.

        If the GOP and the President caves on the bump-stock bill its going to get worse for gun ownership very quickly.

        More bans and control will come.

      • No because that further empowers the BAN mentality. Once we cave on banning anything, it’s only a matter of time before it’s time to ban the next thing. After the bump fire stocks are banned, there will be another shooting without a bump fire stock, in which the shooter uses a regular semi auto. The media will then scream bloody murder, “look, we banned the bump fire stocks and it worked! So we now must ban drum magazines!!!” There’s an entire mentality behind bans, and it’s a snowball effect. If you’ll notice, the hardest of those in favor of gun bans are also very much in the business of banning all kinds of other things. See: Diane Fienstine.

        • You understand. You perceive. It’s not the particulars, it’s the philosophical underpinnings. John Cornyn said he’d support a ban on bump fires. If we allow this to happen, the enemy will declare a huge victory and will be back for more, quite boldly next mass shooting.

        • Stateisevil, do you have a vote to Cornyn’s position? I ask because I find it completely believable.

        • BINGO. We absolutely have to fight a bumpstock ban. Personally, I have zero desire to own a bumpstock but I know that if they get this ban it will be a notch in their belt that will empower them to seek more bans on things that the gun community at large actually cares about (Carry, magazines, etc).

          No is not the time to compromise. Now is the time to absolutely crush our enemies. Kill all their bills, get pro-gun judges into the court system, introduce new pro-gun legislation to keep them on the defensive. America didn’t elect a majority Republican government because we wanted compromise. We wanted a destruction of the progressive mindset. We wanted to make America great again and gun control is not the way.

    • The current President and majorities in the House and Senate owe their current positions to the POTG, the most reliable constituency against obama and Shillary during the last eight years. The anti’s haven’t had a win since the Clinton AWB and desperately want one and might do just about any kind of deal (taxes or Obamacare) to get one, Ryan and McConnell are desperate enough to take such an offer. That’s the danger.

  2. “I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.”

    She drops an even bigger bombshell on Twitter :

    ““Gun policy is the issue I’ve had to revise my position on the most and the one I feel that I was actively mislead on.”

    https://twitter.com/LeahLibresco/status/914876399781076997

    *That*, POTG, is *winning*.

    Forward that tweet to every anti you know…

    • That is one courageous woman. There’s likely going to be a shitstorm of Progressive hate coming her way. Leftists really don’t like it when you leave the plantation. The only thing they hate more than someone who disagrees with them is someone who disagrees with them, but who used to agree.

      • She was raised an atheist and became Catholic. She was pro gun control and abandoned that position. How did she reach these divergent positions? Research, logic, and in the case of her faith, experience. If we get a gun in her hands, we’ll probably have a full blown convert.

        By the way, she is only 27.

    • Leah’s article represents a refreshing turn toward honesty in the genre of “what about guns?” articles.

      I have a suggestion for prevention of Las Vegas-style horrors, one that corporate security has understood for decades: It is madness to pack 22,000 event-goers into a flat ground level “cattle lot” directly in view of a few thousand windows in high-rise buildings. That goes triply for high-rise hotels full of transients. Do you think a sports team (or the super bowl) would accept such an arrangement? Its only virtue is that it is very cheap for the promoters. From every security point-of-view it is absurd. It’s a Texas Tower Massacre waiting to happen all over again…but worse. And that massacre was undertaken with a bolt-action rifle.

      • “Leah’s article represents a refreshing turn toward honesty in the genre of “what about guns?” articles.”

        Even more surprising it’s from the ‘Washington Post’, who’s owner (Amazon’s Jeff Bezos) is actively anti-Trump, as in hiring reporters with the sole job of digging up anything to use against Trump.

        It’s likely a scrap he’s tossed to ‘prove’ his political impartiality…

  3. Hmm the app will calculate for a 9 mph headwind? Pretty sure that was written by a person who hasn’t yet learned about long distance shooting.

    • Won’t a 9 mph headwind impact bullet drop downrange, making the POI lower, depending on how far downrange?

      • Ehhh, a 9 mph headwind at 1,000 yards might change POI by 3 inches. The bullet’s going 1,850 mph so 9 mph from behind or ahead doesn’t much matter. It doesn’t even speed the bullet up or slow it down by the full wind speed amount, it just gradually causes it to slow slightly faster than it would have without a headwind or slow slightly slower than it would have without a tailwind. In effect, it’s the same as causing a teeny minor effect on ballistic coefficient.

      • I’m going to have to check that out. Because I like the way he shredded little jimmy above.

        • I’ve recently listened to a few of his videos and really enjoyed them as well. What’s really fun is watching him debate someone from the other side of an argument. He is very polite, never interrupts and always has his facts ready. I’ve yet to see one of his opponents so prepared or courteous.

  6. Well, Mr. Hawk, if I’m ever unlucky enough to be in Tom’s River again, I’ll have to stop into your shop and wish you well with that wonderful attitude.

  7. You can’t stop Shapiro. That dude is a damn terminator when it comes to arguing conservative talking points. He’s burned so many people in this country who have tried to make him look stupid. That man is the Tesla of modern political speeches and debate. Nobody, no matter how long they’ve been doing it, can shut him down. He’s an amazing little Jew.

  8. Mark who acquiesces to democrats. Mark of CAIN…pretty EZ to make Kimmel look like a dumbazz. Oh and he has armed guards-with GUNS!- right off his stage. Don’t you have to be funny to be a COMIC?!?😫

  9. “The only reason that you’d want to do that is to put yourself on a battlefield, and American streets and American communities are not a battlefield.” Yet……………

  10. Did Thomas Friedman warp in from an alternate reality where San Bernardino and Orlando didn’t happen?

  13. I cannot believe that a person can profit $12060 in 1 month on the internet .

    try this out.. ╚═►╚═► ╚═►╚═►❥❥❥❥www.jobpost9.com

  16. Let me FIFY:

    “The NRA doesn’t need to send out their troops immediately after these shootings, because they’ve the anti-gun D-hacks have already trained people to believe that these incidents will lead to a crackdown on gun ownership,”

    Kinda like they’re doing right now. Again. Loudly.

  17. “… Dear Jimmy Kimmel: Stay Out Of The Gun Debate If You Can’t Be Honest”

    Lyin’ Cryin’ Kimmel.

    And Shapiro’s take down of him was excellent beyond measure.

  18. Today the N.R.A, announced that Bum\b Stocks should be Banned! How do the members like this apple. All the time the N.R.A. stated that they would fight for there members. I guess they forgot there promise.

  19. Banning sale of “Bump-fire” stocks may actually be a reasonable move. First, it is a “gun control” measure that may quiet the ignorant screaming liberals (briefly) and allow the intense rhetoric to die down. Second, such a ban is NOT a restriction on firearms sales, prohibition on ammo sales, or any of the other more onerous measure the left demands. Banning certain alterations to weapons is not something new. Other devices have been reviewed and gotten a thumbs down from BATFE. And finally, if you really want a bump stock, make one! They are not that complicated.

    I doubt a specific “bump-stock” ban is actually constitutional, but I doubt the USSC would ever see a case on it. If they did, I would expect a very long and legally convoluted decision that twisted the Second Amendment into pretzel shape in order to say the fed could ban a specific attachment to a rifle

    • The Bump stock should be defended. It is still legal to sell.The N.R.A. stabbed all there members in the back.They should have fought the law that some pol is trying to pass against the Bump Stock. Every time there is a mass killings The Dem party wants to a gun control bill.there may be thousands of this stocks out there. Did any body hear of a legal gun holder using a stock against anybody. One sick man goes off his med,s and every single CCW holder or N.R.A. member is the cause of this shooting.The N.R.A. may pay a heavy price because of there stand. There may be a large lose of members. If the President goes along with the Commie,Social Death party. He may be looking for a new job in 2020. He has to remember what one of his promise was. No more gun control.Who elected him? It was not the other party.

    • You know that Feinstein’s bill bans not only sale of devices that speed up rate of fire, but also their manufacture and possession, right?
      We throw them bone to silence them. Who needs stupid bump stocks anyways. But they will be back, encouraged and asking for more. They never stop until they reach their goal – complete civil disarmament.

      Not another inch! NRA disappointed me and will hear it from me.

      “American streets and American communities are not a battlefield.” Not yet.

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