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[wierd]

It may seem trite and with bad timing to be so cynical so soon, but my predictions in the aftermath of this occurrence:

1) People will demand harsher gun control laws. (Never mind that fully automatic weapons, such as the ones used, are *ALREADY ILLEGAL*)
2) The issue of stronger enforcement of existing laws will not be broached. Item #1 will dominate all debate.
3) People rightly pointing out that making more laws to outlaw what was already outlawed, without actually stepping up enforcement of those laws, is pissing into the wind-- will be declared evil people who want automatic weapons on the street, when no such thing is being said.
4) The NRA will put its foot in its mouth again, and will stir up the usual crazies.
5) Questions about how this man managed to get that much heavy automatic weaponry up 32 floors without being noticed or stopped by building security will not be broached, or if they are, will not make their way into the media, as the spotlight be will be dominated by item #1.


EDIT:

Item #1 now confirmed. Stay tuned for more!

[Sheb]

5) Questions about how this man managed to get that much heavy automatic weaponry up 32 floors without being noticed or stopped by building security will not be broached, or if they are, will not make their way into the media, as the spotlight be will be dominated by item #1.

Is that really hard? It's what, a couple trips with a couple big suitcase?

[wierd]

See "Better enforcement".

EG, it is fundamentally better to have Las Vegas pass local legislation for hotels and casinos to install metal detectors and security checks at the door, than it is to try to ONCE AGAIN, outlaw what is already outlawed, believing that it will magically make the problem go away. Somehow.

[martinuzz]

5) Questions about how this man managed to get that much heavy automatic weaponry up 32 floors without being noticed or stopped by building security will not be broached, or if they are, will not make their way into the media, as the spotlight be will be dominated by item #1.

Is that really hard? It's what, a couple trips with a couple big suitcase?

Indeed, not hard at all, especially considering the guy had already been staying in the hotel room for a week or so. No one gonna look funny at hotel guests carrying a suitcase to or from their room.

[wierd]

Again, this is something that baggage check at the door will catch. A normal suitcase full of underwear will not trigger a metal detector, and will not show scary silhouettes on a baggage xray.

This is an enforcement issue. Making them somehow even more illegal than they already were wont fix shit.

[Egan_BW]

I think most people would object to have to go through airport security to check in and out of their hotel room every day they stay there. And I think the hotels would object to having to hire extra people to do the checking.

[martinuzz]

I can't see metal detectors and extra security staff to enforce checks being added to hotels. That'll drive room prices up so much to pay for that, that it'd likely kill the business.

[wierd]

And chemical companies objected to having to properly dispose of toxic waste instead of dumping it down the drain too.

Baggage checks and building security will actually make a dent here.  Conspicuously pulling an ostrich, burring collective heads in the sand to the grim reality that criminals will *gasp*, break the law, and illegally obtain illegal weapons, which they can then just WALK RIGHT INTO A TALL BUILDING TO SHOOT FROM WITHOUT ISSUE, (because it's so costly! *sarcasm) will do precisely dick. Because it did precisely dick HERE, TODAY.

(and the cost is pretty minimal. You will find exactly that at every court house in every major metro area right now.)

[Reelya]

"Metal detectors on all hotels" only prevents this one attack. If that becomes a thing then the next attacker just picks somewhere else. So the metal-detectors solution isn't proactive, it's reactive. You end up putting scanners everywhere. And personally, in terms of personal liberty, I'd prefer it if nobody could buy deadly weapon, than to have to live with government scanners all over the place AND crazies with easy access to deadly weapons AND cops who have heightened trigger-happy responses due to THEM also being alarmed by the crazies with deadly weapons.

The longterm solution is in fact European-style gun regulations. "But that wouldn't target this guys guns" misses the point. Making guns harder to access in general pushes up the black market price of all guns due to simple supply and demand. e.g. if you tax every car except chevrolets then the price of chevrolets would also rise, because of how markets work with products that can substitute for each other.

So, general gun restrictions do in fact flow into rising prices for all guns outside the official markets. And that changes the economics for petty criminals. Why risk an expensive gun on a low-profit crime? Given the inherent risk, you'd be better off selling the gun or just not getting the gun in the first place. It becomes too much of an up-front investment.

[wierd]

In which case, enforcement becomes border security to prevent illegal gun smuggling.

Better border security is a non-starter in the US for political reasons involving the US's dependency on illegal foreign labor.

The US has a serious problem actually manning up, and enforcing the laws it passes. Instead, it chases its tail in circles pretending to do something, when the enforcement side is just words on paper.

[Reelya]

Smuggling prevention has a terrible track record. It's never worked. (drugs for example).

The thing is, like I said regulation changes the supply/demand curve so it is effective. That's because it changes things so more gun-crime isn't profitable. It doesn't "intercept" stuff at the border, but leave the core profitability alone.

Gun crime for profit requires that the black market guns are available at reasonable price, and guns stolen from citizens make up a large percentage of that. We know that reducing legal access to guns is effective while stopping smuggling is not, because e.g. in Britain it's very difficult for criminals to get guns, while border-interception does fuck-all good for the drug problem.

[wierd]

No, it only impacts the supply and demand curve, when there is a tangible hazard to the transaction. Toothless enforcement lacks this.

European style gun control, comes with actually toothy enforcement.

[Reelya]

That's not how supply and demand works.

If there are less stolen guns coming into the black market, then the general price of black market guns rises. Individual transactions do not have a price set in stone, because there is competition. e.g. if you taxes every gun except the AR-15, then the price of all other guns would rise, but so would AR-15s because now there's more competition to buy that particular gun (and less demand for the other guns). You don't have to apply "tangible" costs onto the price of the AR-15 directly, the price of other guns going up causes the AR-15 price to rise by itself.

for smuggling, I'd argue that the smuggling only makes up the tiniest proportion of the guns used in crime. So it's a red herring to say you can keep open gun availability but cracking down on "smugglers" would solve the issue. It's a false deflection. In fact, the whole border issue was that Mexican gangs buy guns in America then they smuggle them south to use in the drug wars. It's not them, it's you. It's a complete red herring that you're being awash in foreign guns and that border protection would solve it. You guys are the prime source of the guns. It's fucking nuts to hold up border security as the solution here.

And like I said, the criminal wanting to use a gun illegally is constrained by the cost of the gun. If the price of black market guns rises, then the profits of gun crime are reduced, which pushes more marginal uses into the "not profitable" category.

Sure, that might not stop a really determined mass-shooter, but almost all gun homicides are not by mass-shooters, they're by petty criminals discharging the gun in pursuit of some frankly not very profitable venture. If you push the cost/profit line south for that, then less of them are in the market for guns.

[wierd]

in the case of fully automatic weapons, such as used here, smuggling *is* the primary means on obtaining them, because private sale is illegal, and large supplies dont exist.

if the goal is to prevent another "las vegas" shooting, you cannot just ignore this.

[Reelya]

like I said, those guns are still in a market where product substitution is possible. The price of a smuggled full-auto rifle is not independent from the price of other illegal guns obtained from theft or straw-purchases. Those straw-purchased guns do also get used in crimes, we have direct evidence that this is the case, so they can substitute for the "smuggled full automatic rifle" in the market. It's a market with multiple sellers, multiple buyers. All prices are contingent.

Also: update. Apparently he did in fact have modified domestic weapons. Remember I said originally that the nature of the weapons he had would matter to the political debate on how such things could be avoided in the future. e.g. how many people really need an AR-15? What for?

Actually, the idea that he had smuggled foreign guns was frankly a fanciful stretch to trying and dis-implicate the issue of the wide availability of powerful weapons in the USA. Like I said, crime gangs routinely smuggle guns out of the USA because of how easily obtained they are.