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[Lord Shonus]

https://hotair.com/archives/2017/10/02/vegas-shooter-use-fully-automatic-weapon/

What the guy had doesn't actually sound like a legal weapon. Could be a full-auto or modified semi auto(s). He had 10 rifles in the room. It'll take working out what he used to determine what effect this will have on gun politics.

And if it's something illegal they might want to sit on that information, while they try and investigate where he got them, which should be understandable. If someone is selling modified assault rifles then they need to be caught more than we need to read about it.

It's not illegal to own an automatic weapon, it's just expensive and inconvenient to. He had no serious criminal background anyone can find, and coming up with $10k or $20k or even more, while not exactly cheap, isn't really something unexpected for a retirement age person expecting to go out soon to be able to do either. Hell, I know people that age who regularly blow that much on a monthly casino visit. (As in they put that much into the casino visit, they bring some back too, so it's not usually a total loss, but they're prepared to lose that much.)

Illegal is very possible, but legal is also very possible. Either way, politicians are already coming out with statements pushing for "something to be done."

As was said though, what CAN be done when you already have enough guns to arm everyone in the country capable of holding one out in the wild already?

Ownership of any automatic weapon manufured after 1986 is illegal, because all new registrations were banned. Ownership of older automatics renains legal, but not only are they very expensive, the clearance process takes months. Equally relevant, these are registered weapons, and the police would know about such a weapon very soon after identification was made.

The odds against this being a legal full-auto weapon are very high.

[sluissa]

The gun could be legal, it could be illegal. It could be modified. For all we know it could be 3d printed. Maybe the man is an accomplished gunsmith and created it from raw iron ore he mined himself. At this point it's basically irrelevant.

[Helgoland]

That's an interesting question, actually: How hard or easy is it for someone with basic metalworking skills and a supply of, let's say, hunting rifles to produce full-auto weaponry? The plans must all be patented, so the acquisition of technical details is not that difficult.

[Frumple]

Not. Not easy, is the answer. Especially if you don't want firearms that are likely to be a handheld bomb instead of a gun. Gunsmithing of any sort beyond the very, very trivial is pretty tough, and conversion is sometimes harder than outright building from scratch. Plus basic metalworking tools are going to have a bastard of a time producing decent stuff. Firearms take some specialized stuff (don't think by much, mind, but there's bits that aren't really general use junk that helps quite a bit) or a metric fuckton of experience to produce much in the way of quality, most of the time.

Any case, prez spoke. Actually heard the first broadcast. Content was fairly generic (the religious bits in general were sketchy coming out of trump's mouth, now that I think about it), presentation started bored and transitioned into interchangeable church sermon prayer request. Could have been worse.

[sluissa]

Difficult, time consuming, risky, but definitely possible. Still likely easier (although likely not cheaper even if you had to buy a full metalworking shop full of tools) to simply buy a pre-1986 one.

Automatic weapons are >100 year old technology at this point, diagrams, animations and designs of how multiple different types work are freely available. Some weapons (such as the M-16) were specifically designed to be able to be built in smaller workshops with less specialized tools. The idea of centralized factories being the only source of weapons was a concern and wanted the ability to still have production should those be attacked or shut down somehow.

Since WW1 and in every major conflict since (and likely between), garage inventors have been creating prototype weapons to try to sell to the government or major manufacturers as "the next big thing" there are massive numbers of crazy one off designs out there and slightly tweaked knockoffs of already proved designs.

Gunsmithing is not really all that complicated. It's just basic engineering that happens to involve partially contained explosions and thus requires a LITTLE more care than might otherwise be the case.

EDIT: Also, to note, if you start with a supply of rifles already made. You have the hardest part to create already in stock, which is the barrel.

[Frumple]

... yeah, the professional gunsmith that was a family friend wouldn't terribly agree with that last bit. Decent firearm has to be a hell of a lot more tightly engineered than most "basic" stuff if it's going to be worth a damn. Complicated maybe isn't the right word, but it takes more than a little bit of extra care compared to quite a lot of things.

[sluissa]

Professional gunsmiths have a vested interest in making their trade seem like "magic" so they can stay in business and limit competition.

I imagine because there's so much energy involved that one bad part and the whole thing blows up in your hand.

Depends on the type of ammo, but that's always a possibility. What's fun though is that it's very easy to over engineer something to ensure that doesn't happen. Adds weight and cost, but it's easier to do that than design the most efficient mix of safety and price you can get away with.

[RedKing]

There are certainly full-auto conversion kits available over the Internet for a number of models of semi-automatic, if you know where to look.
These are, of course, illegal as fuck. But when has illegality ever stopped a gun nut?

As with any of these incidents, right now I'm a mix of PTSD, rage, and despair. Because I know, in my heart of hearts, that absolutely *NOTHING* is going to change. We're fucking desensitized as a nation to it. Grabbed a bit of breakfast this morning, people around me were talking about how terrible it was for five minutes, then switched over to talking about the football games this weekend. Nobody seriously gives a shit anymore.

If we didn't have the will, as a nation, to make a change when a bunch of fucking children got mowed down, we're not going to change now. There will be the usual shouting about gun control and Second Amendment and freedom and liberty and all that bullshit, and then something else shiny will catch our attention, and that'll be that.

[Frumple]

It might not hurt, but it's not like those are getting us to do much about infrastructure maintenance/weatherproofing and building regulations either, if that's the desired effect

[sluissa]

Limit one weapons, people will find another, and another, and another, all the way down to sharpened sticks and bludgeons if need be.

You simply can't stop someone from hurting others if they're intent enough on doing it. Even if you limited automatic weapons there are still dozens of other ways to hurt mass numbers of people. It's simply impossible to stop.

It's a point in humanity's favor though, that despite the methods being widely available, so few people actually take advantage.

Maybe, much like how we have fire drills, tornado drills, etc., that we need to start having mass shooting drills.

Schools around here already do those. They're termed less alarmingly(Intruder drill, or something like that, I think?), but the idea is that the students all get herded away from windows, shoved into closets, behind bookshelves, and anything else that might block projectiles or at least sight, doors are ensured locked, windows drawn closed, lights turned off and then they sit and wait quietly.

[Frumple]

Yes, yes, we've heard that first bit before, and it was as silly then as now. Shown over and over and over that not much beats guns in terms of lethality. Literally, if we're getting the same number of people killed with knives instead of firearms (staggeringly unlikely, even if number of attacks stay the same), we would still be better off by dint of there being less associated injuries.

Impossible to stop isn't impossible to mitigate, basically. Even if you can't get the former more of the latter is pretty damn nice.

[RedKing]

Limit one weapons, people will find another, and another, and another, all the way down to sharpened sticks and bludgeons if need be.

You simply can't stop someone from hurting others if they're intent enough on doing it. Even if you limited automatic weapons there are still dozens of other ways to hurt mass numbers of people. It's simply impossible to stop.

It's a point in humanity's favor though, that despite the methods being widely available, so few people actually take advantage.

This is what I like to call the "Everything is terrible, so why bother?" argument. It's apparently an effective one, because things are terrible and we don't bother.

[Descan]

Reading Ameripol after my post, I'm struck by how many people took me saying "actual, literal 'Blut und Boden' Nazis" and immediately started talking as if it it was talking about conservatives/Trump supporters in general. I don't have a specific point to make about that, I just find it funny. And kind of telling.

[Dunamisdeos]

I think it's really good to see people here not immediately divide into bicker-camps over a major event like this. Restores some faith as it were seeing people have meaningful discussion.

I agree that things like auto-kits and automatic weapons in general should never be legal, but I don't think any law would have prevented this. You can't really prevent someone from knowing how to convert something, or from figuring out how to do it crudely. Even the sheriff involved said they couldn't think of a way to prevent this.

I mean, I have a buddy who is an engineer in a field completely unrelated to firearms and I'm 100% positive that he has the base knowledge necessary. It's not like rocket science, it's simple mechanical knowhow. This shooter even circumvented security on-site by just firing from a nearby hotel.

@RedKing - I feel you, but I like to call it "established precedent". Single-shot laws won't prevent these kinds of events. I live in VA, we had a guy ten or so years ago who just drove around in a van and shot one person a day with a semi-auto rifle. Only needed one bullet at a time.

EDIT: I know this is a lot of meandering tangents, but I guess what I'm saying is that we should examine why we live in a nation where everyone wants to shoot each other rather than (or really, in addition to) just looking at the gun he used.

[Folly]

I'm struck by the number of survivors praising God after this, and I just don't get it. I mean, God allows/causes many hundreds of peoples to get shot, and people's immediate response is to interpret this as a demonstration of his infinite love and mercy? God is like the universe's abusive boyfriend, and theists are the bruised and bloodied bitch who stay with him to the bitter end.